Roaratorio

An Irish Circus Finnegans Wake. By John Cage & Merce Cunningham.

Sound and dance installation in the Marble Arch Caves, County Fermanagh in association with Merce Cunningham Foundation and The International Happy Days Samuel Beckett Festival.

In 1979, Cage made the first realisation of “circus on” entitled Roaratorio: an Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake. In 1983 Merce Cunningham added choreography for the American premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, October 26, 1983. In 2009, in the wake of Cunningham’s death, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company set out to revive the work, which was subsequently seen, in 2010, in Los Angeles and Montpellier.

This was the first time the dance had being presented in excerpts and the first time the piece had being seen and heard beneath the earth!

Installation produced by SARC Queen’s University Belfast.