Oona Doherty

Oona Doherty was born in 1986 in London. She moved to Belfast when she was 10. She studied at St Louise’s comprehensive college in Belfast, The London School of Contemporary Dance, University of Ulster and LABAN London. She has been performing dance-theatre internationally since 2010 with various companies, including TRASH (NL), Abattoir Fermé (BE), Veronika Riz (IT), Emma Martin/United Fall (ROI), Enda Walsh & Landmark Productions (ROI).

She created her first solo work Hope Hunt and the Ascension into Lazarus in 2016. With this performance, she was awarded the “Tiger Dublin Fringe Festival Best Performer Award” in 2016 and the winner of the “Total Theatre Dance Award” at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2017 and the 1st Audience place and judges 1st place at Reconnaissance in Grenoble in 2017.

She created her first group piece Hard to be Soft – A Belfast Prayer in 2017, which was then voted “no.1 UK dance show of 2019” by the Guardian and was selected as one of the “top 10 Irish Artists” in 2017 by the Irish Times. In 2019, she created Lady Magma: The Birth of a Cult; a piece for 1 actress and 5 dancers, that was presented in 2022 at the Festival d’Avignon, France. In August 2022, she premiered Navy Blue.

Doherty’s distinctive and visceral choreography has sparked international attention, earning multiple awards, amazing reviews and prestigious artistic opportunities in Ireland, Europe and worldwide. She creates intense, compelling works that appeal for societal change.

Oona was awarded the Chanel NEXT Prize 2024, and the Venice Biennale Silver Lion in 2021. She was one of the Aerowaves 2017 selected artists, a Prime Cut Productions REVEAL Artist and The MAC Theatre Belfast HATCH Artist in 2016-17, an Associate Artist at Maison de la Danse de Lyon (FR) in 2017-18, and an Associate Artist at La Briqueterie Vitry-sur-Seine (FR) in 2017-19. She is Dublin Dance Festival Artist in Residence in 2020- 2022 and a Big Pulse Dance Alliance Artist 2021/2023.