About Fidget Feet
Fidget Feet create spectacular contemporary circus for the outdoor sector – suspended from cranes, trees, buildings and boats. Fidget Feet also specialise in aerial dance for indoors, and site-specific work for the theatre and festival sector. Artistic director Chantal has been working for 11 years as an aerial dancer and choreographer, mixing her skills in contemporary dance with circus to define aerial dance, a new art form in Ireland and England. Jym Daly has worked as a painter, musician (Loop Guru) and circus performer, touring the world with prestigious acts and companies for the last 30 years. Chantal and Jym’s skills working together is what make Fidget Feet a unique and original performance company.
Chantal McCormick
Chantal trained as a dancer and choreographer at the London School of Contemporary Dance and subsequently became interested in aerial circus. For the last 10 years she has been performing internationally both with her own company Fidget Feet, and other established dance and circus companies, including Scarabeus Theatre, Northern Stage Ensemble, Green Candle, Sirens Crossing, Seven Sisters, Isabel Rocamora, Aye Productions, Dream Engine, Boiler House and Expressive Feat.
In 2002 Chantal received a Choreographers Award from the Irish Arts Council and travelled to the US to study contact dance. In 2005 Chantal received a Travel Award from Irish Arts Council to travel to America to take part in a two-week workshop programme at The Aerial Dance Festival in Colorado. She has performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with Scottish company Boilerhouse in The Bridge, a large-scale outdoor production incorporating music, aerial theatre and cinematic imagery. Chantal and Fidget Feet will return to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with RAW in 2009. She also appeared as a Winter Elf in Efteling (BBC) and can be seen alongside Johnny Depp in the film Neverland (Miramax).
She loves working on the ground using dance, contact and theatre, and enjoys finding ways to bring them into the air, using anything to climb or fly on.
With Fidget Feet Chantal has created and directed four full length shows, Wired and Free, I Can’t Handle Me, A Fairies Tale and Remember Her. She worked as a choreographer on RAW and The Snow Queen.
Jym Daly
Jym was born in Cork, Ireland. Trained in art in Cork City, he painted for 10 years then moved on to music and has been in the business for 15 years playing with Physic TV, Headbutt, – an ‘art terrorist’ music band with 4 albums and a trail of shows throughout Europe – and now Loop Guru, a world class music group described as ‘The Godfathers of Global Fusion’. With 7 album releases to date, world-wide tours including 4 full circuits of the USA, with TV exposure and numerous press articles and reviews. Jym occasionally performs with Slipper and also continues to create his own music under the name of Jym Darling.
Jym has scored music for dance/theatre/event companies including Scarabeus Theatre, Wrong Size, Expressive Feat, and Hybrid. He is also a physical performer and actor working with Scarabeus Theatre. Jym has recently performed at Glyndebourne, and with Cirque d’Hoffmann.
In his spare time, Jym makes short promo-films editing for circus and dance companies. He recently won a certificate of merit from South Bank Film for his first animation movie. He has created film for Loop Guru music video (shown on MTV). Performed in Dublin for the opening of the Guinness Building, he was one of the performers flying up and down it’s 7 stories! You might spot him on the triple decker bus in the film Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban or maybe you saw his 2 year run in MUZIK magazine as EBD, a music loving alien!
For Fidget Feet, Jym uses his art skills to create animation and video for projection and backdrops. Fidget Feet are embracing new film and projection technologies in their works, and Jym is keen to expand upon this in the future. Jym worked on Boxes with CoisCeim Dance Company in Ireland, producing all the film and animation.
Jym is working on a new music CD for new music project Invoke The Band.
Jym & Chantal give heartfelt thanks and praise to our spiritual teacher and guide Avatara Adi Da Samraj who is a constant source of love and inspiration.
In loving memory of our beloved friend Emma Insley
On the day of Emma’s accident she was as lively and excited about her work as ever, playing the part of Gaia, spirit of the earth, for our new Fidget Feet production Real Eyes. She was delighting in the role, hamming it up as the star of the show and making us all laugh. Emma had been as lucky in love as she was in her choice of what she spent her life working at. At 17 she met her soulmate, Joe Hull, and they had been together since. Joe was part of this production too. Our heart goes out to Joe as he was there at the accident. This kind of pain should not happen to anyone, and the depth of it can only be imagined.
Fidget Feet have lost a dear and precious friend and her loss has caused a sea of remorse from friends all around the world. All we can say now is that Emma would never have given up the choice to fly in her life, and we respect and celebrate that courageous, full and beautiful life. Emma we love you deeply and forever……….
More about Emma
How many people can truly say they love their job and that they are actually happy in their life? Emma Insley joyfully yelled “I love my job!” as she sat back to back with her friend Chantal on a giant representation of the Earth as it lifted into the Donegal skies. The two were obviously so incredibly happy. Emma was like this whether on the ground or in the air, which is where she spent a lot of her life as a very talented dance/circus aerialist.
She was as developed a human being as she was an aerialist. She brought everyone out of themselves and into the party that was her life, accepting them so fully and completely, just as they were, which is one of the many reasons everyone felt accepted and comfortable with her. Emma was the kind of person you could only love, because that is all she gave out. Despite being one of the most accomplished aerialists on the scene, she never took herself as serious as her abilities would definitely have justified. As a high flying lady, she was in the fullest sense also one of the most grounded of us.
Emma has worked with Fidget Feet for many years and is a most cherished and beloved friend of the directors Chantal and Jym. Emma has always been a bright spark and a boon to any gig. We all were respectful of the dangers of this kind of work. Rather than deny doing what we loved, we all faced those dangers and helped each other through them. Emma faced this challenge in her life with courage and great generosity, helping others to get the right techniques to deal with situations they might face in their work. Many times she could be seen with her arm around a distraught colleague, plagued with self doubt or fear and telling them how great they were and what to do to make it work better for them, punching them playfully on the arm and sending them out to face their challenge with a hearty shout of “don’t worry about it mate, you’re brilliant!”
We love Emma and miss her very much. In our hearts we know she would want Fidget Feet to continue to create and perform aerial work. Also Emma’s family wants Fidget Feet to continue, and hopes we will finish and perform Real Eyes. Their blessing gives Chantal and Jym strength to go on – the show must go on and we want to make Emma proud.
Fidget Feet Have liaised and assisted the Health and Safety Authority and the Guards with their investigation, they are treating the accident as just that, “a tragic accident” and are happy that there was no foul play or negligence and are not pursuing the issue. The accident happened on Wednesday the 20th of August at 3pm in Donegal, Emma was 30years old and working on new show REAL EYES.