During this period, Ireland lost three million people to death and exile. The Famine was more than a natural disaster triggered by a blight on the potato crop - it consitutes a shocking case study on the failure of British Colonialism. It's a woeful tale of evictions, hunger, the poorhouse, sickness, exile, and death. Britain's official adherence to doctrines of laissez-faire economics worsened the Famine, as did laws preventing Ireland from importing lower priced foreign grain. At the time of the Famine, there was actually an ample supply of food in the country - however, while hungry people did not have the resources to buy it, those who controlled the food were exporting it across the water to Britain.
History is movement.
Sometimes, movement is pure, enthralling and dynamic. Sometimes it's pained, damaged and angry. In this journey, CoisCeim is respectfully moving with the ghosts of both. This dance theater is an attempt to touch an abstract, more feeling-based, understanding of a profoudn time in the history of the Irish. The company was set up in 1994 by a group of professional artists who work in dance and theatre in Ireland.