Favour Odusola Awarded Draíocht’s CCI Residency Award 2025/2026

Congratulations to Choreographer Favour Odusola who is the 9th and latest Draíocht recipient of a CCI Residency Award (2025/2026), one of 50 Artist Residencies announced today by our partners in Centre Culturel Irlandais Paris.

Draíocht is delighted to continue our partnership with CCI (one of 24 partnering organisations), supporting an artist to travel to Paris to participate in the 2025/2026 Residency Programme, tapping into the resources of the CCI and the city of Paris, as well as having the opportunity to showcase their work on an international stage.

The recipients of Draíocht supported residencies are artists working in any discipline with a clear focus on children and/or young people.

To date, 8 artists have been awarded a Draíocht Supported Residency; theatre makers Mary Lou McCarthy and Dan Colley (2018/2019); writer and theatre maker Sian Ní Mhuirí (2019/2020), theatre artist Deirdre Dwyer (2020/2021), writer Liam McCarthy (2021/2022), writer & theatre maker Paul Curley (2022/2023), dancer, performance-maker and educator Monica Muñoz (2023-2024) and theatre-maker Em Ó Ceallaigh (2024-2025).

http://www.centreculturelirlandais.com

Favour Odusola (Proud African King) is a Nigerian Irish multidisciplinary artist who has worked across several contexts from traditional dance & percussion to commercial work and contemporary theatre for over 15 years in Europe (Ireland and London), Africa (Ghana, South Africa, Nigeria), and UAE (Dubai). As a dancer, he co-established UMAKOKO with Vithoria Escobar, a dance company that delivers dance-oriented services, such as performances, creative directing, content creation, and artist performance management services, and established UMA, a dance training outfit dedicated to equipping dancers with the skills, information and process of growing as a dancer/dance professional.

As a dancer, producer, curator and actor, he has performed at various festivals and performances including “Dancers for the Inside and Outside”, “EVOLUTIONS” and “Othello” by John Scott for Irish Modern Dance Theatre; “THE WANDERER” by Tom Lane, written by Jessica Traynor, choreographed by John Scott at Cork Midsummer Festival; “STRAWBOYS TOUR” with Rob Heapslip;“NATIVES” a Black canvas x Top 8 Production; and “BREAKING CODES” at Rua Red Theatre.

As a writer, producer and director, he co-created a community-led dance show with his dance company UMAKOKO titled “WAVE” and has run successfully in 2022, 2023 and 2024 – a fresh outlook on-stage performance, with dance and music in the spotlight. He recently wrote, directed, produced, and performed his first-ever theatre play titled “EKAABO” commissioned by the Local Live Phase 3 Performance Scheme funded by South County Dublin to a sold-out show in Dublin as part of Mother Tongues Festival. He was an associate artist with Irish Modern Dance Theatre. He was a Movement Assistant in Death and the Kings Horseman with Utopia theatre, working under Joseph Toonga, in Sheffield, United Kingdom in January 2025. He produced, performed and created, 'RR: Rooted and Rising - A Dance of Two Selves', a dance theatre piece excerpt at Smock Alley Theatre in the Scene and Heard Festival in February 2025.

www.officialpak.art