Nóra Ní Anluain Fay is a choreographer, performer and the Artistic Director of NAF Dance. Their work fuses dance and theatre, while being charged with humour.
Below, she introduces the new NAF Dance production Please Break my Heart - a comedic, contemporary dance piece that plays with the idea that all the greatest works of art derive from heartbreak, which opens the Scene and Heard Festival of New Work in Smock Alley this month.
My New Year's resolutions for 2023 were to get my heart broken and to watch more daytime television. The latter because watching snippets of Loose Women makes me feel like a grown-up and the former because as a theatremaker, going through heartbreak seems like the most practical way to spark material for a piece. From Taylor Swift, William Shakespeare, Adele, Elvis, Nora Ephron, the Brontë sisters and so many more, heartbreak has paved the way for countless of our favourite works of arts to be created. So it seems that to make a timeless masterpiece you must go out and get your heart broken.
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Listen: Nóra Ní Anluain Fay talks to RTÉ Arena
As a kid, I was always struck by the fact that all the songs on the radio seemed to be about love and heartbreak and wondered what else there was out there. The iconic girl band Little Mix released their song Shout Out to my Ex, in 2016 and they said that they were driven to write it due to its relatability as everyone has an ex. At 15, I tried to justify that the boy who proposed to me at 3 in the créche counted as an ex, just to feel involved.
plays or songs all charged with love and heartbreak?'
Dolly Alderton, an expert in writing about love and heartbreak stated that 'All the best love songs are about the right people not loving each other. Next to death, heartbreak is the worst thing we can experience.' Because of this we’ve been gifted such classics as Taylor Swift’s All Too Well, Adele’s Someone Like You, and Diana Ross’s No One Gets the Prize; even last year's song of the summer Good Luck Babe, by Chappell Roan captures the tragedy of what is to not have someone love you the way you love them. Time and time again artists succeed in making something so personal to them feel undeniably universal when they can transform it into something artistic.
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Listen to Nora's Please Break my Heart playlist
So when my previous piece Ham Sandwiches and Discipline, a disco dance comedy about the GAA, began to take off in 2024 I began to think what the next NAF Dance piece could possibly be about. and was immediately reminded of my 2023 resolutions - heartbreak.
I was hungry to discover what makes this theme an endless pit of inspiration for so many. I’ve been slowly developing the work through residencies with Uillinn Arts Centre in Skibbereen, the Mermaid Arts Centre in Bray, the Abbey Theatre’s Time to Write sessions and the Gap Day programme in partnership with the Pavilion Theatre, Dun Laoghaire. I was drawn to works like Fleabag (with the gut-wrenching ‘It’ll pass..’ line), Harry Styles using a voice note from his ex-girlfriend on his song Cherry, the almost loves of La La Land and Casablanca and so many more.
When do the lines blur between life and art? What warrants an experience worthy of being documented? Why are all our favourite books, films, plays or songs all charged with love and heartbreak?
NAF Dance invites you to dive into all this through the camp, comedic, disco world of Please Break my Heart, fusing theatre, dance and all the greatest love stories...
Please Break my Heart premieres as part of the Scene and Heard Festival of New Work in Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin on the 13th and 14th of February - find out more here.
