Magdalena Hylak is a dance artist based in the West of Ireland.
Born in Poland, she studied cultural studies, including theatre and dance, at University of Wroclaw.
She began her professional career in 2011 by working with Michael Keegan Dolan (IE), Liz Roche (IE) and Lea Anderson (UK) as part of Step Up Dance Project. She then worked with Ríonach Ní Néill (IE), Catherine Young Dance (IE), Emma Martin (IE) and Akiko Kitamura (JP) before starting touring nationally and internationally with John Scott-IMDT (IE) and Nacera Belaza (FR), with over 150 performances in 52 venues across 12 countries.
Early 2021, she started developing her own body of work through “Dances for Nobody”, where she questions the notion of performance. Then with “A dance”, an ongoing artistic research through raw movement and sound that translates into public performances in unconventional spaces. She is currently working on a multidisciplinary event conceived as a physical journey through a space and the time frame of her personal dance evolution.
At the core of her research is the movement and sound outside of the question of style/genre or technique, as well as the exploration of the relationships and tensions between public-personal, inside-outside, visible-invisible.
Her dance work can be described as raw, repetitive, highly physical and emanating from within. She is working with the belief that dance is rooted in human existence and that there is no confusion in the public perception of a choreographic work. Therefore, she is interested in community works where she tries to go back to the beginning and work around an absolute idea of movement/dance.
Magdalena Hylak is the Galway Dance Artist in Residence for 2023-2024.
She is the recipient of funding from the Arts Council of Ireland (Agility Award 2021, Commission Award-GDP 2021, Dance Bursary Award 2022) and the Galway County Council (Artist Support Scheme 2022).
She has been commissioned by Galway Dance Days (2012), Galway Dance Project (2016, 2020, 2021), Clifden Arts Festival (2022 & 2023) and Tipperary Dance Festival (2023).
