‘To give something back is one of the only things I can do to make things right’: Erin O’Reilly in The Weight. Photograph: Luca TruffarelliIf a picture is worth a thousand words, then a dance created by a photographer must be worth multiples of that.Spawned from years of photographing dancers, living as an Italian in Dublin and finding deeper meaning in things often taken for granted, The Weight explores questions that filter through Truffarelli’s camera lens as well as through him personally.
Crossing over from photographer to choreographer is no small feat for someone who has never trained as a dancer. How did the creative process work? “Dance is really intriguing, because I have the ability to go away from my reality. Someone else is showing me something, and I get whatever I want to get from it. You just have to watch and make your own thing from it without someone actually telling you what to think, especially with contemporary dance. It’s so open.”
Fast-forward to Truffarelli’s move to Dublin, where he has worked as a photographer with nearly every dance company that can get on his schedule, including Liz Roche Company, Liv O’Donoghue, Junk Ensemble, Philip Connaughton, Emma Martin, Catherine Young and, of course, Oona Doherty.