‘Clifden provided me with answers to that question of what I want to do in my life’

Magdalena Hylak says she was “late” arriving at the decision to turn dancing into her profession, at the age of 30. Having danced for years as a passion, she recalls walking through the streets of Clifden, Co Galway, one afternoon, and thinking: “Dance is something that I want and need to do with my life, as a career.”

Born in Wroclaw, Poland, Hylak studied cultural studies, including theatre and dance, at the University of Wroclaw.

After university, Hylak left Poland, aged 22, for a “summer trip” visiting a friend who was working in Ireland. That was 20 years ago now, and she never looked back.

“I took up a job in a local pub and I found myself in a place where I was really welcomed and comfortable. I started to really live on my own and discover myself through being away from my own culture and the security of family and friends,” she says.

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Clifden was “a place where I could start to hear myself and try to figure out what I want”, and at the time, she didn’t know that she wanted to dance for a living, “even if it was always something I did”.

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“It took me eight years to realise. During that time I worked mostly in hospitality, at a pub, then managing a restaurant, then at a nightclub, and later opening my own restaurant,” she explains.

“It was quite a different way of working versus artistic,” Hylak laughs.

She jokes that she tried “really hard to escape from dance” by moving to the “farthest corner of western Europe, in a rural location, where dance wasn’t very present for me”. Yet it followed her.

“It was always here. Clifden provided me with answers to that question of what I want to do in my life. I was quite old, I was 30 realising that. This is when I joined the Irish Modern Dance Theatre,” she says.

Hylak first began dancing when she was a child, after being encouraged to take up “some type of movement” because she hadscoliosis.

“I first started doing gymnastics, but then I quickly discovered different ways of moving and found myself in the dance theatre in my city. It was contemporary dance,” she says.

She later joined a dance company and trained with them during her university years.

“We can tell stories and connect through movement, which has always really interested me. The fact that I can connect and open a space through the motion of the body is what I love. What I really like is that I do not need words. Words are not needed for this to happen,” she explains.

“You just listen to what resonates behind the movement and the sound. It’s something we can all share together, and there is so much potential because we all have a body. There is a communal sense to it.”

Sometimes at work in Poland, you find there isn’t that much space for being human. In Poland, you have to put all the personal aside. Whereas in Ireland, that’s not the case

When Hylak first came to Ireland, it was an “amazing” time in her life because it brought her even closer to her passion for dance.

“I was young, and Clifden was buzzing at that time prior to the recession. The streets and the pubs always had a massive party. There were a lot of young people still here, but now they’ve moved to the cities. It was a great time of self discovery, of making friends and being in love,” she recalls.

Hylak had a daughter two years after moving to Ireland.

“She’s just turned 18 years old, which is quite scary,” she says with a smile.

“The timing for moving here was great for me because I was just out of university. I really wanted to meet new people and make new experiences,” she says.

Clifden, though it’s small, was “full of art and artists”, and Hylak loved absorbing the culture and getting to know Irish people.

The winters were a challenge, “because they are so long and dark” – both mentally and in terms of work, she says.

“Mentally, because the light is gone so early and so limited. But also for work, because things stop happening. Things have to close – restaurants, pubs, hotels, and it can become quite lonely during the winter,” Hylak says.

But realising she wanted to dance professionally greatly helped with this, as touring abroad became frequent for Hylak.

Since 2011, Hylak has worked with companies and choreographers including the Irish Modern Dance Theatre, Catherine Young Dance and Compagnie Nacera Belaza in France.

She has been performing internationally with the latter since 2017.

“When I started to work with the companies, we were mostly in Paris and other big cities. The combination between the quietness and stillness of Connemara, versus the business of Brussels, Vienna, Paris and Marseilles was a great counterpoint,” she explains.

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Hylak is also the recipient of funding from the Arts Council, Galway County Council, and has been commissioned by Galway Dance Days, Galway Dance Project and the Clifden Arts Festival.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, it was tough to be away from touring and working, but in retrospect, it was “the start of me developing my own work”, Hylak says.

“I loved the landscape and the space I was in. It was helpful to me to find myself and be creative. It’s the raw beauty in Clifden that met my need for that and I started to create my own work,” she says.

At that time, there was a restriction on movement within a 2km radius.

“I went out and danced anywhere within that radius. I looked beyond any style, technique or genre. I removed all of those and looked at what is the essence of movement,” she says, adding: “It’s an experimental approach to dance. I work with high-physical repetitive movement”.

In recent months, performing her work developed during that time has been very rewarding, Hylak says.

“It’s lovely to see how open people are and the interest in the work. This is something I always found really beautiful in Ireland: the openness to different cultures and different ideas. It’s really special,” she says.

Life in Ireland facilitates Hylak’s creativity, because people are “more laid back, and there is more space for being human”, she says.

“The main difference of life here is how community-based everything is. In Ireland, the focus is on community and working in groups. This is something I absolutely love. People in Poland can be very proper and everything has to be done perfectly.”

“Sometimes at work in Poland, you find there isn’t that much space for being human. In Poland, you have to put all the personal aside. Whereas in Ireland, that’s not the case. Here, the personal is a big part of everything.”

People in Ireland are “not as afraid to talk about mistakes or mishaps”, Hylak feels.

“That is something that’s really beautiful about Ireland and I really enjoy it. Of course, I miss my family and my friends in Poland, but a lot of them live all around the world now too,” she says.

“My home is here now. I feel I’m half-Irish, half-Polish. And as an artist, I’m absolutely Irish, because it’s here that I started to develop and make work as a dancer.”

We would like to hear from people who have moved to Ireland in the past 10 years. To get involved, email newtotheparish@irishtimes.com or tweet @newtotheparish