Gypsy Fires

Gypsy Fires is where the research lives, and where it becomes practice: a newsletter, a podcast and a growing library of studies on Romani cultural history, percussive dance and embodied knowledge. Free to read; paid subscriptions keep the fire lit.

Feeling Impact

Intimate Violence: Feeling Impact in Irish Step Dance is a study of Irish step dance, percussive rhythm and the hidden histories carried in the body, written out of my PhD research at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick, accepted without corrections and self-published so the work could keep moving. Available on Amazon and from independent bookstores.

That doctorate is only half of it. The research continues, and two lines of it live here:

• Feeling Impact: the dissertation and the book, in full.
• Choreonavigation: an embodied method of wayfinding through maritime dance’s colonial legacies, in full.

The practice

Every week I write and record from the fireside: letters on embodied history, Romani philosophy and fortune-telling applied to daily life, grounded in PhD-vetted research and the survival wisdom my family has carried for generations. The newsletter is where the research becomes something you can do.

• The Timedancing Lab: an exploration of hyperchronicity — the experience within dance tradition when we can feel all times in this time, and this time in all times. A historical, theoretical and psychic archive built to help us find a way out through rhythm, cadence and repetition.
• The Micro-Dance School: full-body neuro-percussion threaded together from the world’s broken percussive dance traditions — snap, slap and stomp your way back to sanity. A seated somatic toolkit for breaking corporate fatigue and colonial mind-fracking and reclaiming your body directly at your desk, with premium streamable audio loops, rhythmic tapping tracks, movement frameworks and guided meditations.

This work is not abstract. I have been mentored in the British spiritualist tradition by Mavis Pittilla and by the butoh artist Maureen Fleming, and the practice keeps the discipline of that lineage: sound, rhythm and ritual as concrete physical method.

Keep the fire

The newsletter is free to read; paid subscriptions keep the research independent. Fire Keepers — the founding tier — receive everything a paid member does, plus deeper reach into decades of inside knowledge: a private 30-minute virtual reading with live harp, to restore movement, clarity and direction.

The podcast

Researched deep dives and conversations on embodied history, Romani philosophy and timedancing of the body and soul. Currently ranked #11 in Ireland for philosophy. Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.