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Emerging Dance Scholarship in Ireland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2011

AOIFE MCGRATH
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Extract

Irish-based dance practice has a long history of being culturally undervalued, underfunded and marginalized, with the 1995 annual Arts Council report stating a ‘recognition of the fact that dance as an art form has suffered severe neglect in Ireland’. Yet despite this neglect, Ireland has a rich and varied dance history and a vibrant contemporary dance scene, and dance research is emerging as an exciting new field of scholarship. The visibility of theatre dance in the cultural landscape of Ireland improved significantly in the first decade of the twenty-first century. In 2003 dance was finally included as a named art form in the Irish government's Arts Act, and the same year saw the founding of Dance Research Forum Ireland, a society formed to promote critical reflection and discussion about all forms of dance in Ireland. Another important development for dance scholarship was the announcement in January 2010 of Arts Council funding for the establishment of a national dance archive to be housed in the Glucksmann Library of the University of Limerick.

Type
Publications Dossier: Changing the Landscape of Irish Theatre Studies
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , October 2011 , pp. 289 - 291
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2011

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References

NOTES

1 An Chomhairle Ealaíon/Arts Council, Annual Report 1995, p. 61. This report is available online at www.artscouncil.ie/Publications/An_Chomhairle_Eala%C3%ADon_1995.pdf., accessed 3 January 2010.

2 The 2003 Arts Act changed the 1951 and 1973 definition of ‘the arts’ to include dance. The original definition defined the expression ‘the arts’ as including ‘painting, sculpture, architecture, music, the drama, literature, design in industry and the fine arts and applied arts generally’. The Arts Acts can be accessed online at www.irishstatutebook.ie, accessed 7 March 2009.

3 O'Connor, Barbara, ‘“Come Dance with Me in Irelande”: Dance Performance in Tourist Settings’, in O'Connor, Barbara and Cronin, Michael, eds, Irish Tourism: Image, Culture and Identity (Buffalo, NY: Channel View Publications, 2003), pp. 122–38Google Scholar.

4 Monks, Aoife, Comely Maidens and Celtic Tigers: “Riverdance” and Global Performance, Goldsmiths Performance Research Pamphlets, No. 1 (London: Goldsmiths University of London, 2007)Google Scholar.

5 Wulff's project of discussing how ‘Irishness’ is expressed through indigenous dance forms operates from an essentialist basis that is at odds with most current performance studies and dance-studies practice, yet the information gained from her interviews with over a hundred interlocutors from various dance sectors in Ireland presents some important primary research material.

6 Brady, Mary, ed., Choreographic Encounters: Vol. I (Cork: Institute for Choreography and Dance, 2003)Google Scholar; idem, ed., Choreographic Encounters: Vol. II (Cork: Institute for Choreography and Dance, 2005). Deirdre Mulrooney's book Irish Moves: An Illustrated History of Dance and Physical Theatre in Ireland (Dublin: Liffey Press, 2006), also falls into this category of publication, presenting mostly edited interview material with Irish choreographers and physical theatre practitioners rather than a critical history.

7 Mary Brady, ‘Foreword’, in idem, Choreographic Encounters: Vol. I, p. 10.

8 For a discussion of how both a postcolonial focus on mastering the language of the colonizer and the repression of the body by church and state authorities have effected corporeal expression within a theatrical context in Ireland, see the Introduction and chap. 1 of Sweeney's, BernadettePerforming the Body in Irish Theatre (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) pp. 1–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 8–49.

9 Grosz, Elizabeth, Space, Time, and Perversion (New York and London: Routledge, 1995), p. 232Google Scholar.