Dance Theatre in Ireland: Revolutionary Moves

This book provides the first critical and contextual study of contemporary and historical dance theatre in Ireland. Since the arrival of the traditional dance spectacular Riverdance in 1994, Irish dance has not only become a topic of global interest, but also a subject of heated debate. The emergence of companies such as CoisCéim Dance Theatre and Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre in the mid-1990s marked an important turning point in Irish dance practice that once again provoked a re-thinking of the perception of the dancing body and its position within Irish performance culture. McGrath's study examines how groundbreaking dance theatre works have tackled some of the most urgent and difficult socio-political and cultural questions in Ireland, and how in doing so they have re-imagined seemingly hermetic narratives of oppression and limiting definitions of 'Irish' corporeality. This study provides a timely reading of these revolutionary moves.

AOIFE McGRATH is Lecturer in the Drama Department at Queen's University Belfast and recently completed her doctoral studies at Trinity College Dublin. She is a Trinity College Dublin gold medallist and the winner of the Irish Society of Theatre Research's inaugural New Scholar's Prize (2011). She is a dancer and choreographer and has worked as the dance adviser for the Irish Arts Council.

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Danced Precedents from Yeats to Davis

Genre Debates: the Dance and the Bathwater

Choreographing Narratives: Buried Bodies and Constitutive Stories in The Bull and Ballads

Choreographing the Unanticipated: Death, Hope and Verticality in Giselle and The Rite of Spring

Choreographing Dissensus: Dodgems and Roundabouts

Concluding Thoughts and Future Moves

Select Bibliography

Index