Of Our Times
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Spring 2015 / Earrach 2015 Irish World Academy of Music and Dance University of Limerick Dámh Chruinne Éireann Rince agus Ceol OF OUR TIMES Ollscoil Luimnigh COMHAIMSEARTHA Front cover photo: Marketa Formanova (Czech Republic) and Vivian Brodie Hayes (Ireland), MA Contemporary Dance Performance Photograph © Maurice Gunning Niamh Ní Bhriain performing at the Waking St Munchin event at Dance Limerick Photograph © Maurice Gunning Contents 2 INTRODUCTION 4 FACULTY & STAFF AT THE IRISH WORLD ACADEMY 6 LUNCHTIME PERFORMANCE SERIES 12 THE TOWER SEMINAR SERIES 20 LOGOS SEMINAR SERIES 24 SPECIAL EVENTS 28 AG FÉACHAINT SIAR / RECENT EVENTS AT THE ACADEMY 34 BEALACH / COMMUNITY CULTURAL PATHWAYS AT THE IRISH WORLD ACADEMY 38 CÓNAÍ / ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE 42 TAIGHDE / RESEARCH AT THE ACADEMY 48 IRISH WORLD ACADEMY ENSEMBLES 52 SCHOLARSHIP AND AWARD RECIPIENTS Credits 56 CLÁR / IRISH WORLD ACADEMY PROGRAMMES 60 OTHER PROGRAMMES AND ARTS OFFICES General Editor: Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin Text Editors: Gráinne O'Donovan and Eilín Mulcahy Photography: Maurice Gunning Design: Joe Gervin Space Booking Coordination: Melissa Carty Ag Féachaint Siar/Recent Events: Jennifer de Brún (Media Office) Tower/Logos Module Coordinator (Colloquium): Aileen Dillane Thursday Lunchtime Performance Coordinator: Ferenc Süzcs Tuesday Lunchtime Performance Coordinators: Sandra Joyce/Niall Keegan Taighde/Research Editor: Helen Phelan CONTENTS 1 Introduction Sionna’s Box: Artists-in-Residence Dr Helen Phelan at the Irish World Academy In its earliest manifestations, the Academy was not a physical entity but an imagined to relocate the orchestra to the University of Limerick campus in accordance with space, often referred to playfully as a ‘bosca’, or ‘box’, by its founder-director, a recommendation from the Arts Council. This decision birthed a relationship Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin. This bosca was no ordinary cube with six faces but a between the orchestra and the Academy, which has spanned two decades. magician’s box with false walls and escape hatches; a Pandora’s Box of curiosity, If the chamber orchestra was the first artistic-ensemble to establish itself at the creative subversion and mischief; a box of tricks where anything could happen. Academy, it was preceded by an earlier artistic residency at Thomond College of It was also imagined as a reliquary: a sacred box housing precious and valuable Education, which was dissolved and integrated into the University of Limerick impulses; and a sanctuary and safe haven: a place where scholarly and artistic in 1991. In 1986, Mary Nunan was appointed Dancer-in-Residence at Thomond searchers could explore, experiment and be nourished by the sharing of the College, and in 1988, with support from the Arts Council, Thomond College and journey. Most tellingly, the Academy was imagined as a junction box: a bordered Mary Immaculate College of Education, she founded Daghdha Dance Company space where energies and currents could meet and electrify each other. at Thomond College. Mary was Daghdha’s artistic director until 1999, when she The junction box of the Academy allows for the flow of energy through the curricula became a full-time member of faculty at the Academy. – or circuits – of its educational programmes. Scholarship and performance grow out In 1995, Toyota Ireland gifted IR£500,000 to the Academy. The donation resulted of this box as branches from the trunk of a tree. The Greek (puxos) and Latin (buxis) in the creation of the Toyota Performing Arts Initiative, a five-year programme of for ‘box’ derive from the boxwood tree. Indeed, writing and scholarship literally artistic residencies, commissions and festivals managed by Margaret O’Sullivan. grew out of the boxwood tree, whose wood was favoured for early wood-block In 2000, a publication entitled Bosca commemorated the initiative, and in its printing. With its finely grained, high-density texture and resistance to chipping, introduction, Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin likened the bosca that had emerged during the music also grew out of the boxwood tree in the form of tail pieces, chin-rests and five-year period to things as diverse as the alchemist’s vas hermeticum – the sealed tuning pegs for stringed instruments, Baroque recorders, uilleann pipes and Great container of wisdom; the hazelnut of Irish mythology, cracked open to reveal the Highland bagpipes. purple bubbles of imbas, or inspiration; and the egg-shaped beehive huts of Flowing around the circuitry of the Academy is the wider world of musicians, dancers, medieval, monastic Ireland, dotting the banks of the River Shannon (Sionna) and singers, story-tellers, clowns, acrobats and global performers. The Academy connects creating beads of education and artistry, threaded together by the river. Bosca, in outwards to these energies through access programmes such as NOMAD, which this sense, is Sionna’s box; a gift waiting to be opened by those who would spend celebrates Irish Traveller culture; SANCTUARY, which celebrates new migrant cultural time on her banks. communities; and numerous community-based, educational and therapeutic projects. The Toyota Performing Arts initiative resulted in commissions and publications from Just as the Academy reaches out into local and global creative communities, artists such as Raymond Deane, Gerald Barry, Kenneth Edge, Tommy Hayes, Michael it also welcomes these worlds of performance into its bosca in the form of artists- Alcorn, John Buckley, Elaine Agnew, Mary Nunan, Terry Moylan, Niall Keegan and in-residence. Over the last two decades, the Academy has facilitated more than Desi Wilkinson. James Keane from Labasheeda, Co Clare became the first Irish 40 artistic residencies. The establishment of a Chair of Music at the University of traditional dancer in residence at any university in the world. Other artists-in- Limerick in 1994 coincided with an impulse to professionalise and decentralise the residence included Peggy McTeggart, Dara Bán MacDonnacha, Cindy Cummings, Irish Chamber Orchestra, Ireland’s premier chamber string orchestra. A dialogue Stephen Scott, James Scanlon, Subroyo Roy Chowdhury and Saibal Chatterjee. between the orchestra’s chief executive, John Kelly, and the Academy’s newly The Irish World Academy building has emerged as a physical manifestation appointed Chair, Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, resulted in a decision by the then Minister of the imagined spaces of Sionna’s bosca. In the middle of the foyer there is a pit, for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, Michael D. Higgins (now President of Ireland), INTRODUCTION 2 sunk into the foundations at the time of construction in the tradition of ritual pits and dance in the world. Irish language song has been supported by the efforts of built to consecrate newly constructed buildings. The 11th-century Kasyapasilpa, a Foras na Gaeilge with the appointment of Iarla Ó Lionáird and Áine Uí Cheallaigh as Sanskrit treatise on art, architecture and literature, describes the ritual for placing Foras na Gaeilge artists-in-residence. Pecker Dunne became the first ever Traveller a deposit box in the pit. Known as garbhanyasa – ‘the placing of the embryo’ – musician-in-residence in an Irish university through the NOMAD initiative, while the the ritual describes the constructed deposit box as ‘the womb house’, the place of contemporary Nigerian dancer Peter Badejo was appointed SANCTUARY’s artist-in- gestation, fertility and birth. The ritual pit in the Academy has a bag of hazelnuts, residence to work with new migrant communities in Limerick. Fidget Feet, Ireland’s a pair of bones, a bodhrán and a replica bronze-age horn, all symbols of the foremost Aerial Dance Theatre Company, became artists-in-residence in 2013 to Academy’s own quest for creativity and wisdom. mark the launch of a new postgraduate programme in festive arts. The Academy building is a space of hospitality for artists who continue to interact Artistic energy fuels the creative and scholarly endeavours of the Academy but it with the bosca in a variety of ways. Musicians-in-residence, including Lajos Szücs, also responds to, subverts, represents and questions the Academy’s identity and the Bellatrix Piano Trio, Donal Lunny, the Chieftains, Martin Hayes, Tommy Peoples, ethos. If the bosca that is the Irish World Academy is a junction box of connectivity, Mickey Dunne, Paul Brady and Maighread Ní Dhomhnaill, have all made rich artists who reside and spend time here provide an essential aspect of its weave and contributions during their residencies as teachers and musicians and have provided wattle. Sionna’s box is an invitation. It is waiting to be cracked open. Come to her students with the invaluable opportunity of performing with their heroes and riverbanks and join the celebration. mentors. Dancers-in-residence Colin Dunne, Jean Butler, Breandán de Gallaí, Dr Helen Phelan Liz Roche and the Liz Roche Dance Company (formerly Rex Levitates) have led the Programme Director, PhD Arts Practice artistic and intellectual dialogue on future directions in Irish dance, dance in Ireland Irish World Academy Dr Helen Phelan is programme director of the PhD Arts Practice at the Irish World Academy. From 2000 to 2009, she directed the MA Ritual Chant and Song. She has served as associate director and acting director of the Academy and as associate director, academic affairs of the UL College of Humanities (now the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences). She was appointed Herbert Allen and Donald R. Keough Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Notre Dame in 2012.