Contemporary Irish Dance Choreographers And
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GOING BACK: CONTEMPORARY IRISH DANCE CHOREOGRAPHERS AND MODERN IRISH IDENTITY A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFMILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN DANCE MAY 2014 By Kathryn M. Holt Thesis Committee Kara Miller, Chairperson Betsy Fisher Lurana Donnels O’Malley ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to the members of the my thesis committee, Kara Miller, Betsy Fisher, and Lurana Donnels O’Malley, for their support, encouragement, and feedback throughout the process of writing this thesis. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to work with a committee who both challenged and encouraged me. I would also like to thank all of the choreographers and dancers who lent their time, talent and knowledge to this project. Colin Dunne, Darrah Carr, Niall O’Leary, Sean Curran, and the dancers of Darrah Carr Dance, I am endlessly inspired by the work that you all do, and am grateful to have had the opportunity to speak with you about your experiences, and observe some of the process. iii ABSTRACT Irish step dance has for many years centered on Irish nationalism, and an attempt to preserve Irish tradition and identity. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, dancers who have been trained in the competitive Irish dance tradition have begun to experiment outside of the highly structured confines of this style of Irish dance. Particularly since the premiere of Riverdance in 1994, there has been increasing interest in exploring the use of Irish dance outside of the traditional structure. This thesis looks at the work of two such choreographers – New York-based choreographer Darrah Carr and Limerick-based choreographer Colin Dunne - who are actively creating contemporary Irish dance pieces utilizing both Irish dance and contemporary dance vocabulary and choreographic structures. I analyze choreographic works and teaching practices of both choreographers. I also take a practice-as-research approach to this area of inquiry, including an analysis of my own past works of Irish contemporary choreography, as well as a dance film produced specifically as part of my thesis research and the work that I created for my UH Late Night dance concert, Identity Crisis, in Fall 2013. This thesis argues that the work of Carr and Dunne, as well as my own, reflects the changing nature of postcolonial Ireland and the Irish diaspora, and aims to represent the multi-faceted, hyphenated identities of the choreographers as modern Irish dancers by combining the traditional with the contemporary. Key terms: Nationalism, Irish identity, diaspora, authenticity iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract…………………………………………………………………………..iii Chapter One: Introduction to Topic……………………………………………...1 Chapter Two: Literature, Media, and Performance Review……………………..7 Chapter Three: Historical Background...........………………………………...…15 Chapter Four: Fieldwork and Methodology....…………………………………..20 Chapter Five: Posture............................................................................................42 Chapter Six: Choreographic Structure and Themes..............................................53 Chapter Seven: Dance Practice and Instruction....................................................62 Chapter Eight: Place..............................................................................................67 Chapter Nine: Issues of Authenticity....................................................................71 Conclusion............................................................................................................73 Bibliography.........................................................................................................75 Appendix A: Glossary..........................................................................................79 Appendix B: Interviews........................................................................................82 Darrah Carr, 9/28/12.......................................................................82 Colin Dunne, 6/27/13......................................................................92 Brigid Gillis, 10/11/13....................................................................103 Darrah Carr, 10/13/13.....................................................................114 Laura Neese, 10/13/13……………………………………………134 Melissa Padham, 10/14/13………………………………….…… 143 Niall O’Leary, 10/14/13……………………...………………..….149 Sean Curran, 10/15/13……………………...…………………..…164 1 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION TO TOPIC My interest in Irish dance as a topic of research stems primarily from my experiences as a practitioner and spectator of Irish dance. I began studying Irish dance at thirteen, having seen the dance form in a video of Riverdance my grandmother brought back from Ireland and immediately fallen in love with it. I was already a dancer, trained primarily in ballet and jazz. There was something about Irish dance, with the music and rhythms that moved me, and the feeling of connection to my Irish heritage, that appealed to me automatically. Once I began attending community college, and my training focused more on modern dance technique and choreography, I quickly felt a need to reconnect with my Irish heritage and the feeling of belonging the dance and music gave me. My first attempt at incorporating Irish dance into my college dance studies was a piece titled “Ireland, Love of My Heart, ” the English translation of one of the songs in was set to, called “Erin Gra Mo Chroi.” I choreographed the piece for a student dance concert at Lansing Community College in the spring of 2003. At this point, I did not try to blend Irish dance movement with any other style of movement, instead there was a section of Irish dance choreography bookended by two sections of modern dance choreography. All three sections were choreographed to music by well-known Irish bands The Chieftains, the Corrs, and Cherish the Ladies, and the total theme of the piece was a longing for home, a theme that commonly appears in Irish music and literature. I continued to study both Irish dance and modern dance throughout college and after, and always found myself wanting to bring the two together in my work. Whenever I went through a period where I was practicing one of more than the other, I felt dissatisfied, as if I needed both in order for my dance practice to feel complete. For the first couple of years, I thought I was the only one who felt this way. Irish dancers I met in my years as an undergraduate dance major at the University of Colorado seemed to have abandoned Irish dance in favor of modern dance, rather than continuing to pursue both. It seemed that Irish dance and modern dance existed separately everywhere but in my body. If I was “only an Irish dancer,” my upper body would start to ache and feel the urge to move after a while. Then I would go take a modern dance class and the movement of my upper body would feel like a breath of fresh air after being inside for too long. Conversely, if I left Irish dance for a 2 month or two and focused solely on modern, my feet would begin to tap out jig and hornpipe1 rhythms while I sat at my desk or while waiting for the bus, as if they simply could not help it. Although most people I knew identified as a modern dancer or an Irish dancer, and rarely ever both, as I began to shape my own identity as a dancer, it seemed essential that I be both. I soon discovered the work of Colin Dunne, a dancer who I admired from his work in Riverdance. I learned that he had completed an MA in Contemporary Dance at the University of Limerick in Ireland, and was making choreography outside of the usual Irish dance competition and Riverdance type spaces. I was immediately fascinated by the fact that such a high profile dancer was choosing to study outside of Irish dance and have followed his work since. I later found that Jean Butler, the original female lead of Riverdance had completed the same MA program in Limerick, and again later while searching online for Irish dance schools in New York discovered Darrah Carr Dance, which advertised the “ModERIN” style combining modern and Irish dance styles. As I continued my training as a dancer and choreographer, I continually returned to these choreographers for inspiration. The summer after I from graduated college, I spent three months living and working in Dublin, Ireland. Despite the few growing pains I experienced my first week there, such as finding a place to live and finding a job, I was pleasantly surprised at how easily I adjusted to this new place. A large part of the ease of this transition was that it did not really feel new to me at all. Having grown up in an Irish-American family, and having spent the previous years immersed in the Irish dance community in the Denver metro area, the accents were different, but the people and the culture were both familiar. My grandmother, when she visited Ireland for her sixtieth birthday, came back saying that she felt like she was in a country full of members of her family, and I felt very much the same way. I felt more at home in Ireland than I had anywhere in years. 1 Hornpipe – A hard shoe dance. Hornpipe tunes are in 2/4 or 4/4 time. 3 A large part of that “at home” feeling developed a few weeks after I arrived in Dublin. There was a pub in the City Centre called O'Neill's where there was live traditional2 music every Sunday. I began to go to the pub every week for the music. I had grown up listening to traditional Irish music, and