Dance Matters in Ireland

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiv

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2. Introduction

   • Aoife McGrath, Emma Meehan

   Pages 1-16

3. Critical and Historical Perspectives

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 17-17

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   2. Revisiting Lunar Parables: Dublin Contemporary Dance Theatre and the Intangible Archive

      • Emma Meehan

      Pages 19-37

   3. On Peregrine Collaborations—Cindy Cummings’ Choreography of Triúr Ban: Woman, Disorientation, Displacement

      • Finola Cronin

      Pages 39-53

   4. Bodied Stories and Storied Bodies in Contemporary Irish Performance

      • Róisín O’Gorman

      Pages 55-78

   5. Discomforting/Disarming Touch: Experiencing Affective Contradiction in Improvisatory Dance Performance

      • Aoife McGrath

      Pages 79-91

   6. The Language of Affect in Choreographic Practice: Conversations on the Making of Embodied at the GPO

      • Paula Guzzanti

      Pages 93-111

4. Practitioner Processes and Theories

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 113-113

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   2. Dance Ecology as a Live Research Practice

      • Rachel Sweeney

      Pages 115-124

   3. Dancing, Identity and Place: Balancing Subjectivity and Technique in Contemporary Dance Training

      • Jenny Roche

      Pages 125-143

   4. (Per)forming the Triptych / Two Voices from a Work: The Dance of Making

      • Mary Wycherley, Jürgen Simpson

      Pages 145-169

   5. A Gallery of Hanging Thoughts: Reflections on a Choreographic Practice (12 Frames)

      • Mary Nunan

      Pages 171-189

   6. The Kenning

      • Jools Gilson

      Pages 191-200

5. Back Matter

   Pages 201-209

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This book addresses the need for critical scholarship about contemporary dance practices in Ireland. Bringing together key voices from a new wave of scholarship to examine recent practice and research in the field of contemporary dance, it examines the excitingly diverse range of choreographers and works that are transforming Ireland’s performance landscape. The first section provides a chronologically-ordered collection of critical essays to ground the reader in some of the most important issues currently at play in contemporary dance in Ireland. The second section then provides an interrogation of individual choreographers’ processes. The book traces new choreographic work and trends through a broad array of topics, including somatics in performance, screendance, cultural trauma, dance archives, affect studies, feminist perspectives, choreographic process, the dancer’s voice, interdisciplinarity, and pedagogical paradigms.

• contemporary dance
• Irish theatre and performance
• dance practitioners
• choreography
• Irish culture and history

“This book, Dance Matters in Ireland, makes it clear how much it matters – and how much dance scholarship matters – in the broader scheme of theatre and performance studies, because its object of focus can be none or little other than the human body in all its expressive, kinetic, phenomenological potential.
It weaves a genuine dialogue amongst writing about practice and writing about practicing, from ground zero in the studio outward to national and international contexts. The chapters take a variety of methodologies and theoretical frameworks; the contributors include seminal figures in dance practice, teaching and scholarship.
It really gets to the heart – or more importantly to the body - of our engagement in dance and by extension the performing arts at large, and it does so from several approach points; these thinking practitioners and practicing thinkers go confidently and circumspectly into the most elusive questions about performing, spectating and creating.” (Eric Weitz, Professor of Drama at Trinity College Dublin, President of ISTR)

“Its fresh approach to contemporary practice in Ireland provides a critical appraisal of the relationship between social, cultural and historical ideas of body and society through an analysis of particular companies, choreographers and specific performance pieces. Drawing on work from dancers and choreographers, as well as academics, this book has potential to bring new evidence and debates to the contemporary performance arena, as well as revealing material that often lies hidden.” (Dr Ann R. David, Head of Dance and Reader in Dance Studies, University of Roehampton, UK)

• School of Arts, English and Languages, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, United Kingdom

  Aoife McGrath

• Centre for Dance Research, Coventry University, Coventry, United Kingdom

  Emma Meehan

Aoife McGrath is Lecturer in the School of Arts, English and Languages at Queen’s University Belfast, UK. A dancer and choreographer, her publications include Dance Theatre in Ireland: Revolutionary Moves (Palgrave, 2012). She is a co-convener of the Choreography and Corporeality Working Group of the IFTR.

Emma Meehan is Research Fellow at Coventry University’s Centre for Dance Research, UK. She co-edited The Performing Subject in the Space of Technology: Through the Virtual Towards the Real (Palgrave, 2015) with Matthew Causey and Néill O’Dwyer and is Associate Editor for the Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices.

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