Dance Theatre in Ireland


Book Description

Dance theatre has become a site of transformation in the Irish performance landscape. This book conducts a socio-political and cultural reading of dance theatre practice in Ireland from Yeats' dance plays at the start of the 20th century to Celtic-Tiger-era works of Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre and CoisCéim Dance Theatre at the start of the 21st.




Lord of the Dance


Book Description

The international star and creator of "Lord of the Dance" and "Celtic Tiger" Irish step dancing shows pens a no-holds-barred autobiography that reveals the person, the passion, and the drama behind his astounding rise to stardom.




Dance in Ireland


Book Description

In Dance in Ireland: Steps, Stages and Stories, Sharon Phelan provides an in-depth view of dance in Ireland during the colonial and post-colonial eras. She presents dance as an integral part of Irish life and as a signifier of cultural change. Central themes are documented and analysed. They include cross-cultural influences, the dance master and pantomimic dance traditions, dance during the Gaelic Revival, dichotomies in dance, and the theatricalisation of Irish dance. The book is illustrated with photographs and it is an indispensable resource for academics and artists alike, as they continue to foster dance, on the page and on the stage.




Dance Theatre of Harlem


Book Description

2021 NAACP Image Award Nominee This definitive history is a celebration of the first African-American ballet company, from its 1960s origins in a Harlem basement, to the performances, community engagement, and education message of empowerment through the arts for all which the Company continues to carry forward today. Illustrated with hundreds of never before seen photos from the founding during the Civil Rights Movement by Arthur Mitchell and Karel Shook through to today, this visual history tells the story that fueled Dance Theatre of Harlem’s growth into one of the most influential and revolutionary American ballet companies of the last five decades. With exclusive backstage stories from its legendary dancers and staff, and unprecedented access to its archives, Dance Theatre of Harlem is a striking chronicle of the company's amazing history, its fascinating daily workings, and the visionaries who made its legacy. Here you’ll discover how the company’s founders—African-American maestro Arthur Mitchell of George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet, and Nordic-American Karel Shook of The Dutch National Ballet--created timeless works that challenged Eurocentric mainstream ballet head-on—and used new techniques to examine ongoing issues of power, beauty, myth, and the ever-changing definition of art itself. Gaining prominence in the 1970s and 80s with a succession of triumphs—including its spectacular season at the Metropolitan Opera House—the company also gained fans and supporters that included Nelson Mandela, Stevie Wonder, Cicely Tyson, Misty Copeland, Jessye Norman, and six American presidents. Dance Theatre of Harlem details this momentous era as well as the company's difficult years, its impressive recovery as it partnered with new media's most brilliant creators—and, in the wake of its 50th anniversary, amid a global pandemic, its evolution into a worldwide virtual performance space. Alive with stunning photographs, including many from the legendary Marbeth, this incomparable book is a must-have for any lover of dance, art, culture, or history.




Pina Bausch's Dance Theater


Book Description

This volume provides new, ground-breaking perspectives on the globally renowned work of the Tanztheater Wuppertal and its iconic founder and artistic director, Pina Bausch. The company's performances, how it developed its productions, the global transfer of its choreographic material and the reactions of audiences and critics are explained as complex, interdependent and reciprocal processes of translation. This is the first book to focus on the artistic research conducted for the Tanztheater's international coproductions and features extensive interviews with dancers, collaborators and spectators and provides first-hand ethnographic insights into the work process. By introducing the praxeology of translation as a key methodological concept for dance research, Gabriele Klein argues that Pina Bausch's lasting legacy is defined by an entanglement of temporalities that challenges the notion of contemporaneity.




The Story of Irish Dance


Book Description

The international success of Riverdance has focused new attention on Irish dance, which is the subject of this first history of what has become an international cultural phenomenon. Tracing the origins of dance back to early medieval accounts, this volume also charts the developments of the 18th century, exploring how dance played a vital role in the formation of a new national culture.




Dance Matters in Ireland


Book Description

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.




The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Irish Theatre and Performance


Book Description

This Handbook offers a multiform sweep of theoretical, historical, practical and personal glimpses into a landscape roughly characterised as contemporary Irish theatre and performance. Bringing together a spectrum of voices and sensibilities in each of its four sections — Histories, Close-ups, Interfaces, and Reflections — it casts its gaze back across the past sixty years or so to recall, analyse, and assess the recent legacy of theatre and performance on this island. While offering information, overviews and reflections of current thought across its chapters, this book will serve most handily as food for thought and a springboard for curiosity. Offering something different in its mix of themes and perspectives, so that previously unexamined surfaces might come to light individually and in conjunction with other essays, it is a wide-ranging and indispensable resource in Irish theatre studies.




Dancing at the Crossroads


Book Description

Dancing at the crossroads used to be young people ́s opportunity to meet and enjoy themselves on mild summer evenings in the countryside in Ireland - until this practice was banned by law, the Public Dance Halls Act in 1935. Now a key metaphor in Irish cultural and political life, ́dancing at the crossroads ́ also crystallizes the argument of this book: Irish dance, from Riverdance (the commercial show) and competitive dancing to dance theatre, conveys that Ireland is to be found in a crossroads situation with a firm base in a distinctly Irish tradition which is also becoming a prominent part of European modernity. Helena Wulff is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at Stockholm University. Publications include Twenty Girls (Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1988), Ballet across Borders (Berg, 1998), Youth Cultures (co-edited with Vered Amit-Talai, Routledge, 1995), New Technologies at Work (co-edited with Christina Garsten, Berg, 2003). Her research focusses on dance, visual culture, and Ireland.




Perfect Rivalry


Book Description

Ren Dunbar is used to never fitting in—anywhere. Graduating high school at thirteen and med school at nineteen pretty much guaranteed she’d always have trouble proving she belonged, but she’s okay with that. She prefers the solitude of the lab over the raucous atmosphere in the OR, which would be fine except she’s a surgery resident. Winning the Benjamin Franklin Prize in surgery is just the proof she needs to show everyone she deserves to be part of their world. Dani Chan knows she’s disappointed her family in choosing a mundane clinical career—in surgery no less—over the far more valuable world of medical research. When she wins the Franklin Prize and the national acclaim that comes with it, she’ll finally gain their approval, and maybe, at last, their affection. Ren and Dani set out to win, no matter what it takes, but their unexpected attraction is an obstacle neither has counted on and love may be the final reward.