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.
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.
Aoife McGrath
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)