Steps in Time: The History of Irish Dance in Chicago (review)

Although Irish-American social history has received increasing scholarly attention over the last thirty years, most historians focus on religious and political life and tend to overlook those actively engaged in maintaining Irish traditional arts in the United States. From the prefamine generation to the present, a small but culturally significant number of Irish immigrants and their descendants have persisted in advancing traditional music, dance, and song in America. Kathleen M. Flanagan's Steps in Time adds the story of traditional dancers in Chicago to the narrative of Irish America.

Flanagan's book begins with the 1893 Columbian Exposition, an event that provided the earliest and most visible public stage for Irish traditional dance—not just in Chicago, but in the United States as a whole. Following the exposition, dancers capitalized on the local interest in traditional dance. Chicago's dancers organized clubs, schools, and associations. A pedagogy of cultural preservation developed as talented dancers began actively teaching students, mostly men instructing young boys. Performances took place in large halls and theaters. Not only the ethnic press but also Chicago's mainstream newspapers covered such events, indicating that dancers provided entertainment for Chicagoans whose roots did not lie in Ireland.

Between 1912 and 1920 a marked shift occurred as dancers retreated from performance and focused on competitions as the most conspicuous venue for their art. At the same time, women began to participate more actively in dance, eventually becoming the majority over the twentieth century. After a trough in the "Roaring Twenties," a revival of interest occurred despite the economic dislocation of the Great Depression. Another Chicago World's Fair in 1933-34 again provided a public venue, offering performances organized and conducted by the celebrated dancer and teacher Pat Roche, born in Clare in 1905. Irish dance became popular once more, and continued to thrive during the 1940s.

Between the 1950s and 1980s, competitions and such formal organizations as Roche's Harp and Shamrock Club and the Irish Dancing Teachers Association of North America became "the life-blood of Irish dance" in Chicago. The second city's dancers established connections with governing bodies that regulated contests in Ireland and throughout North America to allow for the standardization and codification of competitive dance. By the 1950s, Chicago's dancers began testing their skills at feiseanna outside of their own city with greater frequency. Twenty years later, Chicago native Michael Flatley became the first American to win the Irish world championships in 1975. Céili dancing also saw a revival in Chicago during the 1970s, expanding the number of people involved in Irish traditional dance.

In the last two decades of the twentieth century, competitive step dance gave rise to tremendous innovations. Flatley became one of the cornerstones of the Riverdance extravaganza, and eventually broke off to form his own financially successful shows. Chicago's Trinity Irish Dance Company fused step dance with other world traditions and transformed the practice from folk art to high art. Flanagan firmly argues that the vicissitudes of the 1990s and early 2000s constitute legitimate and authentic expressions of Irish dance as a living tradition.

For the most part, Flanagan confines her analysis to step dance, without extensively covering group dance, and she does not explain her choice of focus. In the discussion of a "revival" of céilí dance in the 1970s, it would be helpful to know whether or not group dance was popular earlier in the century. Flanagan offers little on the transition from sean-nós (old style) step dance to modern competitive forms, beyond a brief mention of the old genre's "healthy comeback" at present. Flanagan's account of Irish dance does not explain how her subject fits into the wider history of Irish America. Was dance primarily a matter of overall cultural change, or of continuity? Did the practice constitute resistance to assimilation, or did dance aid the process of integration? These questions go unanswered. Nonetheless, Steps in Time...