The Irish Dancing: Cultural Politics and Identities 1900-2000

Notes

1 THE IRISH DANCING 1 Celtic Tiger cubs is the expression commonly given to the children of those who benefited from the relatively short-lived ‘boom’ of the Irish economy in 1996–2007 approximately. 2 THE BODY POLITIC 1 This dual response is well captured in Memmi’s book The Colonizer and the Colonized (1965), an analysis of colonialism in Tunisia. It generates a situation in which the colonised wish on the one hand to reject the colonial ‘other’ while simultaneously mimicking their behaviour. 2 It was not until the setting up of An Coimisiún that a compromise was agreed. An Coimisiún was charged with overseeing ‘the evolution of the dance form by controlling its rate of change and its stability through a system of exclusive competitions coupled with a programme for official certification of dance teachers’ (Meyer, 2001, p. 71). 3 It is interesting to note that Munster and especially Kerry was the base for developing canons in Irish language and literature around the same time (for example, see Nic Eoin, 2003). 4 Seoníní is the plural of the Irish word ‘seonín’ or ‘seánín’, translated into English as ‘little John’ or John Bull, the symbolic figure of Britishness. It is a term of derision for those who ape foreign manners and customs. 5 Connerton (1989) applies the distinction between natural and forced bodily ease to social class positions and is in this regard similar to Bourdieu’s (1984) work on how social class position can be inferred through bodily orientations or ‘habitus’. 6 Aeríocht is Irish for an open-air event and scoruigheacht for an indoor event. McMahon (2008, p. 165) informs us that at ‘these spirited sessions, branch members [of the Gaelic League] or students from area schools typically performed short plays and musical numbers alongside local enthusiasts and nationally known Irish-Irelanders, who delivered addresses designed to stir up support for the movement’. 155 Notes 7 The park fêtes were celebrations rather than competitions. This was in contrast to both the competitive nature of Irish step dance and to the New York boys’ leisure that featured competitive athletics as early as 1903 (see Tomko, 1996). The early presence of the competitive element in Irish step dance raises questions about its effect on young female dancers of the era and on the overall cultural climate of step dance. 8 Commonplace but telling examples are incorporated into the monopoly men had on playing traditional musical instruments, particularly the higher status, more technologically sophisticated and more expensive ones such as the fiddle and the uileann pipes. Women were confined (with notable exceptions such as the concertina) to the technologies of the body, expressed in singing and dancing (for further details, see Vallely, 2011). 3 THE DEVIL IN THE DANCEHALL 1 I have not yet established whether the infamous dances such as the Shimmie and the Charleston, both objects of concern in Britain at this time, were commonly danced in Ireland. 2 Pen name for D. Breathnach. 3 Much of the normative writing on social dance relates to this period. It is interesting to note that the wealth of information is due to the availability of official state records or the reproduction in national and provincial newspapers of the pronouncements of the Catholic hierarchy on dance. These documents illustrate the power of both institutions to influence the legal and moral discourses on dance at this time. 4 Fr Devane was a member of the Carrigan Committee and expressed alternative opinions to the other (five) members of the Roman Catholic clergy on the committee. One such opinion was about the ‘dual standard of morality accepted in this country, as in perhaps no other, where the woman is always hounded down and the man dealt with leniently’ (quoted in Smith, 2004, p. 221). 5 This trend was most explicitly expressed in the Constitution of 1937 in which women’s primary role was constructed as mothers within the home which, inter alia, led to the implementation of the ‘marriage bar’, which denied married women access to public service jobs. 6 It is likely, given the double standards regarding sexuality, that women would have been more compliant than men. There was probably also a social class dimension in that respectability was highly valued amongst the middle classes. There may in addition have been a geographical dimension, as suggested in Kevin Whelan’s (1988) claim that after the Famine piety was more common among the middle classes of...