Irish Choreo-Cinema: Dancing at the Crossroads of Language and Performance

That Ireland we dreamed of would be joyous . . . with the laughter of comely maidens dancing at the crossroads.

—Eamon de Valera

I invoke Eamon de Valera's articulation of the dancing body to initiate a consideration of dance and its relationship to "orality" in Irish theatrical and cinematic narratives. When de Valera gave voice to his view of Irish society, he used language to shape an idealized national body, while his words also defined the gendered contours of the physical body in motion. In societies where oral traditions are the dominant mode of cultural expression, the body is often framed or confined within the narrative voice. Irish narrative traditions such as poetry, prose, fiction and drama are greatly informed by the performative concept of "orality," and Irish film may also be considered a visualization of the voice. ¹ Yet does the voice carry the full weight of cultural experience? What about those aspects of culture which are, according to Luke Gibbons, "unsayable"? Gibbons has suggested that cinematic images articulate what has been culturally repressed or concealed, particularly in relation to the body. ² This essay examines how Irish theatrical and cinematic images of dance have been used to narrate these unspoken histories.

Let us imagine de Valera's "comely maidens" dancing beyond his vocalization and materializing into the cultural spaces of Irish theatre and film. What do these dancing bodies "say"? What information does their movement reveal? What does it mean to move—to dance—beyond an imposed boundary? In the following paper I attend to the cultural and political significance of dance within several Irish films and examine the social implications of and for those who dance. I also suggest that dance offers an alternate perspective from which to consider the cinematic form; focusing on dance allows us to view films as choreographies for the camera rather than as "oral cinema." Rather than deny the primacy of the voice in Irish culture, I seek to underscore the significance of physical experience as it is expressed through cultural narratives. This involves looking at both "literal" dance and at the bodily codes that govern social interactions—the gestures, movements and facial expressions that comprise what Dudley Andrew has called "a repertoire of national expression." ³ I am interested in locating those moments when stories become physicalized, when the tale is translated into the language of the body.

The notion of an "oral" culture does not necessarily exclude dance, since both vocal and movement performances "speak" through the body. As a non-verbal art, dance is often considered a silent voice, and yet bodily movement communicates despite its apparent silence. Michel Foucault has argued that such silences must be understood as cultural discourse:

Silence itself, the things one declines to say or is forbidden to name. . . is less the absolute limit of discourse, than an element which functions alongside the things said, with them and in relation to them. ⁴

Dance may be understood as a form of "silent" discourse, which communicates "alongside" and in relation to what is spoken. There are different ways of culturally not-saying which reveal the importance and power of the non-verbal and, therefore, we must attend to those stories that are kinetically transmitted—those that have been learned and remembered in the body. Dance does not displace language, so much as revitalize it at certain moments; at times, movement may reveal what the voice cannot.

Irish dance, however, complicates the notion of dance as a silent discourse, because it is not silent. Irish dance is a visual, narrative and acoustic form, which some scholars have viewed as part of Ireland's oral traditions. For instance, dance critic Moe Myer has argued that the beats created by Irish dancers' feet actually derive from the sounds of Gaelic oral poetry. He believes that "the acoustic apparatus of Irish dance descends from spoken Gaelic" in...