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The theme of this volume, the role of dance in Irish cultural politics and identities in the twentieth century, can be book-ended by two dance events. The first, an Irish céilí and social event, was held in the Bloomsbury Hall in London on 31 October 1897, organised by the Gaelic League, at this time the main organisation for the promotion of cultural nationalism and for spearheading the Gaelic Revival in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The céilí, the first of its kind, was the outcome of efforts by League leaders to create an ‘authentically’ Irish dance canon that, in their view, would accurately reflect the ancient Irish nation and help to lay the cultural foundations for the establishment of an independent state in the future. The event can be seen as symbolic of the role dance was to play in generating a distinctive sense of Irish national identity. The second theatrical dance event, taking place almost one hundred years later, on 30 April 1994, at the Point Depot in Dublin, was a seven-minute step-dance routine as the interval act in the annual Eurovision song contest. The critical success of this act, with its two lead IrishAmerican dancers, Michael Flatley and Jean Butler, and a troupe of twenty-four Irish step dancers, led to the production of a full-scale music and dance show with its debut in the same venue in 1995. Riverdance: The Show went on to achieve extraordinary critical and commercial acclaim. With its spin-off products, four dance troupes in each major global region and its role as inspiration for new theatrical dance shows, it can be seen as a major contributor to Irish cultural industries and to the continuing association of Irishness with dance. Indeed, this is so much the case that ‘Riverdancing’ has become the generic term for Irish step dance in the USA. CHAPTER ONE The Irish Dancing Cultural Politics and Identities 1 2 The Irish Dancing: 1900–2000 These two events, illustrate the importance of dance in Irish cultural expression and its pivotal role in the formation of cultural identities at two key moments at either end of the century. This book engages with these two events, as well as other dance events, performances and discourses, in order to examine the ways in which cultural identities were constructed, maintained and altered through dance over the course of the century. Underlying the discussion throughout is the assumption that dance both reflects and produces society and culture. That dance reflects the social, cultural and political contexts within which it is performed and represented has long been attested to by sociologists and dance scholars alike (see, for example, Rust, 1969; Elias, 1978; Foucault, 1981; Bourdieu, 1984; Polhemus, 1993; Franko, 1995). Dancing individuals not only experience culture but they also actively produce it. In other words they ‘mobilise culture for being, doing and feeling’ (de Nora, 2000, p. 74). Dance is tightly interwoven into the fabric of Irish culture and society. There has been a contentious claim that there was no dancing in Ireland until the coming of the Normans in the twelfth century. The origins of this belief, according to dance historian Breandán Breathnach (1977, p. 36), was that the two modern Irish words for dancing, ‘rince’ and ‘damhsa’, derive from the French and English language respectively and only began to appear in the early sixteenth century. Breathnach acknowledges that the assumption that dance was therefore absent from Irish culture before this time seems highly implausible, since dance constitutes part of the warp and weft of most, if not all, known cultures. However, what counts as dance and its functions within a society as well as its associated meanings and pleasures will vary according to the historical and geographical circumstances in which it is performed. Broadly speaking, dance can be categorised into three analytically distinct forms of activity: dance as ritual performance, dance as a pastime or leisure activity, and dance as an art form. In tribal cultures dance is integrated into many aspects of daily life. It is believed to be efficacious in fighting wars or in bringing rain, as well as accompanying rites of passage such as birth, marriage and death. It is a form of ritualised movement and is inextricably linked to other domains of life, including the religious and the economic. Vestiges of dance as pre-Christian seasonal ritual can still be seen in events and practices such as Oíche Naomh Eoin/St...

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