Dancer Interviews:

‘The Stack of Barley’. It was the late 60’s. And I was about 15 years old. The teacher was my Auntie Nancy.  The place was Caher East, in the Roughty Valley, a parish about 6 miles from Kenmare, CoKerry. We standing on the side of the road hitching a lift into the town. As we were waiting for cars to come she sang the tune and guided me through the steps.

Auntie Nancy was my mother’s youngest sister. Their family home was on a very small farm in Caher East at the end of a long dirt lane.  When my mother married my father (also a Kerryman) they moved to Newbridge, Co. Kildare. That’s where I was born and lived until I left home as an adult. We visited Kenmare every year for the family’s two week annual holiday. As a townie child I found it to be a wonderous albeit strange-smelling world.

Dancing ‘The Stack of Barley’ with Aunty Nancy was fun. She transmitted the importance of being easeful and grounded when doing the steps. Fuinneamh gan stó [1] I got that! Joy. It’s only in hindsight that I feel a little sad about not fully appreciating, at the time, how much more of our cultural identity, was held in, and transmitted through, the those steps.

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Tradition. Transmission.

A dance doesn’t start as a dance…….

‘A word does not start as a word– it is an end product which begins as an impulse …. Peter Brook[2]

Dance impulses were also transmitted whenever I was being deftly whirled through fast and furious Kerry Polkas, at my cousins’ weddings, over the years. Impulses that propelled me to seek out opportunities to study dance, any dance, all dance. Creative Dance as a Physical Education undergraduate student at Thomond College (now the University of Limerick), Contemporary Dance in Dublin and later in New York City in the late 1970s. It was as though something that I experienced doing these Irish dances swept me skywards and landed me into a field that, at that time, I didn’t even know existed: contemporary dance.  All I knew is that I wanted, needed, to do some formal training so that I could follow this deep curiosity about, and desire to, dance: wherever it came from. How else can I explain it?

I continued to return to Kenmare, year after year. By the early 70s most of my friends there were traditional Irish musicians. Their music sessions had become the constant, around which a whole other ‘world’ began to turn: a world of artists and hippies: a world of incense, henna, kaftans, bare-feet: a world of long-haired women and men, vegetarians, petulia oil, joss sticks, free-love: a world that did not include Irish traditional dance.

Irish traditional music seemed to have had the magical capacity to expand its boundaries to absorb all these elements that were swirling around and through it whilst, at the same time, managing to remain deeply connected to the heart of the tradition: apart, that is, from its connection to dance. The ‘coolest’ music sessions and concerts took off without it, at that time. So I took off to New York. There was more dance going on there!

I started taking classes, as many and as often as I could. I focussed on Erick Hawkins technique which is now widely recognised by many professional dancers as being ‘revolutionary’ not least because of his prescient espousal of the values of ease and effortlessness (fuinneamh gan stró again!) that would later become central to development of post-modern release-based techniques.

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Tradition. Transmission. Impulses. Lineage.

Three years later I returned to Ireland and set out on a career as a professional dance artist, first, in the 80s, as a member of Dublin Contemporary Dance Theatre (Ireland’s first professional contemporary dance company) then later, in the 90s, as Founder Artistic Director of Daghdha Dance Company (now Dance Limerick). At that time the Company was in-residence at the University of Limerick. Each year we created programmes of works that we toured nationally and internationally. A number of these choreographies were created in collaboration with Irish traditional musicians. But I had very little interaction with Irish traditional dancers. It wasn’t that we were deliberately ignoring each other. Our paths just didn’t cross very much at that time.

All this changed utterly with the appointment, in 1994, of pianist, composer, educator Professor Micheál O’Suilleabháin, as UL’s inaugural Chair of Music and Founding Director of the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance. Within a very short period of time he set up a suite of six MA programmes, including one in dance. His decision to include (and ability to deliver) the latter was quite a feat, given that there were no full-time degree programmes in dance (at any level) in any University in Ireland at that time, despite the best efforts of many people who had campaigned for this for years. The MA Dance Performance was designed to house two independent streams - one Contemporary and one Traditional Irish Dance. It was an undeniably bold and pioneering move on Micheal’s behalf.

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Tradition. Transmission. Impulses. Lineage. Pioneers.

‘In a reincarnation I would be a dancer, because when I’m performing I feel a huge connection between gesture and sound………. A sound comes from a gesture. Then a gesture may respond to a sound. So I’m interested in something that goes deeper than music and dance’ (Micheál O’ Suilleabháin)[3]

In 1999, having resigned my position as Artistic Director of Daghdha Dance Company, I was appointed the inaugural Course Director of the MA Contemporary Dance. At that time, the energy generated by the Academy's many new MA music (traditional and classical) and dance programmes trying to ‘find our feet’, in a context that was new to us all, felt on the verge of wild. The last time I’d been in the company of so many Irish traditional musicians was in the 70s in Kenmare. But this time there were no hippies. Most people wore shoes –apart from us contemporary dancers that is.

In putting Irish and contemporary dance traditions together as two independent streams of the MA Dance Performance Micheál always made it clear that he was not trying to force a connection between them. He was instead offering  ‘space and time for things to germinate organically under controlled conditions’. And so they eventually did, in very surprising ways.

It may sound like an oxymoron to describe contemporary dance as a tradition. And yet this is precisely what it is – a tradition with traceable lineages, repertoires and methods of transmission. However, I would also describe it as a tradition of exploration. This strand of it is kept alive by dance artists who skillfully engage with its conventions and codified forms/techniques whilst challenging and/or interrogating certain aspects of them. The latter was the primary focus of the MA Contemporary Dance Performance during my time as Course Director.

The process of taking techniques/ or specific dances apart does not mean erasing them – quite the contrary – it means opening them up in order to go more deeply them. It can be high-wire stuff! So I have a huge amount of respect for dance artists who ‘go there’ especially those whose practice is rooted in traditions where this kind of interrogation might not be so highly valued or even welcomed.

Jean Butler and Colin Dunne were amongst the many distinguished dancers and musicians who spent time at the Academy (as performers, visiting tutors and/or artists-in-residence)  during those early years. Many of them, inspired by Micheal’s vision and the range, depth and breadth of the programmes that he had established, decided to take time-out to study/research there. Most who did this anchored themselves within programmes specific to their tradition and their disciplinary expertise. So it caused quite a flurry of excitement when first Colin, and later Jean, decided to the undertake the MA in Contemporary Dance Performance.

‘If anything at all, perfection is not when there is nothing to add, but when there is nothing left to take away’ Maria Tallchief

As Course Director of the Programme, I was initially a little concerned as to how this might ‘work’ given the status they had as virtuosic Irish traditional dancers. Stars. But I was also really curious as to what moved them, each in their own way, to undertake this research. It was clear that neither was interested in cutting and pasting contemporary dance techniques onto their way of moving. They were there to dig: to dance themselves to where the dancing comes from[4]:a space, a state-of-being, rather than a specific place: Micheál called them ‘diviners’.  

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Tradition. Transmission. Impulses. Lineage. Pioneers. Diviners.

‘For me the personality of Ireland is reconfiguring itself in gesture. If it ever will happen words like ‘fusion’  of ‘crossover’ are far too small. I’m talking about the underground cultural well that diviners tap into. It will either take a kind of Colin/Jean figure walking across, or someone in the opposite direction. (MicheálO’ Suilleabháin)[5]

When I first saw Riverdance (the  interval act for the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest) I was, of course, interested in how Jean Butler moved: her skill and sensitivity as a dancer: her presence as a performer. Up until this point in time we didn't have any stars, in any genre of dance, in Ireland. Ever. And then suddenly there she was -  the first global Irish traditional dance star. She. Of course I was interested in what moved her. However, because of the excitement generated by the spectacle, I couldn’t really get a sense of it that night.

Since that time, it has become clear to me that what moves this star is a deeply felt curiosity which she weaves in and through her respect for the core values at the heart of Irish traditional dance. By core values I mean those currents that run under the tradition: values transmitted by those teachers who have kept them alive through generations: values that emerge from, and connect us to a source that is both in, and simultaneously much bigger than, the tradition: values that can be eroded by those black holes that seek to exploit the tradition for primarily monetary gain. Those.

In my view, it takes a lot of strength and courage to resist the seductive pull of excessive commodification: the homogenizing effect that comes with global branding. I bow down to all those dancers, from all traditions, who have done, are doing, that. Resisting. I see them as them lineage holders. In my view all lineage holders are stars (including those that work away quietly under the radar, off the beaten track). We own them all a great debt of gratitude, especially those rare stars (from all traditions) who, in addition to being lineage holders, are also pioneers and diviners.  Without them there would not be as much light in the world.  

Tradition. Transmission. Impulses. Lineage. Pioneers. Diviners. Respect. Resistance. Dance.

Aunty Nancy was a lineage holder in her own right. She and I danced away until eventually a car came and brought us a few miles along the road to a place called The Crossroads (even though it has only three roads leading to it). And, no, we didn’t stop to dance there: De Valera.  We walked the rest of the way into town deciding that we would probably get there faster than if we waited for another car to come. And so it happened.

[1] Fuinneamh gan stró: trans from Irish ‘energy without (too much) effort’

[2] Reference to a quote by Theatre Director Peter Brook in TheEmpty Space, Atheneum, 1968.

[3] Extract from an interview with Micheál  O’Suilleabháin in ‘Irish Moves (an illustrated history of dance and physical theatre in Ireland)’ Deirdre Mulrooney, The Liffey Press, 2006

[4] This is a reference to a line from the poem entitled  ‘At the Wellhead’ by Séamus Heaney. The line ‘sing yourself to where the singing comes from’ is a metaphor for seeking the root or source of inspiration.

[5] Extract from an interview with Micheál O’Suilleabháin in ‘Irish Moves (An IIlustrated hHstory of Dance and Physical Theatre in Ireland)’ Deirdre Mulrooney, The Liffey Press, 2006

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Mary Nunan is a contemporary dance artist: choreographer, performer. Her professional career began when she joinedDublin Contemporary Dance Theatre (1981-86). She was founder Artistic Directorof Daghdha Dance Company (1988-1999). During this time she created a substantial body of ensemble choreographies that were toured extensively to venues at home and abroad including: London (South Bank), Berlin (Podweil Theatre), Munich(Dance ’95), Paris (Pompidou Centre) and Guanajuato (Festival Cervantino),Mexico.  The screen adaptation of her dance-theatre work ‘Territorial Claims’ was selected for screening at the Lincoln Centre’s Dance-for-Camera Festival in New York City(1998). Mary was the inaugural CourseDirector of the MA Contemporary Dance Performance, UL (1999-2016). Since 2016she has returned to working as an independent dance artist. She has lead workshops and mentored artists nationally and internationally: USA, UK, France, and most recently Cyprus.  She earned herPhD from Middlesex University (2013). Articles she has written have been published in a number of peer-reviewed articles on choreographic process and performance.

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