Irish World Academy of Music and Dance
Seminar Series Wednesdays 2.30 – 5pm
Irish World Academy Seminar Series
Tower Theatre Irish World Academy University of Limerick
Traditional singer and musician Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh performing at a lunchtime concert during the Academy’s Blas Summer School, July 2010. Photograph © Maurice Gunning
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Dr Catherine Foley
Dr Anya Peterson Royce
Wednesday September 29 Dance Seminar
Dr Anya Peterson Royce is Chancellor’s Professor of Anthropology and of Comparative Literature at Indiana University. Royce is one of the pioneers in the anthropology of dance, bringing together her early career in classical ballet with long-term ethnographic research. Her books on dance include The Anthropology of Dance (1974), Movement and Meaning in Ballet and Mime (1984), and The Anthropology of the Performing Arts: Artistry, Virtuosity and Interpretation in Cross-Cultural Contexts (2004). She is currently working on a Pilobolus: Collaborative Innovation and the Architecture of Reinvention. Her work examines the from, content and cultural context of the performing arts in order to understand artistry, creativity improvisation, interpretation and the aesthetics of the ordinary.
community and collective responsibility. Finding these values and the supporting structure in a contemporary dance company is, however, rare. Pilobolus’ ability to refashion and reinvent itself over four decades while remaining faithful to the founding philosophy of collaboration, on the one hand, and belief, on the other, in the ability of everyone to create, is a story of imagination and innovation. Points of tension and specific challenges, rather than dissolving the company, caused its members to seek creative solutions. Instilling that process and philosophy into successive generations of dancers requires the creation of architecture of reinvention. In this creative fashioning, Pilobolus resembles many societies whose cultures have deep roots and structures that guide collaborative endeavours of all kinds, including those arts that require communal investment. Just as with those societies, Pilobolus has experienced critical moments that have required a rethinking, a readjustment, a restructuring if the company were to continue with its original philosophy. This seminar will examine several of those moments and will offer some thoughts about similar processes at work in historically communally-based societies.
Abstract:
Chair: Dr Catherine Foley
Speaker: Dr Anya Peterson Royce (Indiana University) Chair: Dr Catherine Foley (Irish World Academy)
The Architecture of Reinvention: The Pilobolus Dance Theatre and Other Tribes Pilobolus is unique among dance companies for its choreography but also in its belief in innovation embedded in a context of common values. Its members and supporting cast refer to themselves as a family. In our recent conversations, they have also used the word “tribe” to describe their customs and communal process. Ethnographers historically have worked most often in the context of societies that have a similar sense of
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Dr Catherine Foley designed and is course director of both the MA in Ethnochoreology and the MA in Irish Traditional Dance Performance at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick, Ireland; she also supervises doctoral research in dance at the Academy. Catherine pioneered the ethnochoreological study of dance and Irish dance performance in University Higher Education in Ireland. She received her undergraduate degree in Music (1977) and her Postgraduate Diploma in Education (1978) from
University College Cork. She received her Postgraduate Diploma in teaching the Irish language from the Department of Education (1984) and is an Associate in Acting with the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. Catherine is a registered Irish step dance teacher with An Coimisiún le Rincí Gaelacha and has also worked as a collector of Irish traditional music, song and dance for Muckross House, Killarney, Ireland. She received her PhD in Ethnochoreology from LABAN, London, in 1988. Catherine is founder and Chair Emeritus of the international society, Dance Research Forum Ireland.
Wednesday October 27 Venue: IW2-25 (Dance Studio, 2nd Floor) Time: 2.30 Jean Butler will perform extracts from her current performance project, a solo entitled “DAY”, choreographed by New York based artist, Tere O’Connor. After the performance Jean will talk about the work and the process of creation and collaboration. A questions and answers forum will follow. DAY was commissioned by the Abbey Theatre (Ireland) and was co-presented by Dublin Dance Festival 2010. It explores the ways we come to know a person beyond the narrative of his/her life. The work questions how well we can know someone and if our projections constitute our knowing more than the truth. O’Connor moves away from episodic theatrical structures in this work, using non-causal sequencing to create a meditation on consciousness. Through extreme contrasts in rhythm, tone and reference DAY mirrors the mercurial, unfixed nature of the human mind. He has created a choreographic system in which persona shifts constantly, and
where strands of affect, artifice and suggestion are woven around the real performer. Devised in silence O'Connor's dense rhythmic phrases create a grammar for the work. DAY is a departure from Jean’s long history and training in Irish Dance. The work can be seen as a dialogue between two uniquely different artists. O'Connor and Butler's personal histories and shared aesthetics combined illuminate the ability of dance to process information in alternative ways. The work features a score by O’Connor’s long time collaborator James Baker. The work was premiered at the Dublin Dance Festival 2010 and also performed at the International Tanzmesse Festival in Düsseldorf, August 2010. The work will have its New York premiere at St. Marks Church, hosted by Danspace Project in November 2010.
Arts Council, The Dublin Dance Festival, The Project Arts Centre (Dublin), Culture Ireland, Daghdha Dance Company (Limerick), Plankton Productions (Japan), Movement Research (New York), and the Abbey Theatre (Dublin). Choreography and performance credits include Riverdance, the Show, Dancing on Dangerous Ground, The StepCrew, Greyage, does she take sugar?, and thicker than this. Her current performance piece commissioned by The Abbey Theatre, entitled DAY, is a solo choreographed by Tere O’Connor. She currently lives in New York and is an editor at ciritcalcorrespondence.com. Tere O’Connor (choreographer) has been making dances since 1982 creating over 35 works for his company, Tere O’Connor Dance, which has performed throughout the US and in Europe, South America and Canada. O’Connor has
created numerous commissioned works; among these have been works for Lyon Opera Ballet, White Oak Dance Project, de Rotterdamse Dansgroep; Dance Alloy; and Zenon. In addition to his 1996 work Greta in a Ditch for White Oak, he also created a solo work for Mikhail Baryshnikov. He recently completed a solo for Jean Butler, which premiered in May 2010 at the Dublin Dance Festival. Tere O'Connor is a 2009 USArtist Fellow and the recipient of a 2009 United States Artist Rockefeller Fellowship. He is a recipient of a Foundation for Contemporary Performance Art Award, Arts International’s DNA Project Award, and a Creative Capital Award. He has received three New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Awards - One for Heaven Up North in 1988, another in 1999 for Sustained Achievement, and most recently for his work Frozen Mommy (2005). He is currently a professor of dance at the University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign.
Irish World Academy Seminar Series
Jean Butler (performer) has been dancing for over 30 years. Her current solo work has been commissioned and supported by the The Irish World Academy of Music and Dance (Artist in Residence 2003-5), the Irish
Jean Butler
Students of the MA Contemporary Dance, Spring 2010. Photograph © Maurice Gunning
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Daithí Kearney
Éamonn Costello
Wednesday November 3 Music and Locality – examining the paradigms of regional style. Speakers: Daithí Kearney: ‘How long is a piece of string: concepts of area and distance in musical regions’ Éamonn Costello (Irish World Academy): The Regional Style Hypothesis and its Impact on Sean-nós Singing. Niall Keegann (Irish World Academy): ‘Music, imagination and the creation of ‘tradition’’ About the speakers: Daithí Kearney has recently completed a PhD on the geography of Irish traditional music. He has toured with a number of groups including Nuada and Siamsa Tíre, and was Artistic Director of the Cork International Folk Dance Festival, 2005. He won the All-Ireland senior mandolin in 2001, and performed for USA President Barak Obama in the White House for St. Patrick’s Day, 2009. He is a part-time lecturer in music at UCC, is an examiner with LCM and his research concerns the geography of regional identities in traditional music. Éamonn Costello is from An Cheathrú Rua (Carraroe) in the Connemara Gaeltacht. His plays the button accordion and the uilleann pipes. He has guested on collaborations with a number of musicians and groups, including: Mactíra (2000), Frozen Fish (6-Pack, 2004), and Papua Merdeka: Tribal Songs of Love and Freedom (2004). In 2010 Éamonn released a duet album with Cathal Clohessy from Limerick called Bosca Ceoil and Fiddle. Éamonn holds a B.A in Irish Music and Dance from the University of Limerick and an M.A in Ethnomusicology from University College Cork. He is currently undertaking a PhD researching the influences cultural nationalism has on sean-nós singing in Ireland.
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Niall Keegan is course director of the BA Irish Music and Dance at the Irish World Academy. He was born
Niall Keegan
Martin Hayes
in the south east of England and began playing Irish traditional flute at an early age amongst the community of first and second generation musicians in and around London. In 1990 Niall began studying in UCC under Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin for a Masters degree which he completed in 1992 with the submission of a thesis entitled The Words of Traditional Flute Style. Since moving to Ireland Niall has performed extensively throughout the country and abroad in a variety of contexts and venues, including the Royal Albert Hall, Barbican, Project Arts Centre in Dublin, the University of Limerick Concert Hall, The National Concert Hall in Dublin, The Waterfront Hall in Belfast and the Galway Arts Centre. Niall’s solo recording, Don’t Touch the Elk, was released in June 1999 on his own independent label to huge critical acclaim.
Wednesday November 17 The Traditional Music of East Clare Hosted by Martin Hayes This day celebrates the music of East Clare, with its rich native arts heritage, as the new site of the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance. Academics and some of the leading traditional musicians from this region will feature, performing, teaching and speaking of their music and its place in the cultural landscape of the nation. The day long event will be curated by resident musician and East Clare native Martin Hayes, who will also perform. Public events include a lunchtime concert followed by a seminar.
Wednesday November 24 Music Therapy Seminar Music & Health Research Group Presentations from members of the Music & Health Research Group will provide an overview of recent
research findings, proposed future directions, and interesting topics about music, music therapy and healthcare that will appeal to a wide audience. Colleagues from all disciplines in healthcare, the study of health and culture, psychology, and music will be interested. Candidates wishing to apply for the MA in Music Therapy at the Irish World Academy may also find the seminar useful. Jane Edwards, Director, Music & Health Research Group Professor Jane Edwards is a qualified music therapist with expertise in a range of practice areas including parent-infant bonding, music therapy to promote health outcomes in mental health services, and music for stress management and relaxation. She has edited a book for Oxford University Press Music therapy in parent-infant bonding to be launched in 2011. She is currently exploring the topic of music listening in everyday life through the Musli project. Jane is President of the International Association for Music & Medicine www.iammonline.com She regularly teaches and presents in other countries including in the past 12 months, Canada, the USA, Germany, and Australia. She leads the MA in Music Therapy in the Irish World Academy, and is the guest professor for music therapy at the University of the Arts in Berlin. Alison Ledger, Health Research Board Fellow Alison Ledger came to the Irish World Academy in 2005 to work as part of an HSE funded project using music therapy and art therapy to achieve the reduction of agitation for older people with dementia. She has made a significant contribution to the development of the music therapy programme in various teaching and research roles since, most recently as the HRB Research Fellow studying aspects of music therapists’ experiences of developing services in medical healthcare contexts.