Book Readings...

Author, Deirdre Mulrooney, is a writer, specialising in dance, a lecturer in drama, and a director. Her five-part radio series Nice Moves, out of which Irish Moves grew, was broadcast on RTE Radio One with the Second International Dance Festival Ireland in 2004. Deirdre has been published internationally in dance publications including Dance Magazine. She has also written a book on Pina Bausch's Tanztheatre Wuppertal (her PhD).



ORDER TODAY! Submit your name and address - pick up it for $35 of which $5 is contributed to O'Connor Irish Heritage House:

About the Book:

Irish Moves explores and celebrates the history of dance in Ireland. Featuring many rare and striking images, this meticulously researched volume showcases - and in some cases salvages - the stories of Ireland's unsung movers: actors, dancers, choreographers, playwrights, directors.

It describes in their own voices the creative journeys taken by Ninette de Valois, Colin Dunne, Jean Butler, David Bolger, Tom Hickey, John Scott, Joan Davis and many more - artists past and present who have devoted their lives to physical expression, despite the fact that in Ireland their medium was largely ignored and, in some cases, erased from memory, such as the long forgotten Abbey School of Ballet.

Irish Moves not only provides a map of dance and physical theatre in Ireland, it is also a meditation on the Irish nation's complicated attitude to the body. As the author explores how the Irish moved from "the naked man galloping bareback across the Kilkee Strand in celebration of the festival of Lughnasa, to the alarmingly straitjacketed movements of our 'national' dance," the book offers surprising and sometimes disconcerting revelations about Irish society.

But this is no dry history: Irish Moves is an engaging and entertaining book certain to appeal to performers, scholars and enthusiasts alike.

Irish Moves book reading Photo's