Champion step-dancer

The book A History of Irish Ballet 1927-1963 by Victoria O’Brien was published last October.

Unfortunately, the narrative of the book largely disregards two of the most important ballet companies operating in Ireland during the time period: Cork Ballet Company and Irish Theatre Ballet.

Irish Theatre Ballet is referred to in passing as a semi-professional company. In fact it was fully operational as a professional company with Stanley Judson as first ballet-master; it commissioned works from Irish composers, performing 24 new works specially created for it. Both companies carried out significant education and outreach work long before the same was instigated in the UK.

Joan Denise Moriarty’s competence as a dancer and choreographer is challenged. In fact she was a champion Irish step-dancer and she studied ballet with Marie Rambert. Furthermore, it is claimed JDM did not attribute originality to Cepta Cullen and that she re-staged a ballet by Sara Payne without acknowledging the ballet’s creator.

However, the ballets in question had completely different stories (Rosamunde), or a different composer (An Coitin Dearg) and in the case of Puck Fair the original choreography was attributed to Cullen in CBC programmes from 1948 and 1953, although Moriarty choreographed the work independently to an orchestrated version of the original music.

In her conclusions O’Brien claims that JDM sought to eclipse all achievements in Irish ballet before her. In fact, she said (1972) that when she started in 1947 the country had no tradition of ballet.

In 1947 the country had never had a professional ballet company; in 1972 the first professional company, which had lasted for 5 years, had been disbanded.

If we compare Ireland to France (professional ballet since Louis the XIV), Russia (over 150 years of it) or Britain (over 50 years) her statement can be found, not only to be very accurate, but humble and an acknowledgment of the distance Irish ballet still had to go.

David Wallace

PGDip (Dance), MMus

(GSMD), BMus (CSM)

South Croydon, England