Falling for a dancer

Joan Denise Moriarty instilled a love of ballet in Cork people, taught it to their children, and gave it a home in Firkin Crane, says Jo Kerrigan

IT is hard to imagine the influence dance teacher Joan Denise Moriarty had for half a century. Children (and their children in turn) learned to move gracefully, develop poise and elegance; adult dancers devoted their lives to performing in new and challenging works; and the public developed a liking, then a passion, for ballet. Cork’s Firkin Crane stands proudly, a testament to the matriarch’s determination that the city should have its own home for dance.

‘Matriarch’ is the right word. Ireland’s mythology is full of powerful women — Queen Maeve, the Morrigan, Macha — who strode proudly through the land, demanding and achieving. Feared as much as loved, they were the antithesis of the shrinking violet, the subservient girl-wife.