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.

It’s a role JDM was born to play, and play it she did, to the hilt (as countless shrinking violets over the years, terrified at the sound of her cane rapping on the ballet floor, will aver).

Born in Mallow, JDM spent her early years in England, where she studied ballet under Marie Rambert (who was a lifelong friend and patron). She was also an accomplished Irish dancer and traditional musician, winning awards and medals. Returning home, she set up her first school of dance in the town of her birth, in 1934, and classes in Cork city from 1938. Her stirring performance on the Irish war pipes drew the attention of Seán Neeson, who showcased her during a summer school at UCC.

Then, in 1945, composer Aloys Fleischmann asked her to play in his Clare’s Dragoons, a piece for baritone, war pipes and orchestra commissioned by the government for the Thomas Davis centenary. Her bargain was that Fleischmann’s Cork Symphony Orchestra would play for the annual performances for her own ballet company. The links and friendships were being formed that would shape Irish music and dance for decades.

Graduates from her school formed a company: from 1948 it gave an annual week of ballet at Cork Opera House and toured Munster. It took vision and determination, but JDM had both.

For the first ten years, she danced in many of the ballets, her dramatically tall figure and flowing red hair being most effective in pieces like Macha Ruadh, based on a legendary goddess queen of ancient Ireland.

From 1956, the company brought in international guest artistes. It is a tribute to the passion for ballet that JDM had inspired in the people of Cork that crowds packed the railway station to welcome the visiting dancers and to see them off again.

In 1957, Moriarty founded the Folk Dance Group as part of the ballet company. Here, she combined aspects of both forms in visionary pieces that were one of a kind — Casadh an tSugain, for example, The Twisting of the Rope, which could have been the embodiment of a 19th century folk painting come magically alive. The folk dance troupe travelled to festivals throughout Europe, and, together with the principal ballet company, gave a series of programmes on the infant RTÉ television station in 1966 and 1967.

Irish Theatre Ballet was another visionary step, the country’s first professional company, founded in 1959.

A small touring company of just a dozen dancers, it travelled all over the island, north and south, to some 70 different venues, with a programme of classical excerpts, contemporary works, and folk ballets.

No less than 24 new ballets were created for Irish Theatre Ballet, with new music commissioned for five of these, from composers like Seán Ó Riada.

In 1973 came the Irish Ballet Company, funded first by the government and later by the Arts Council, with Dame Ninette de Valois as patron and benefactor. Touring Ireland, it brought international choreographers, such as Anton Dolin, Peter Darrell, Michel de Lutry, and, of course, Domy Reiter, formerly a member of Irish Theatre Ballet, who became the company’s artistic advisor as well as choreographer.

This was the period of creative genius that saw Moriarty’s version of Playboy of the Western World, performed to live music by the Chieftains, and her epic Táin, to Fleischmann’s score and with Patrick Murray’s sets. Pieces like these eventually saw the company earn the richly-deserved title of Irish National Ballet. The great lady died in 1992, just before her dream was realised in the opening of the Firkin Crane.

At a time when groups and companies everywhere whinge about, demand, rely on, or fail without, generous official funding, it is striking to look back at how much was achieved by one woman’s determination and drive when conditions were at their most unpromising and life genuinely hard. JDM couldn’t have done it alone, of course — and that was another strength of hers, her ability to persuade, cajole, force others to see things her way, to give their own energy and strength and skills to her great cause. As anyone who was involved in those early days will confirm, there was an infectious desire to work together, to contribute, to volunteer time and ability and enthusiasm, so that something wonderful could be created. That it succeeded, and has left such a legacy, is tribute to its creator.

The centenary celebrations have been long in the planning, says Alan Foley, who is now busy with final rehearsals for the centenary gala by Cork City Ballet, which opens at the Firkin Crane on Thursday, Mar 22, for just three performances (the first night is sold out). Top attraction will, undoubtedly, be the new adaptation of The Playboy of the Western World, choreographed by Patricia Crosbie (also recreating her original role of the Widow Quin). There will be an excerpt from the rarely-seen Lugh of the Golden Arm, to Seán O Riada’s music, as well as the pas de deux from Le Corsaire, Anton Dolin’s revered Pas de Quatre, and the Polovtsian dances from Prince Igor. Planned for November is a touring production of The Sleeping Beauty, and, as a taster to that event, a suite from the ballet will be presented at the gala, featuring prima ballerina of the Royal Swedish Ballet, Marie Lindqvist, and international ballet star Dragos Mihalcea. “It’s a wonderful programme, and I feel so proud to be continuing JDM’s incredible legacy,” says Foley.

Throughout the year, there will be dozens of events celebrating the centenary of this remarkable woman.

On March 21, a new book, edited by Ruth Fleischmann, will be launched at Cork City Library; and a special exhibition of archive material will open at the Firkin Crane on the same night as the centenary gala, featuring rare photographs and fascinating ephemera, like playbills and programmes, as well as costumes.

* Joan Denise Moriarty Centenary Gala, Firkin Crane, Cork, Mar 22-24. 021-4507487, www.firkincrane.ie