Dance and Modernism in Irish and German Literature and Culture: Connections in Motion

(Hardback)

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A collection of scholarly articles and essays by dancers, scholars of ethnochoreology, dance studies, drama studies, cultural studies, literature, and architecture, Dance and Modernism in Irish and German Literature and Culture: Connections in Motion explores Irish-German connections through dance in choreographic processes and on stage, in literary texts, photography, dance documentation, film, and architecture from the 1920s to today. The contributors discuss modernism, with a specific focus on modern dance, and its impact on different art forms and discourses in Irish and German culture. Within this framework, dance is regarded both as a motif and a specific form of spatial movement, which allows for the transgression of medial and disciplinary boundaries as well as gender, social, or cultural differences. Part 1 of the collection focuses on Irish-German cultural connections made through dance, while part 2 studies the role of dance in Irish and German literature, visual art, and architecture.

Reviews

The subtitle of this book encapsulates what is shared within - how dance as an anchor to creative enquiry across literature and culture can expose social, political, and cultural connections that deepen our relationships with each other - past, present, and - indeed - in the future. We read of the creative and performative encounters of Irish and German artists and innovators, with modernist thought and influences - be that through exploring contemporaneous poetry and prose (Ruprecht, Harper, Egger, Twist), performance and embodied presence (Holfter, Jones, Purcell) or ideas (Frohburg and Poppelreuter); or the development of practices as transmitted through the protgs of those modernist thought leaders (Mulrooney), or in the meeting of art forms resulting in new manifestations (Fleischmann). Modernism, as an early 20th Century movement, can be described as an acknowledgement of change - social, cultural, and political; a rejection of historical practices and an opening up to innovation and exploration of form and structure. This quite often leads to "new" techniques and processes (Cronin, Donlon) and indeed new forms of art. That dance can tip the balance of power, of perception - if only for a moment - is a modernist intention that resonates through time and can be seen in the legacies of those texts and performances, as experienced in our reading of this book. And, indeed, in the artistic practices and performances we encounter today. With reference to Foley's "Irish German Intellectual Inheritances", I suggest these experiences are our embodied inheritances; and acknowledge the particular influence and exchange between Ireland and Germany as instrumental in forming an Irish contemporary identity in the art form of dance.

Sheila Creevey, CEO of Dance Ireland

Author Bio

Sabine Egger is lecturer in German studies at Mary Immaculate College and joint director of the Irish Centre for Transnational Studies. Catherine E. Foley is senior lecturer in ethnochoreology at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at the University of Limerick. Margaret Mills Harper is Glucksman Professor in Contemporary Writing in English at the University of Limerick.