ICTM - Dance Place Festival - 27th Symposium Ethnochoreology - 2012

Abstract

This paper addresses the ways in which Irish dance creates a common landscape and shared rhythm that is able to transcend geographical boundaries, producing cultural knowledge and establishing connections within and across diasporic communities. The Irish step dancer navigates a soundscape, or a musical "floor," through audible foot movement, and an emphasis on rhythm encourages dialogue among Irish step dancers, musicians, and dancers of other percussive traditions. While Irish step dancers continually improvise new rhythms that might depart from traditional practices, their steps are always rooted visibly in the floor and woven sonically into the music. Thus, Irish step dance maintains a continuity of tradition while innovating new forms, and this paper explores how Irish step dancers connect rhythmically to music and the floor in order to cultivate a resilient braid of tradition across time and space.