James Devine was born in Ireland and began to take dance lessons at the age of eight. At the age of fourteen he became the only Irishman to have won the World, American, British, and All-Ireland Irish dancing titles in the same year. In 1996, Devine was selected by Michael Flatley to star in his Lord of the Dance show and spent two years performing in the show’s global tour. Between 1998 and 2000, Devine lived in Australia where he choreographed, directed, and performed the lead role in the dance show GaelForce, which toured worldwide. Since 2001, Devine has lived predominantly in America where he has taught Irish dancing to thousands of enthusiasts. In February 2005, he began work on a new solo project, Tapeire, which premiered the following year at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to critical acclaim. The show’s success inspired Devine to found his own production entity, Devine Dance Company, and to bring Tapeire on tour in America and Canada. Devine is widely respected as a leader in the world of percussive dance and holds the world record for fastest tap-dancing speed.
Dr László Felföldi is the head of the Folk Dance Department at the Institute for Musicology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest and a member of a number of distinguished professional cultural organisations. His work centres on Hungarian folk dance traditions and those of Hungarian national minorities in Eastern Europe.
Dr. Catherine Foley is a dancer and musician. Her undergraduate degree is in music from Cork (NUI) and she holds a doctorate in ethnochoreology (Irish traditional step dance) from London. She worked as a collector of Irish traditional music, song and dance for Muckross House, Killarney, Co. Kerry, and has lectured, performed, published, and given workshops internationally. She designed the MA Ethnochoreology and the MA Irish Traditional Dance Performance courses at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick, and acted as director of both courses until her retirement in 2019. Catherine was instrumental in the establishment and development of the National Dance Archive of Ireland and served as its first director. She is also founder and Chair Emerita of Dance Research Forum Ireland.
Ann Gallagher, the daughter of Frank and Cecilia Gallagher, was born in Dublin. She attended the Abbey School of Ballet under Muriel Kelly’s direction as a child, and it was at the Abbey School that her lifelong interest in ballet started. She was interested in and exposed to all aspects of Dublin’s cultural life from an early age, and began visiting ballets and collecting programmes, which form the core of this collection.
Gerard Patrick Gallivan was born in Limerick on 29 July 1920 and grew up on Henry Street. A contemporary of Frank McCourt, Gallivan’s recollections of his home city differed considerably from those described in Angela’s Ashes, although the two men lived in very similar spheres. Gallivan was educated at Crescent College and graduated in 1939. He began his working career in England, where he emigrated in 1940. Here he also met his wife, whom he married in 1945. A year later, they returned to Ireland and settled in Limerick, where Gallivan established a career in the airline industry. In 1952, he was transferred to Dublin, where he was to live for the rest of his life.
Gallivan’s writing career commenced at the age of 18, when he wrote his first novel, The Hawk, but failed to get it published. He later found his feet as a playwright and over his long career wrote more than 40 plays, many of which were produced at the Gate Theatre, Abbey Theatre, Elbana Theatre and Olympia Theatre in Dublin, and the Lyric Theatre in Belfast. He also did a lot of journeyman work, contributing several episodes to the popular radio series Harbour Hotel and The Kennedys of Castleross, and for the television drama Kilmore House. Many of his stage scripts, such as Parnell, The Final Mission and The Lamb and the Fox, were also produced as radio plays.
Gerard Gallivan's works focus predominantly on Irish political history (particularly the foundation of the Irish State) and major Irish and English political and social figures such as Bernard Shaw, James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, Maude Gonne, W. B. Yeats, Noel Chamberlain, Eamonn De Valera, Michael Collins and Cardinal Newman. His published plays include Decision at Easter (1960); And a Yellow Singing Bird (1963); Mourn the Ivy Leaf (1965); Dev (1978); Watershed (1981), Lovesong (1984), and three volumes of Selected Plays (1999-2008). Among his best-known stage plays is The Stepping Stone, which was originally performed in 1963 and enjoyed a popular revival in Cork in 1997. Gallivan continued to write until the last months of his life. His later works included The Indomitable Lamb (1997), The Prudent Paramour (1997) and The Rusted Dagger (1998), all of which were broadcast as radio plays. His other late works included a family history The Gallivans of Limerick (1995), and a commissioned account of his working life, My Time in Irish Travel, published posthumously in 2004 as Ireland Enters the Air Age. He died on Christmas Day 2003.
Deirdre Grant was born in Wexford and was first introduced to contemporary dance in that town in 1984, when she joined the Barefoot Youth Dance Company. She later gained a BA in Dance with Education from Middlesex University, London, undertook post-graduate training in Community and Youth Dance, and has recently trained with Joan Davis (Certificate of Somatic Studies). In 1999, she co-founded Myriad Dance with Brid Malone, and remains the company’s artistic director. Grant is the author of Are We Dancing Yet, published by Wexford County Council in December 2011.
Myriad Dance successfully promoted dance awareness, participation, and appreciation regionally through various dance performance-based initiatives (mainly site specific works) and development initiatives, including the Sonraigh Youth Dance Festival and the Pulse Youth Dance Programme (2001-2008) in partnership with Wexford County Council. The latter was expanded in 2009 and continued to operate under the name Education and Community Programme @ Myriad as the largest youth dance partnership with a local authority in Ireland. In July 2009, Myriad Dance moved into the newly built Wexford Opera House, in which they were one of two resident dance companies. Over the years, the dance company’s intense focus in youth and education left it at odds with its original role as a production company. As a consequence, the dance company was wound down in 2015.
Russian ballet dancer and the first director of the Irish National Ballet School.
Ester O'Brolchain was born in Dublin. She studied ballet with Valentina Dutko and later with Patricia Ryan at her National Ballet School. In her early teens she moved to Tunbridge Wells to train at the renowned Legat School. She returned to Dublin to perform with the National Ballet Company. Following a knee injury in 1962, which halted her dancing career, she moved to Italy to study opera production at the Rome Opera House. She later opened her own ballet school in Italy. In 1996, she returned to Dublin and became assistant artistic director at the College of Dance, teaching ballet and dance history. She returned to Italy in 2010.
Rosemary Butcher was a British choreographer and dancer known for her minimalist style.