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The Royal Ballet is an internationally renowned classical ballet company based at the Royal Opera House in London. It was founded in 1931 by Ninette de Valois and was granted a royal charter in 1956.

Ferenka Limited was a steel-cord manufacturing plant located in Annacotty, Limerick. Its managing director, Dr Tiede Herrema, was kidnapped in October 1975 by members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) to secure the release of three republican prisoners.

The Irish Press was a national daily newspaper founded by Éamon de Valera from money collected during a series of fundraising drives to finance the first Dáil. The drives were terminated following the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. The trustee of the funds, Stephen O'Mara (1884-1959) considered himself as the exchequer to the Irish Free State and refused to hand over the funds to the pro-Treaty administration, which resulted in his imprisonment in 1922-1923. The bulk of the money was left in various banks in New York and remained untouched until 1927, when a court in New York ordered that money outstanding to bond holders must be paid back. Having anticipated such a ruling, de Valera’s legal team invited bond holders to sign over their bonds, for which they were paid 58 cents to the dollar. The funds thus accumulated were used as capital to launch the Irish Press, with Frank Gallagher as its first editor. The paper remained under the control of de Valera and his family and as a consequence its views followed closely those of the FIanna Fáil party. At its peak, the paper had 200,000 subscribers. The paper was wound down in 1995, following several years of financial difficulties.

Dr Olive Beecher is a professional dancer and dance academic. She trained at the Nikolais/ Louis Dance School in New York under Alwin Nikolais and Murray Louis and studied improvisation and somatics under Sara Pearson. On returning to Ireland, Beecher worked as a dance lecturer at Thomond College, University of Limerick and became a founder member of Daghdha Dance Company under the artistic direction of Mary Nunan. Beecher devised, choreographed, and performed contemporary dance works for and with the Company for four years between 1988 and 1992.

Beecher left Daghdha Dance Company to develop her own work and continued to study under internationally renowned teachers including Jill Clarke, Laurie Booth, Motion House, teachers from Hawkins, and Merdith Monk Company. Olive performed in New York, the UK, and in theatres throughout Ireland. She also became a dance academic, completing an MA in Ethnochoreology in 1998 and a PhD in therapeutic applications of modern dance in 2005 at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick.

Beecher is first and foremost a dance artist. Between 1987 and 2016 she has created more than 25 original dance/performance works and continues to practice as an artist. Her work is influenced by the experimental movement of the 1960s and 1970s in Europe and America. She is also interested in German expressionism, eastern and post-modern approaches to movement and performance, and pedestrian movement. Most of her creative ideas stem from her own life experiences.

Beecher’s academic interests include topics such as improvisation; creativity, theory, and practice; phenomenology; somatics and fundamentals of contemporary dance movement; arts, health, and well-being; integrated dance and special education; dance education and Rudolf Laban; ritual; and post-modernism. She has been a regular contributor to the Irish World Academy Seminar Series from 1999 to 2015 and has worked as a dance tutor at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick since 2006. She also delivers the dance education and world dance modules each year at University College Cork, which she wrote for their Physical Education and Sports Science degree programme in 2007. She also works in special education. The integration of theory and practice is a key feature of her teaching and lecturing style.

Róisín Cahalan was born and raised in Limerick. She trained at the Nolan School of Irish Dance for ten years and later at Scoil Rince Dal gCais under the direction of Anthony Costello. She is a five-time Munster Champion and has placed in the top three at the All-Irelands and British Nationals. Her highest placing at the World Championships was second.

After retiring from competition, Róisín attended the University of Limerick, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in business and a postgraduate degree in computer studies. Upon completion of her academic studies, she became a computer programmer in Dublin. Róisín put her career on hold when she joined the Riverdance Liffey Company in August 1996. She moved to the Lagan Company in January 1998 and returned to the Liffey Company in August 1998.

Barbara Clarke was born in Dublin in 1938. She started dancing at the age of four at the Burchill School of Dancing on St Stephen’s Green, Dublin, where she studied both ballet and tap. Her first stage appearance was in the Burchill School of Dancing Recital at the Gaiety Theatre in 1943 at the age of five. From the very beginning, she showed exceptional talent and enthusiasm, and steadily built up her skills by undertaking dance and teaching qualifications. As she progressed, she began to help Miss Burchill with the younger classes and continued to participate in the school’s regular recitals at the Gaiety Theatre. As there was no full-time work for dancers in Ireland in the 1960s and 1970s, Barbara trained as secretary at Alexandra College, Dublin, and worked in that capacity for a firm of stockbrokers in the city. She dedicated her spare time to dance, both as a performer and a choreographer, and gained countrywide publicity through her appearances in RTÉ’s popular programme, Shall We Dance?. She continued her involvement in the art form until 1992, when a stroke called a halt to her active dancing career.

Rosemarie Cockayne was born Rosemarie Edwina Biggers on 4 November 1943 in Montreal, Canada. Her parents were Harold Edwin Biggers (1900-1979), a barrister and political journalist from Australia, and Evelyn Linda née Cockayne (1906-1980), an English-born commercial artist who had emigrated to Australia with her mother and sister in 1913. In 1944, the Biggers family returned from Canada to London, where Rosemarie’s parents had lived for some years prior to her birth.

Rosemarie was educated at Miss Ironside’s School for Girls in Kensington, London. Her interest in the performing arts emerged at an early age. When she was seven years old, she took mime lessons with the legendary Russian prima ballerina Tamara Karsavina (1885-1978), who quickly spotted Rosemarie’s aptitude for dance. She recommended her to the Polish ballet master Stanislas Idzikowski (1894-1977), and it was under his tutelage that Rosemarie took the first steps towards her future career. While continuing to study at her day school, she furthered her dance training at the Royal Ballet School. She appeared in ballet and opera productions at Covent Garden and, in 1958, was given a role as Miriam in the film Drawn from the Nile. Having left the Royal Ballet School, Rosemarie became a ballet soloist and later a ballerina at the Basle State Ballet in Switzerland under the direction of Waslaw Orlikowsky. It was at around this time that she assumed her mother’s maiden name as her stage name.

While living and working in Switzerland, Rosemarie developed an interest in painting. She adopted expressionism and its vibrant use of strong colours as her dominant style. She returned to England to study painting at Saint Martin’s School of Art and at Morley College in London. To fund her studies, she continued dancing and took up fashion modelling aided by her mother, who drew fashion illustrations for the stores in Kensington and Knightsbridge. Rosemarie held her first exhibition at Clarges Gallery, London in February 1972. For the next thirty years, she exhibited her work widely in England and internationally in Sweden, Canada, and Brazil. In addition, she produced company logos, record sleeves, and stage designs, most notably sets and costumes for Dublin City Ballet’s productions.

Later in her artistic career, Rosemarie Cockayne combined her love of art with her deep interest in people and the environment. She began to do voluntary work with children, the homeless, and the disabled as Artist in Residence for several community groups, running art workshops and sitting at committees concerned with art and education. Among the charities she collaborated with were Field Lane, The Pembroke Centre, and Providence Row. Her work with the city’s charities was honoured in 2000 with the Freedom of the City of London.

Rosemarie Cockayne died after a long illness on 3 February 2015. Her funeral was held at the church of St John the Baptist in Kensington, and her ashes interred at the church of St John the Baptist in the parish of Cockayne Hatley in Bedfordshire alongside her parents.

Niamh Condron was born in Dublin in 1976 and gained a BA in Dance from the Northern School of Contemporary Dance, Leeds, in 1999. She has worked as a dancer with Scott Wells & Dancers Company (San Francisco), Justin Morrison (San Diego), Irish Modern Dance Theatre (Dublin), Sioned Hews Dance Company (Belgium), Earthfall Physical Theatre (Wales), The Curve Foundation (Scotland), and Dance Theatre of Ireland (Dublin). In 2001, Condron won a scholarship for emerging dance artists to train at the Impulstanz Festival, Vienna, and in the same year founded the This Torsion Dance Theatre to explore movement and performance, combining dance, music, and voice. Condron performs with the company at theatres, festivals, and alternative performance spaces in Ireland and abroad. In 2006, she founded the Vibrate Dance Festival and acted as its Artistic Director until 2008.

Joan Davis née Citron was born in Dublin in 1945. She studied tap, folk, and ballroom dancing with Evelyn Burchill as a child, and rediscovered her love of dance at the age of 29, when she began taking classes with the American modern dance pioneer Terez Nelson. Davis made her public debut as a contemporary dancer in 1975, when Nelson staged a small performance at St Mark’s Church in Dublin. Davis and Nelson later taught together, but their partnership failed to last, and Davis sought further training at the London School of Contemporary Dance, commuting between Dublin and London on a fortnightly basis to participate in intensive training sessions.

In April 1977, Davis co-founded the Dublin Contemporary Dance Studio with Karen Callaghan. The school was located at premises on Harold’s Cross, Dublin and opened its doors in September 1977. It provided an opportunity for dancers to work with guest teachers from abroad, and it was here that many of Ireland’s prominent dance personalities received their first grounding in contemporary dance. In March 1979, Davis and Callaghan established the Dublin Contemporary Dance Theatre under the patronage of Marsha Paludan and Niall Montgomery. The company toured professionally in Ireland and abroad and received financial support from the Arts Council. Its core members were Joan Davis, Robert Connor, Loretta Yurick, and Mary Nunan, but other dancers such as Ruth Way, Judy Cole, Paul Johnson, and Tony Pinder also performed in the company at different times. The dance company and school played a significant role in establishing and shaping contemporary dance in Ireland, and Davis is acknowledged as one of the pioneers in this field.

The Dublin Contemporary Dance Company folded suddenly in February 1989, when the Arts Council announced the withdrawal of its financial support. This gave Davis an opportunity to pursue her interest in movement as a therapeutic tool and to seek training in various somatic forms such as Authentic Movement and Body-Mind Centering. Throughout the 1990s, Davis worked as a movement therapist, advertising this work as The Moving Experience. She also explored the links between therapeutic practices and the arts, terming it The Theatre of the Unconscious. As part of this exploration, she organised outdoor retreats or “tribals” during which participants lived outdoors and created art and movement in nature. In 1999, Davis received funding from the Arts Council to explore therapeutic movement forms more fully in a shared dance context. The project culminated in a performance, Through Fluid Eyes, on Greystones Beach in County Wicklow in August of that year. From these explorations emerged the Maya Lila training method for professional dancers, which harnesses somatic training practices as a starting point for an exploration of the creative process and encourages coordination between body and mind.