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Rosemary Dalton was born Rosemary Bartram in Dublin. She started ballet classes at the Abbey School of Ballet, co-founded by W. B. Yeats and Ninette de Valois in 1927. She also studied piano at the Municipal School of Music (now College of Music) under Josephine Curran and acted as accompanist to the school’s orchestra under Michael McNamara.

In 1953, on a trip to enjoy a week of ballet performances in London, Rosemary became acquainted with author and bookseller Cyril Beaumont and his wife. Their friendship was to last until Cyril Beaumont’s death in 1976.

Rosemary became involved with the National Ballet School, founded by Cecil ffrench Salkeld in 1954, both as a council member and as a student, taking classes with the school’s artistic director, Madame Valentina Dutko. Encouraged by Dutko, Rosemary started an evening class for adults who had danced ballet as children and wished to take it up again as a hobby. When Valentina Dutko moved to the United States with her diplomat husband, the ballet school was left in Rosemary’s care. In need of a teacher of the Russian method of Ballet which the school had adopted, Rosemary wrote to Nadine Nicolaeva-Legat and on her recommendation hired Legat’s former student, Patricia Ryan, as a teacher.

Following her marriage, Rosemary Dalton moved from Dublin to Cork and as a consequence of family commitments gave up an active involvement in ballet in 1963 for a number of years. In the late 1980s, she befriended Eric Gibson and Mary Gibson-Madden and became involved in the running of Ballet Theatre Ireland founded by the couple in 1992. Her involvement in the school was to lead to a friendship with Dame Ninette de Valois and her secretary Helen Quinnell who, along with Sir Peter Wright, joined forces in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to encourage the Arts Council to support the dance company.

In 1980, Cork Vocational Education Committee persuaded Rosemary to start fitness classes for women. She taught yoga in adult education classes and community schools in Cork for 30 years, retiring in 2011.

Catherine Gyll was born Catherine Doolin in Dublin in 1923. After seeing a production by the Irish Ballet Club at the Abbey Theatre in late 1939, she auditioned for and was invited to join the Club by its director, Cepta Cullen. Catherine studied and performed with the Irish Ballet Club until 1943, during which time she also studied radiography at St. Vincent’s hospital, Dublin. Catherine performed in most of the Ballet Club’s repertory during this period, including Puck Fair, Aisling, Lanner Waltz, Rhapsodie, and Peter and the Wolf. In 1943, Catherine went to work in London where she met and married theatre director Peter Gyll (1913-1989) while working as an Assistant Stage Manager. Catherine returned to live in Ireland in 2004.

Katarína Mojžišová is a Slovakian dance artist who worked in Ireland between 2005 and 2012. Born in Uherské Hradišt? in the former Czechoslovakia, she gained an MA in Dance from VŠMU Bratislava in 1999. Her diverse career includes dance, film, theatre, and performance art. She has a particular interest in experimental dance works and cross-genre projects, such as O1, a 7-hour performance created in collaboration with sound artist Robin Parmar in 2006, and The Rite of Spring, Limerick (Commissions Award of The Arts Council and Limerick City Council), performed in the Parkway Shopping Centre on the day of vernal equinox in 2007. She has also created numerous choreographic works supported by art institutions and dance companies, including Parsifal Project (commissioned by Framemakers Symposium 2005); Dragon (supported by Daghdha Dance Company and selected for Dublin Fringe Festival 2006); and The Auction (commissioned by Excursions: Performance Festival 2005 and selected for Have-U-Met-Nosti Festival, Dublin, 2007). Katarína was also involved in the former Mentoring Programme of Daghdha Dance Company and has lectured on dance and performance at the University of Limerick and the Sculpture and Combined Media of Limerick School of Art and Design.

Edward Donough O’Brien was born on 14 May 1839 as the eldest son of Lucius O’Brien, 13th Baron Inchiquin of Dromoland by his first wife, Mary née Fitzgerald. He was educated at Cambridge and succeeded his father as 14th Baron Inchiquin in 1872. He served as Representative Peer of Ireland between 1873 and 1900 and held the office of Lord-Lieutenant of county Clare between 1879 and 1900. In 1862 he married the Hon. Emily Holmes à Court as his first wife and by her had four children: Geraldine Mary (1863-1951), Lucius William (1864-1929), Murrough (1866-1934) and Edward Donough (1867-1943). His first wife died in 1868, and six years later he married as his second wife the Hon. Ellen Harriet White (1854-1913). By his second wife, he had another ten children: Clare (1875-1950); Moira (1876-1957), Eileen (1877-1867), Maud (1878-1956), Donough (1879-1953); Beatrice (1882-1976), Lilah (1884-1968), Henry Barnaby (1887-1969), Doreen (1888-1960) and Desmond (1895-1915). Edward Donough O’Brien died on 9 April 1900 and was succeeded by his eldest son from his first marriage, Lucius William O’Brien, as 15th Baron Inchiquin.

Member of sales and catering staff at Shannon Airport.

Nan Quinn lived in Bessbrook, county Armagh, Northern Ireland and was introduced to Irish dancing by a nun in Bessbrook Convent in c. 1911. She established a traditional Irish dancing school in Bessbrook in 1933. She was a member of Cumann na mBan and a committed republican and was highly regarded in traditional Irish dance and republican circles.

Domy Reiter-Soffer was born in Tel Aviv and began his career with Israel Ballet in 1959. In 1962, he became a member of Irish Theatre Ballet, Ireland’s first professional ballet company, and danced as a guest with Cork Ballet Company, both of which were run under the artistic directorship of Joan Denise Moriarty. In 1964, he moved to the UK, where he became a member of London Dance Theatre, The Western Theatre Ballet at Saddler’s Wells, and The Scottish Ballet. He has also been a guest artist with major American ballet companies, among others New York Contemporary Dance Company, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, American Ballet Theatre 2, Ballet Met, and Ohio Ballet. He also danced with the Israeli Bat-Dor Dance Company and acted as its resident choreographer, creating over thirty ballets for the company. From 1975-1989 he acted as artistic advisor and choreographer of Irish National Ballet creating over twenty works, among them Women, Yerma, Paradise Gained, Lady of the Camellias, Pomes Penyeach, La Valse, Chariots of Fire, House of Bernarda Alba, and Oscar, the company’s last ballet before its disbandment in 1989. Domy Reiter-Soffer’s distinguished career has seen him as director of numerous plays, musicals, and operas, choreographer for film, opera, and television, and designer of over thirty dance and theatre productions across the world. He is also an accomplished painter, with twenty-two one-man shows in Europe, America, and Israel.

Joyce Richardson began dancing at the age of two. Having started with Irish dancing, she moved to ballet when nine years old, training at the Myrtle Lambkin School of Dance. By sixteen, she had completed all major classical exams and perfected her training at the Urdang Academy of Ballet and Performing Arts at Covent Garden, London. Her subsequent career in dance has taken many forms, including music videos and touring in popular musicals such as 'Jesus Christ Superstar' and 'West Side Story'. She has also appeared on several popular TV-shows and collaborated with great Irish performers, including Maureen Potter, Brendan Grace, and Ronnie Drew.

Joyce Richardson discovered flamenco while recovering in Jerez, Spain after a personal tragedy, and later trained in Spain and London with great flamenco stars such as Maria Maya, Belen Maya, Javier la Torre, Esperanza Linares, and Ana Salazar. She began teaching flamenco in 2005 and in the same year founded her Dublin-based company, Aires Flamencos.

Brenda Springer (née Boylan) was born in 1942 in Mallow and joined Mary Mulcahy’s School of Irish Dancing at the age of three. She later trained with Maureen Nugent, Maureen Howell, and Tommy Cullen, and in 1965 gained her teaching qualifications. She established the Springer School of Dancing in Mallow, which trained children for Irish dancing competitions, and the Mallow International Folk Dancers, which consisted of older dancers interested in performing rather than competing. In the early 1980s she gave up teaching and became an adjudicator, in which capacity she has travelled around the world. She remains a well-known figure in the Irish dancing circles.

Máire Tugendhat née Littledale was born on 19 April 1910 to Arthur Charles Littledale (1879-1915) and Mary Josephine née Harris. A noted printmaker and illustrator, she trained at the Slade School of Fine Art in London between 1933 and 1935 and became particularly noted for her wood engravings. In September 1934, she married Georg Tugendhat (1898-1973), an Austrian-born economist and industrialist who had settled in England in 1921. Her children include among others the British Conservative Party politician Christopher Tugendhat, Baron Tugendhat (b. 1937) and retired High Court judge Sir Michael Tugendhat (b. 1944). Máire Tugendhat died on 8 August 1994 in Yorkshire.