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The National Ballet Company evolved as a professional body from the National Ballet School under the directorship of Patricia Ryan. In 1963, it fused with Joan Denise Moriarty's Irish Theatre Ballet to form the National Ballet.

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.

Irish Modern Dance Theatre, also known as John Scott Dance, was founded in 1991 by Dublin-born John Scott to create and commission new works to expand the experience of dance theatre for audiences in Ireland and abroad. Since its instigation, the company has operated the policy of employing Irish dancers in its work whenever possible and seeking Irish dancers living abroad to bring them back to work in Ireland. It has also forged links with international choreographers and other artists, including Meredith Monk, John Jasperse, Thomas Lehmen, Sara Rudner, Sean Curran, Chris Yon, Deborah Hay, and Charles Atlas. The Irish Modern Dance Theatre has produced several ground-breaking works which break traditional theatre and dance conventions, leaving audiences thrilled and sometimes shocked. They have been performed in theatres, art centres and schools across Ireland. International venues include PS 122, Danspace Project at St Marks Church, La MaMa (New York), Forum Cultural Mundial, SESC (Rio De Janeiro), l’Étoile Du Nord (Paris), Pustervikstheatern (Göteborg), Varna Summer Festival, Kanuti Gildi SAAL (Estonia), Scenario Pub.bli.co (Sicily) andAl Kasaba Theatre (Ramallah).

The Ponydance Theatre Company was founded in 2005 by Leonie McDonagh (b. 1981), who received her training at Sallynoggin College, Dublin and at London Contemporary Dance School. The other founding member was Paula O’Reilly. Company members include Duane Waters, Ryan O’Neill, Lorcan O’Neill, Carl Harrison, Neil Hainsworth, and Oona Doherty. The company’s performances combine contemporary dance and commercial dance with comedy and theatre. Their success is evidenced by the Audience Choice Award, which they won in 2009 at the Pick’n’Mix Festival, Belfast.

Jeremiah Michael O’Neill was born on 27 September 1921 in Limerick, where his father was the city’s postmaster. He was educated at the Augustinian College, Dungarvan, County Waterford. He moved to England in the 1950s where he worked in Barclays Bank (Dominion, Colonial and Overseas) and grew to specialise in colonial banking. He was posted to West Africa and ended up in Ghana and Nigeria. He returned to England with his wife Mary and his children, and became an agent in the building trade in London and the Home Counties. In 1967, he became the tenant landlord of the Duke of Wellington pub in the Ball’s Pond Road in Islington. There he established the Sugawn Theatre and Sugawn Kitchen, a well-known venue for plays and folk music.

In 1980, he left the pub trade and settled in Hornsey, where he wrote a number of plays and four novels. During this time he received two Irish Post/ AIB awards. His plays include God Is Dead on the Ball’s Pond Road, written for the Sugawn Theatre’s 1976-1977 season; Now You See Him, Now You Don’t; and Diehards. His first novels, Open Cut (1986) and Duffy Is Dead (1987), were hailed as truly original works, earning him the accolade of being ‘the laureate of the London Irish’. These first two novels were followed by Canon Bang Bang (1989) and Commissar Connell (1992). He moved to live in Kilkee, County Clare, where he completed his two last novels, Bennett & Company (1998) and Rellighan, Undertaker (1999). He died on 21 May 1999, shortly after being awarded the Kerry Ingredients Book of the Year Award for Bennett & Company.

Maurice Walsh was born in the townland of Ballydonoghue, near Lisselton, in the north of county Kerry on 21 April 1879, the eldest son and one of the ten children of John Walsh and Elizabeth Buckley. It is notable that his home area is near Listowel, which has produced two other important writers – Bryan McMahon and John B. Keane. John Walsh (Maurice’s father) was a farmer and a devoted reader, and both he and Michael Dillon, a teacher at the local national school, cultivated Maurice’s interest in books from an early age. After primary school, Walsh attended St. Michael’s College in Listowel, and in 1901 he joined the civil service, becoming a customs and excise officer. After brief postings in Ireland (beginning in Limerick), he was sent to Scotland, followed by Derby, and in 1906, back to Scotland again. That country had a profound influence on him. He was inspired both by the landscape of the Highlands and the people, as some of his literary works testify. Among the lifelong friends he made there was the novelist Neil Gunn (1891-1973). It was in the town of Dufftown in the Highlands that Walsh met Caroline Isabel Thomson Begg – his beloved ‘Toshon’ – whom he married on 8 August 1908. At that point, he was serving at Kirbymoorside in Yorkshire, but soon was transferred back to Ireland where he remained until 1913. The next nine years were spent at Forres in the Highlands, from where, after independence, Walsh secured a transfer to the customs service of the new Irish Free State. He was prominent in the newly established customs officers’ association, Comhaltas Cana, and contributed to its journal, Irisleabhar. He retired in 1933 and writing became his career.

Walsh’s literary output was impressive and spanned about sixty years. His first published work was a story in the Weekly Freeman in the early 1890s entitled Robbery Under Arms for which he won two guineas. His last publication was the collection of short stories The Smart Fellow, which appeared in 1964, the year of his death. His early works were short stories that were published in periodicals – three in Irish Emerald (1908) and three in The Dublin Magazine (1923-1925). His first novel – of fourteen – The Key Above the Door was published by W. and R. Chambers of Edinburgh in 1926 and attracted an unsolicited tribute from the famous Scottish author J. M. Barrie. Walsh continued to write short stories and they appeared mainly in Chambers’s Journal and the Saturday Evening Post (Philadelphia). The first collection of them was published as Green Rushes in 1935.

One of Walsh’s most successful creations was the character Thomasheen James O’Doran, based, like so many of his characters on a real person, in that case Tom O’Gorman, a veteran of World War I who worked for Walsh. Eleven of the stories concerning Thomasheen James were published in Thomasheen James, Man-of No-Work in March 1941 and reprinted in May of that year, which indicates their great popularity. Thomasheen James also featured in two other collections: Son of a Tinker and Other Tales (1951) and The Smart Fellow (1964). Many of Walsh’s works were translated into European languages and all were sold in English-speaking countries such as Canada and Australia.

One of Walsh’s better-known novels now is Blackcock’s Feather, published in 1932. Set at the time of the Nine Years’ War (1594-1603), it has been noted for the quality of its prose. In 1933, the Department of Education published an abridged version of it, which would become familiar to generations of post-primary school students. It was later translated into Irish as Cleite Clarcollig.

Some of Walsh’s work was broadcast on radio beginning with Blackcock’s Feather, which was serialised both on Radio Éireann (1937) and on BBC radio in Northern Ireland (1938). Such productions were not confined to Ireland. The Man in Brown was broadcast under its American title Nine Strings to Your Bow on an American station, WTZ, in 1945, and in 1950, Scottish radio broadcast The Key Above the Door. Naturally, there were many schemes envisaged for the adaptation of work of his for film, but most failed. It was, however, a film which was to guarantee the fame of one of his short stories – The Quiet Man.

Published in The Saturday Evening Post in February 1933, The Quiet Man had as its central character Shawn Kelvin, but when it appeared in Green Rushes two years later, he had been renamed Paddy Bawn Enright. The real person of that name was a man who had worked for John Walsh, Maurice’s father. Walsh’s inspiration for the story came from two incidents: the first one, ‘where a bully refused to pay his sister’s fortune at Listowel fair’ and the other, a fight between John McElligott (known as ‘Quiet Jack’) and a cattle dealer who had tried to cheat him, at a fair also in Listowel, in 1914. On reading the story, John Ford purchased the film rights of it, but it would be almost twenty years before it made its way onto celluloid. By two agreements of 25 February 1936 (both between Walsh and Ford) and another of 25 May 1951 (between Ford and Republic Pictures), Walsh received a total of $6260 for the story, which for many, now occupies iconic status in cinematic history. The only novel of Walsh’s to be successfully adapted for film was Trouble in the Glen (which had been published in 1950), made in 1954 by Republic Pictures and starring Margaret Lockwood and John Laurie.

In addition to short stories and novels, Walsh also wrote plays (one of which, The Golden Pheasant, was performed), some poetry (mainly unpublished), and articles on subjects including whiskey (of which he was a connoisseur). He was involved in two literary organisations – P.E.N. (of which he served as president in 1938) and the Friends of the Irish Academy of Letters. His circle of friends included many writers, among them Seán O’Faoláin and Francis McManus. Maurice Walsh lived in Dublin from the beginning of his service as a customs officer in the Irish Free State. He died at his home in Stillorgan on 18 February 1964.

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.

Thomas White was born in Darlstone [Dalston], Hackney, Middlesex in 1676 to Stephen White (1633-1681) and Hester née Drake. His father was a successful London merchant, who worked in partnership with his uncle, Sir Steven White (d. c. 1678), and three brothers, two of whom were living in Oporto, Portugal. From his uncle, Stephen inherited £3,000 together with lands and tenements in the parish of Aldham, Essex, ‘which lys about 5 mile on this side of Colchester & within a mile of the London road’.

Thomas was one of four children, two of whom died in infancy. His surviving sister, Hester, married Bedingfield Heigham in 1694. As the only surviving son, Thomas inherited considerable wealth from his father following the latter’s premature death from illness when Thomas was five years old. He appears to have trained as a solicitor, with chambers in the Temple, and to have accrued additional land holdings, including ‘an Estate in the Barrony of Clonnelloe in the County of Lymrick, I think within 5 miles of the City containing 1469 acres 12 Rood & 38 pearch Plantation Measure’. He married on 3 June 1718 Olive Western (1699-1753), daughter of Maximilian Western of Abington Hall, and by her had three children, Thomas (1720-1808), Frances (1721-1778) and Olive (b. 1723). He died on 23 November 1742, ‘possessed of a very large Estate’ in Suffolk, as noted by Stanford Mercury (25 November 1742).

John Daly was born in Limerick City on 18 October 1845 as the son of a labourer. At the age of 18, he became a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), founded in 1858 to crusade for the establishment of an independent Irish Republic. Its sister organisation in the United States was known as the Fenian Brotherhood. Fenianism was particularly strong in Limerick, where John Daly emerged as one of the leaders of an ill-prepared Fenian Rising in 1867. When the attack was repelled, Daly was forced to flee the country. After a period of exile in America, he returned home to reinvigorate the IRB and to promote its aims among the general public. In 1883, John Daly was arrested for his involvement in the so-called Dynamite Campaign, a transatlantic conspiracy directed by Clan na Gael, the rebranded Fenian Brotherhood in America. He was sentenced to penal servitude in Chatham and was later moved to Portland Prison in Dorset. Here he met and befriended a fellow-Fenian, Thomas Clarke, who was serving a sentence for his involvement in a failed attempt to blow up London Bridge as part of the Fenian Dynamite Campaign.

John Daly was released from prison on health grounds in 1896. His brother Edward having died in 1890, Daly was now responsible for the support of his widow and ten children, who included Margaret (Madge) Daly and Edward (Ned) Daly. After a year of fundraising in America for Clan na Gael, he returned to Limerick and established a bakery in May 1898 at 26 William Street, where several of his nieces worked. John Daly became a figurehead for Limerick nationalist politics and, in spite of efforts to disqualify him, won a seat on the City Council. He was elected Mayor of Limerick City on three occasions (1899-1901) and became known as the Fenian Mayor. The spectacular elevation to civic office of a convicted felon was indicative of the appeal of the republican message to the artisans and labourers of the city.

John Daly died on 30 June 1916, devastated by the loss of his nephew Ned Daly and many close friends in the Easter Rising and its aftermath. His influence and legacy was marked by the volume of good wishes the Daly family received from organisations and individuals alike. His and his Fenian comrades’ deaths in 1916 marked the beginning of a more organised and effective military campaign against British rule in Ireland.

Agnes Mary Gaffney was born in Limerick in 1874 to Thomas Gaffney and Agnes Mary née Clune and was educated at Laurel Hill Convent. She was her parents’ only surviving daughter, but had several brothers, many of whom became prominent figures in Irish public life. Among these were James Gaffney (1866-1933), who became a Crown solicitor for county Limerick; Joseph Gaffney (1868-1897), a prominent figure in municipal politics in Limerick and High Sheriff of the city during the year 1896; and Thomas St John Gaffney (1864-1932), who emigrated to America and served as US Consul General at Dresden and Munich in Germany from 1905 to 1915. A strong pro-Irish nationalist, he openly supported Germany during the First World War, which cost him his consular post.

Agnes Mary Gaffney divided her time between Ireland and America as a socialite and featured prominently in the cultural life of both countries. She also took an interest in women’s rights issues through the influence of her sister-in-law Frances Humphreys Gaffney née Smith, who was elected president of the National Council of Women in America in 1899. Agnes settled permanently in Ireland following her marriage to George Robert Ryan in 1900. Her subsequent life history is unknown.