Dance Ireland is the trading name of the Association of Professional Dancers in Ireland Ltd (APDI). It was founded in 1989 as the representative body for professional dance in Ireland and was initially administered by Dance Council of Ireland. It was incorporated as a non-profit company limited by guarantee in 1992, and re-branded as Dance Ireland in 2006. The organisation aims to provide support and practical resources for dancers and choreographers and to enhance public awareness of and involvement in dance at all levels. Its programme includes international guest residencies, choreographic programmes, master classes and cross arts sessions. It also manages DanceHouse, Ireland’s only custom-built dance studio venue, opened in Dublin in December 2006 with the support of the Arts Council and Dublin City Council.
Dance Resource Base is the premier non-profit organization, which supports the dance community in Northern Ireland. It provides facilities and resources and advocates the raising of the profile of dance in the North. Dance Resource Base was incorporated and registered as an independent company in 2006 following a process of consultation with the dance sector. It is a membership organization and is run by a board of governors who are elected annually by company members. It is an annually supported client of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.
Dance Theatre of Ireland was founded in June 1989 by Robert Connor and Loretta Yurick, former members of Dublin Contemporary Dance Theatre. Since its inception, the company has created and produced some forty dance works for theatre, festivals, and television, and presented and commissioned work of international choreographers to introduce dance in its wider context to the Irish audience. The company has toured most major venues in Ireland and participated in some of the most prestigious festivals and theatres in Europe, Korea, and the USA. In 2000, with the support of the Arts Council, Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council, and Dunloe Ewart Properties, Dance Theatre of Ireland opened a purpose-built Centre for Dance to provide a permanent home for the company, rehearsal space for new work, and a venue for dance classes and workshops to dance enthusiasts of all ages.
Dance United Northern Ireland emerged from Dance United, a non-profit organization established in 2000 by choreographers Mags Byrne and Royston Maldoom and independent television producer Andrew Coggins. In April 2007, Byrne as Artistic Director and Maldoom as Consultant Director established Dance United Northern Ireland as an entirely separate and independent entity. This professional dance development company works across the island of Ireland and internationally, advocating dance as a tool to facilitate personal and social development, advance dance as an art form, build community connections, and foster tolerance and respect. Its approach has been formulated into four separate but interconnected programmes of work. Building Bridges aims to connect young people who are at risk of being socially segregated due to their special needs, cultural difference, behavioural difficulties, or disability. Crossing the Divide focuses on cross-community work, bringing communities together using dance as a tool to provide people with a safe environment to let go of fears and prejudices. Closing the Gap focuses on inter-generational work and addresses the breakdown in contact between people of different ages. Opening the Spectrum comprises workshops and performances that have a social or developmental aim but do not naturally fit into the company’s other generic programmes. In April 2012, Dance United Northern Ireland changed its name to DU Dance (NI).
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.
Éamonn Proinsias de hÓir was born Edward Francis Dore as one of three children and the only son of Edward Thomas Dore and Nora Daly. A devoted nationalist, he later adopted the Irish spelling of his name. Born in 1921, he studied at University College, Dublin and gained an MA degree in Modern Irish in 1941. While at UCD, he was active in An Cumann Gaelach and in the Language Movement. After some further postgraduate work he joined the translation department of the Dáil.
In 1957, de hÓir was appointed director of the office of the Ordnance Survey. During his tenure, he upgraded and expanded the work of the Placenames Commission and became the country’s leading authority on place names. In 1964, he founded the Placenames Association (An Cumann Logaimneacha) to inform the public of the Commisson’s work and established the Association’s journal, Dinnseanchas, which he continued to edit until his death. De hÓir gave several lectures annually, wrote a number of articles on Irish language subjects and in 1963 published a book in Irish on the lives and work of Eugene O’Curry and John O’Donovan, his nineteenth-century predecessors in the Placenames Office. De hÓir also had a deep interest in archaeology and was a long-standing member of the Royal Society of Antiquaries. He died suddenly on 20 December 1975 at Meath Hospital, Dublin, aged 54.
The De Lavals were a notable Huguenot family who claimed descent from King Henry IV of France and held title to extensive seigneuries in Picardy. Like other Huguenot families, they had greatly benefited from the Edict of Nantes issued by Henry IV in 1598, which granted substantial rights to Calvinist Protestants in a strongly Catholic country. The Edict was bitterly opposed by the Catholic clergy and many French parliaments and was eventually revoked by Louis XIV in 1685. The revocation deprived French Protestants of all religious and civil liberties and subjected them to intense religious persecution. The Vicomte Henri Robert d’Ully de Laval was imprisoned at Laon in 1688 and his estates were declared forfeit. He was able to escape in September 1689, and eventually sought refuge in Ireland. He moved to Portarlington in 1695, where his rank and considerable wealth allowed him to establish a leading position in the community.
In 1808, the Vicomte’s great-granddaughter Deborah Charlotte Newcombe married Thomas Gilbert Willis, son of Thomas Willis, the Master of Portarlington’s most famous French school. Thomas Gilbert, who had taken Holy Orders in the Anglican community, was appointed Rector of Kilmurry Church, Limerick (now adjacent to the campus of the University of Limerick); his son Thomas was appointed Curate to the same church in 1832. Thomas Gilbert was also appointed Prebendary to St Mary’s Cathedral, and Master of the Diocesan School which he ran from his house in Thomas Street. He died in 1837 and was buried outside the west door of the Cathedral. Following his death, his widow opened a Day and Boarding School for Young Ladies in No. 5 Pery Square, while his son William continued to run the private school in Thomas Street. Thus, the strong tradition of education established by the Willis family in Portarlington was successfully extended to Limerick.
General Sir Henry de Beauvoir De Lisle was a British Army Officer. He served in the First World War as commander of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade, then as General Officer Commanding (GOC) 1st Cavalry Division and as GOC 29th Division during the Gallipoli Campaign.
Ernest de Regge was a major influence in the development of church music in Ennis and the diocese of Killaloe. He was an accomplished musician, organist and composer, and much of his music was performed by the Ennis Cathedral choir and broadcast on RTÉ. He was also instrumental in setting up the annual Church Music Festival, which was held in Ennis in the 1930s. Under the auspices of An tOireachtas, he arranged Irish melodies for school choirs and received many national and international awards for his work.
Ernest de Regge was born on 15 January 1901 in Overmere, Flanders, Belgium, where his father was an elementary school teacher and organist. Ernest’s musical talent was recognised at a young age and while still in elementary school he and his brother were given the opportunity of private classes under Jules De Groot, organist at the cathedral in Ghent. His secondary school in Sint Niklaas prepared him not only for teaching but also for the position of church organist. He then enrolled in the prestigious conservatory, the Lemmens Institute in Malines (currently incorporated into the University of Louvain), where he studied composition, organ and Gregorian music. In 1922, he received the degree of Licentiate in Music claiming first place in composition, while his classmate, the world famous Flor Peeters, took the prize for organ.
From 1900, the Lemmens Music Conservatory in Malines had sent its organists and musicians to Ireland. Ireland had musical people and good, well-maintained organs but lacked trained organists and musicians who could play them to the highest standard. There had been much sympathy in Ireland for Belgians suffering during the First World War, while the struggle for Irish independence had created much interest and sympathy on the continent. In 1923, Bishop Fogarty appointed Ernest de Regge music professor at St. Flannan’s College and organist-choirmaster in the Cathedral of SS Peter and Paul. The bishop’s aim was to implement the instruction of Pope Pius X to simplify choir music. In St. Flannan’s (a junior seminary), de Regge would be instructing future clergy of the diocese of Killaloe in musical literacy and giving them a firm grounding in Gregorian Chant.
In the 1920s and 1930s, de Regge returned frequently to Belgium to continue his studies under the distinguished teacher of harmony and orchestration, Paul Gilson of Liege (recipient of the prestigious Prix de Rome award). They were collaborating in 1942 on de Regge’s Piano Concerto when Paul Gilson died; it would appear that the work was never published. He also continued his studies in composition with Lodewijk Mortelmans, director of the Antwerp Music Conservatory.
The Ennis Cathedral choir had been associated with liturgy in the cathedral for over one hundred years, beginning in 1859 with another Belgian, Charles Louis ‘Mons’ Nono. In the cathedral, de Regge created a showpiece choir, which was the envy of other dioceses. The choir, which often had over a hundred members, was a focal point for the young people of Ennis. The highlights of the church calendar were the midnight mass and high mass at Christmas, Easter and St Patrick’s Day. Talented local singers received extensive training and in particular the voices of Eva Meehan (alto), Amby Costello (soprano), John Murphy and Aiden Tuttle (tenor), Stephen Touhy and George Meehan (bass) and Liam Walker (alto) were highlights of this era. Broadcasts on Radio Éireann included Sacred Concerts in 1930, 1933, 1935, 1946 (Diamond Jubilee of Bishop Fogarty), and 1947 (Mass in honour of Blessed Oliver Plunket), in addition to concerts such as the An Tostal in 1953.
In the early 1930s, the new Irish Republic was very anxious to acquire and publish new Irish music through the state publishing company, An Gum. De Regge and Micheál Ó Siochfhradha (a primary school inspector based in Ennis, a skilled violinist and a John McCormack Medal-winning tenor) took up that task. These two, together with Father Joseph Rogers, Irish professor at St Flannan’s and Sister Mary Albeus of the Sisters of Mercy worked for several years adapting old Irish airs for school choirs. O’Siochfhradha and de Regge also published a textbook The Rudiments of Music (1953) in both Irish and English on the teaching of music as a subject for secondary schools.
De Regge composed almost two hundred works for choirs of mixed voices, songs based upon English and Irish texts, masses, motets, piano and organ pieces. His profile grew as he won national competitions. He received the Composers Competition Milligan Fox medals in 1939, 1942 and 1946; Dr Annie Patterson Medals in 1943 and 1953 for composition; and first prizes in An tOireachtas Ceol in 1943, 1944, 1945, 1946, 1947 and 1956. It was, however, impossible to support his growing family as a music teacher and organist, and after entrepreneurial ventures into farming (chickens) and importing cars (Borgward and Lloyd), he opened a jewellery shop in O’Connell Street, Ennis and a music shop in Limerick. He combined his passion for collecting paintings and antiques with trips to the Dublin auction houses, where he bought pianos for refurbishing and resale.
The night before the fateful furniture auction at the historic Carmody’s Hotel in Ennis, de Regge quipped to his friend and choir manager Paddy Gill that he would buy de Valera’s bed for him (Paddy was not a Dev supporter). Next day, on 15 January, 1958, the floor of the auction room collapsed killing Ernest de Regge and seven others and injuring fourteen. The tragedy cast a shadow over the town for many months and years to come.
Ernest de Regge is remembered for his great musical talent, his continued and infectious good humour, his zeal and above all his kindness. He was a second father to his students and young choir members and always nurtured their talents; money was never a barrier to someone who had talent. He had special time for those who had to emigrate, perhaps remembering his own times in the twenties, and often took time to write to them to help them through those first lonely weeks, usually in England. Ernest de Regge had become an adopted son of Ennis, and as such had been taken to the town’s heart. He had left his mark on the musical and social life of so many in County Clare and farther afield.