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Dublin City Ballet, originally named the Oscar Theatre Ballet Company, was founded in 1979 under the directorship of Louis O'Sullivan. The company performed a wide repertoire of classical and jazz ballet productions until 1989, when its funding was withdrawn by the Arts Council and the company was forced to disband.

The National Ballet School was set up in Dublin in 1954 by Blanaid and Eoin O’Brolchain and Cecil ffrench Salkeld. The school was located at 19 Ely Place, Dublin, and its first director was Valentina Dutko, a Russian ballet dancer and wife of an American diplomat Paul Dutko. Towards the end of 1955, Dutko moved to America and was replaced in 1956 by Patricia Ryan. In 1959, the company moved to new premises on Parnell Square. The standard of its students was exceptionally high, and by 1961 the school had evolved into a professional company named the National Ballet Company.

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.

Irish Ballet was founded by Patricia Mulholland to showcase performances that were not ballet in the classical sense but a form of folk ballet. The company made its debut in 1951 in the Empire Theatre, Belfast as part of the Festival of Britain.

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.

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.

In September 1977, Karen Callaghan and Joan Davis co-founded the Dublin Contemporary Dance Studio in Harold’s Cross, Dublin to pioneer modern dance in Ireland. Two years later, they established the studio’s performing company, the Dublin Contemporary Dance Theatre, which rapidly built up a varied repertoire of both original and guest choreographers’ work. Many of Ireland’s key choreographers and dancers began their professional careers with this company. In spite of its distinguished track record, the Dublin Contemporary Dance Theatre was forced to fold in 1989, when the Arts Council cut its funding. Its spirit lives on in Dance Theatre of Ireland, founded by the company’s former co-Artistic Directors Robert Connor and Loretta Yurick.

The artists’ association ) + ( = a O (spoken: Convex and Concave Equals a Sphere) was co-founded by performance artist Ursula Mawson-Raffalt and fine arts artist Anthony J. Faulder-Mawson in 1993. The collective is known particularly for the avant-garde nature of its work and unique artistic language, combining text, dance, sound, painting, light, and film. The collective’s performance installations have been shown in Israel, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Romania, Wales, and Ireland and have been the recipients of numerous grants and awards in Ireland and abroad.