By Paddy McCarthy
Now I am going to feature a great artist who does not need any introduction and that is Jean Butler from the original Riverdance. I had the great pleasure of featuring Jean in the first issue of Irish Connections magazine almost 25 years ago. Oh, how time flies when you’re having fun and yes, I did when I was publishing it. It was a beautiful glossy magazine with very nice sponsorship. I have had so many requests to bring it back and I probably could with printing and digital that can keep the costs down.
I am so sorry for getting away from my main feature the Irish Arts Center who will have this great Irish dancer performing. Now here is the information that you’ve been patiently waiting for!
Irish Arts Center (IAC), based in New York City and renowned for presenting dynamic, inspiring, collaborative experiences of the evolving arts and culture of Ireland and Irish America in an environment of warm Irish hospitality, presents the North American premiere of choreographer, director, and performer Jean Butler’s contemporary exploration of traditional Irish dance, What We Hold.
An “astonishing dance work, a visual, aural, almost poetic performative archive of Irish step dance” (The Irish Times, in a five-star review), What We Hold breaks down the barriers of audience and stage and illuminates the personal and cultural histories contained within the Irish dancing body.
Performances take place from February 14 to March 3.
Jean Butler has re-staged and re-designed this site-specific work for Irish Arts Center after its acclaimed 2022 Dublin Theatre Festival premiere at City Assembly House.
What We Hold takes the audience on a physical journey through the performance space, encountering an intergenerational cast of renowned dancers, and experiencing what the body holds and what happens when we collectively let go.
The “joyous journey…push[es] at limits of form, convention, history and memory” (The Arts Review, in another five-star review) as it invites audiences to engage with traditional and contemporary expressions of Irish step side-by-side and up close.
Sound design plays a key role in the work. A sound sculpture specially designed by composer Ryan C Seaton and Andrew Rumpler traverses the space.
The original score, mixed live by Seaton throughout the work, interweaves oral history recordings of Irish dancers from around the world, uniting the performers with older generations of Irish dancers from Ireland, England, Scotland, Canada, and the United States.
What We Hold marks a return for Butler to working with traditional Irish dancers. Says Butler, “In many ways, What We Hold closes a circle of my past as a traditional Irish dancer and my present as a contemporary dance artist. I knew I wanted to work with traditional Irish dancers again — I hadn’t worked with them in 25 years.
“What We Hold opens a conversation between traditional Irish dance and the contemporary expression of traditional Irish dance.”
As well as Butler, the New York Cast includes performers Tom Cashin, Marion Cronin, Colin Dunne, Kristyn Fontanella, James Greenan, Kaitlyn Sardin, Maren Shanks and Ryan C Seaton.
What We Hold is created, choreographed, and directed by Butler. Its creative team includes Ryan C Seaton (composer and sound designer), Katie Davenport (set designer), Harriet Jung & Reid Bartelme (costume designers), Stephen Dodd (lighting designer), Ryan C Seaton & Andrew Rumpler (sound sculpture designers), Laura Murphy (Associate Director), Levi Gonzalez (Performance and Rehearsal Consultant), Shane O’Reilly (Dramaturge), Louise Lowe (Consultant), Pádraig Heneghan/Lovano (Producer), Ois O’Donoghue (Associate Producer), and Ste Murray (Photographer).
Jean Butler’s performance embodies the type of expansive, exploratory, and boundary-breaking work IAC’s New Irish Arts Center—the 21,700 square foot hub for the arts completed in December, 2021—enables the organization to present.
What We Hold and other major upcoming works this season—including celebrated musician Lisa Hannigan’s residency (March 21–23), Lyric Theatre, Belfast’s production of Owen McCafferty’s “searing new play” (The Irish Times) Agreement (April 11–May 12), If These Wigs Could Talk from “Ireland’s undisputed queen of drag” (The New York Times) Panti Bliss (June 13–23)—continue to move IAC into a new era.
What We Hold further establishes IAC as a home for groundbreaking contemporary dance, following Oona Doherty’s Hard to Be Soft, Mufutau Yusuf’s Òwe, and Darrah Carr and Seán Curran’s Céilí.
Now I am going to give you an inside about this super star Jean Butler.
Dancer, choreographer, and Our Steps artistic director Jean Butler is a leading figure in the world of contemporary Irish dance performance. Her most recent production, a site-specific promenade piece entitled What We Hold premiered at the Dublin Theatre Festival in October 2022 to critical acclaim.
Past works have been supported and presented by the Arts Council (Ireland), Abbey Theatre (Dublin), Baryshnikov Arts Center (NY), Danspace Project (NY), Dublin Dance Festival, Dublin Theatre Festival, Irish Arts Center (NY), Jacobs Pillow (MA), The Joyce (NY), Kennedy Center (DC), Project Arts Centre (Dublin), and Seamus Heaney Homeplace (Northern Ireland).
In 2018 Jean founded Our Steps, a not-for-profit organization committed to expanding the way we think about history, practice, and performance of Irish dance.
Partnering with the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library, Our Steps initiated the first living Irish dance archive, entitled Our Steps, Our Story: An Irish Dance Legacy Archive.
To date, this ever-expanding archive has created over 200 hours of video and audio resource materials never previously documented.
Butler has taught at Princeton University, University College Dublin, University of Notre Dame Global Center, Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick, and Glucksman Ireland House, NYU. She choreographed and starred in the original Irish dance productions, Riverdance and Dancing on Dangerous Ground and is the recipient of many prestigious awards and honors.