Dance and Modernism in Irish and German Literature and Culture

Sabine Egger is lecturer in German studies at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, and joint director of the Irish Centre for Transnational Studies. Catherine E. Foley is emeritus senior lecturer in ethnochoreology at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at the University of Limerick and founding director of the National Dance Archive of Ireland.Margaret Mills Harper is Glucksman Professor in Contemporary Writing in English at the University of Limerick.

• Chapter One: Modernism, Migration, and Irish-German Connections in the 1930s and 1940s: The Impact of Modern Physics and Dance on IrelandGisela HolfterChapter Two: Erina Brady: Mary Wigman’s Irish Disciple?Deirdre MulrooneyChapter Three: Duality of Cultural Influences as a Source of Insight and Inspiration: The Collaboration between Aloys Fleischmann and Joan Moriarty 1947-1992Ruth Fleischmann Chapter Four: Irish Dance Documentation for the Archive: A Personal Reflection on Irish-German Connections and Intellectual InheritancesCatherine E. FoleyChapter Five: “Somewhere Between Remembering and Forgetting”: An Examination of the Choreographic Process Inspired by the Poem “The Man Made of Rain” by Brendan KennellyMarguerite DonlonChapter Six: Creating Tanztheater: Finding Ireland with Pina?Finola CroninChapter Seven: Irish Modernism and the History and Aesthetics of DanceSusan JonesChapter Eight: Rhythm and Colour: The Legacy of Dance in 1930s Joyce and BeckettSiobhán PurcellChapter Nine: Yeats’s Transgressive DancersMargaret Mills HarperChapter Ten: “I as a Text,” I as a Dance: On the Relationship of Contemporary Dance and Contemporary Poetry with Reference to Anne Juren, Martina Hefter, Monika Rinck, and Philipp Gehmacher Lucia RuprechtChapter Eleven: Dancing between Transgression and Transformation in German Literature after 1945 and 1989: Johannes Bobrowski and Katja PetrowskajaSabine EggerChapter Twelve: Dance and the Postmodern Subject in “Libidoökonomie” and “Der Kranich auf dem Kiesel in der Pfütze” by Feridun ZaimogluJoseph TwistChapter Thirteen: “Alive. Changing. New”: Impulses of the Jaques-Dalcroze Dance Institute on the Architecture of Ludwig Mies van der RoheTanja Poppelreuter and Jan Frohburg

The subtitle of this book encapsulates what is shared within – how dance as an anchor to creative enquiry across literature and culture can expose social, political, and cultural connections that deepen our relationships with each other – past, present, and – indeed – in the future. We read of the creative and performative encounters of Irish and German artists and innovators, with modernist thought and influences – be that through exploring contemporaneous poetry and prose (Ruprecht, Harper, Egger, Twist), performance and embodied presence (Holfter, Jones, Purcell) or ideas (Frohburg and Poppelreuter); or the development of practices as transmitted through the protégés of those modernist thought leaders (Mulrooney), or in the meeting of art forms resulting in new manifestations (Fleischmann). Modernism, as an early 20th Century movement, can be described as an acknowledgement of change – social, cultural, and political; a rejection of historical practices and an opening up to innovation and exploration of form and structure. This quite often leads to “new” techniques and processes (Cronin, Donlon) and indeed new forms of art. That dance can tip the balance of power, of perception – if only for a moment – is a modernist intention that resonates through time and can be seen in the legacies of those texts and performances, as experienced in our reading of this book. And, indeed, in the artistic practices and performances we encounter today. With reference to Foley’s “Irish German Intellectual Inheritances”, I suggest these experiences are our embodied inheritances; and acknowledge the particular influence and exchange between Ireland and Germany as instrumental in forming an Irish contemporary identity in the art form of dance.Sheila Creevey, CEO of Dance Ireland