Hi Danceletter readers,
This is a quickie (and probably my last dispatch of 2021), just to share something I’ve been working on that was published today, over at Jean Butler’s Our Steps website.
For many years, I have wanted to sit down and chat with dancers who, like me, followed an unusual path from competitive Irish dance to less strictly vertical ways of moving. About a month ago, it finally happened! I got together on Zoom with dancers Doug LeCours, Mickey Mahar, and Michael Thurin, to talk about the histories we share (and don’t) as people who grew up training intensively in Irish dance and later found our way to more experimental forms. The wrangling of schedules alone felt like a triumph (Mickey is based in Berlin, Michael in the Bay Area, Doug and I in NYC). Our two-hour discussion has been distilled into something of a more readable (I hope) length, titled “You Can’t Really Talk About It with Other People”: A conversation on Irish dance. If you have a chance to read it, I’d love to hear what you think.
And while you’re on the Our Steps site, check out the ever-growing collection of oral history interviews with Irish dance practitioners, which has continued to expand throughout the pandemic.
Since we find ourselves here at the end of the year, I’ll also point you toward a good ol’ year-end list, the NYT’s “Best Dance of 2021,” to which I contributed a few thoughts. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, “best of” lists stress me out, but they also are a nice opportunity to reflect on the year and some of the work that has really stayed with me.
Here’s one such work, Get the Lite, a three-minute film that came out in February and that I’ve revisited many times since, starring litefeet pioneer Chrybaby Cozie, directed by Ali Rosa-Salas and Godfred Sedano, and commissioned by Jacob’s Pillow:
Wishing you ease in this latest pandemic chapter, and a happy holiday if you observe.
Until next year,
Siobhan