Critical scholarship about dance practices in Ireland has taken some time to gather momentum. This is perhaps unsurprising, considering that dance has yet to be established as a discrete subject of study at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels of education.Footnote ¹ Yet despite the neglect of dance studies in Irish academia, the past decade has seen the emergence of a growing number of publications that are forging space for much-needed discussion. This new wave of scholarship has been supported by several important infrastructural developments in the dance research landscape, such as the founding of Dance Research Forum Ireland in 2003; the advent of increasingly regular symposia dedicated to dance scholarship supported by festivals and organizations such as Galway Dance Days, Dance Limerick, and Dance Ireland; and the establishment of the National Dance Archive at the Glucksmann Library, University of Limerick, in 2011. Publications that are contributing to the growth of the field include work by dance scholars/practitioners looking at various aspects of historical and contemporary dance practices and performance in Ireland, such as questions of identity in contemporary dance education (Roche Reference Roche2011), the autobiographical body and somatic practices in dance (Meehan Reference Meehan2011), and the intersection of dance and politics in Irish dance theater (McGrath Reference McGrath2013). Another strand of scholarship includes research conducted through sociological, anthropological, and ethnographic lenses that investigates the historical and current practice of traditional Irish step dance and social dance forms. Publications in this area include sociological analysis of the development of step dancing and social dancing in Ireland from the Middle Ages to the present (Brennan Reference Brennan1999), ethnographic study of the expression of Irish national identity and cultural memory in dance (Wulff Reference Wulff2007), anthropological analysis of the role of competition in Irish step dance (Hall Reference Hall2008), and cultural analysis of the globalization of Irish step dance through commercial productions such as Riverdance (Monks Reference Monks2007). This flourishing interest in, and practice of, critical dance scholarship is coinciding with a (belated) awareness of the serious lack of attention that has been paid to corporealities in research on Irish culture. Barbara O'Connor's work acknowledges this neglect within the field of sociology and cultural studies (5) and aims to contribute toward redressing it.

O'Connor presents The Irish Dancing as an examination of “the role of dance in Irish cultural politics and identities in the twentieth century” (1). This rather broad title and aim actually has a quite narrow focus in terms of dance genre, with the dance discussed limited to different manifestations of Irish step dance and ballroom dancing. Apart from a final chapter on commercial step dance shows (e.g., Riverdance), the book focuses on dance in social and recreational settings, with the seven main chapters each addressing a different form of cultural identity construction: “national, ethnic, gender, social, class, postmodern, and global” (7). An aspect that sets O'Connor's book apart from previous sociological studies of traditional step dance and social dance in Ireland is the integration of some dance studies scholarship in her analyses, although it must be noted that there are few references to post-1990s publications. Her citation of Jane Desmond's observation in 1998 that “dance remains a greatly undervalued and under-theorised arena of bodily discourse” (Desmond in O'Connor, 5) certainly continues to be relevant in an Irish context; yet international developments since the 1990s make this reference relatively dated in a broader context.

The first three chapters serve to cover familiar and well-rehearsed terrain in the field. Chapter 1 outlines the book's methodological underpinning, which O'Connor describes as a “critical cultural studies approach [that is] embedded in a broadly sociological frame” used to conduct an “investigation of the links between social, economic and political power with the production/performance and representation of dance in an Irish cultural context” between 1900 and 2000 (7). A discussion of the “Irish body style” and the origins of the posture used in Irish step dancing (in which the upper body and arms remain largely immobile, while the legs and feet perform physically and rhythmically complex steps) skirts rather gingerly around the problem of “essentializing” the Irish body. O'Connor takes care to point out that “it is important not to reify ‘the Irish body’ as something immutable and monolithic” (11), yet this section nevertheless goes on to reiterate some problematic stereotypes, or what Frank Hall terms “myth-like stories” (Reference Hall2008, 15) about its origins. Chapters 2 and 3 conduct insightful gender readings of the re-imagining of step dancing as “Irish” dancing during the Gaelic Revival in Ireland at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, and of the “woman–dance–sin nexus” (47) contrived and railed against by the Catholic Church and nationalist organizations during the dancehall heyday in the 1920s and 1930s. Of particular interest is the discussion in Chapter 2 of the feminization of step dance performance and teaching between 1890 and 1920. Considering the effects of colonial history on the development of traditional Irish dance from a gender perspective, O'Connor argues that the nationalist conception of an Irish dancing body was forged not only in opposition to degrading colonial stereotypes, but that it also incorporated elements deemed useful to the promotion of moral ideals. The “abiding colonial image” (21) of the Irishman as ape-like and of Irish people in general as “feckless, childlike, lazy and overfond of passing their time in drinking, playing music and dancing” co-existed with a portrayal of rural “Irish colleens” as being “hardworking, clean and chaste” (22). O'Connor's analysis of the adoption of this British stereotype of Irish femininity by the nationalist cause serves as a useful reminder of the complexities at work in the construction and (danced) performance of identity.

The strongest chapters in the book—Chapters 4, 5, and 7—are those that are grounded in empirical research material in the form of O'Connor's interviews with dancers. Chapter 4 provides a fascinating discussion of how the material construction of ballroom-dance venues (e.g., the lighting, the type of flooring, the seating arrangements) “fostered the performance of romance in everyday life” (61). And Chapter 7—although perhaps spending too much time reiterating the many and varied opinions on the artistic and cultural merits of the Irish dance spectacular Riverdance—very usefully contributes an analysis of the “Riverdance effect” on traditional Irish step dancers working in Dublin's cultural tourism industry. Chapter 5, “Return of the Repressed,” discusses the revived popularity of set dance in Ireland from the 1970s to the 1990s. O'Connor proposes that during Ireland's so-called Celtic Tiger economic boom years (ca. 1994–2008), in which rapid urbanization, globalization, and individualization caused a decline in the sense of community, there was a flourishing of set dance that can be read as “an expression of a longing for community” (101). Based on interview material with both rural and urban set dancers from the 1990s, O'Connor's highlighting of the intergenerational aspects of set dance is a particularly interesting contribution. However the discussion of how the set dance revival can be read within the frame of Ireland's lurch into postmodernity could be interrogated further. Speaking of “[d]ance as a metaphor for community” (96), O'Connor cites various interlocutors’ experiences of performing a set dance titled the “Clare Lancers.” One interviewee makes reference to the dance's “military line-up” and the sense of a pleasing “uniformity” that performing it engenders (96). Read within the context of the socioeconomic backdrop of Ireland's (ultimately disastrous) wholehearted embrace of neo-liberal capitalism during the boom years, the discussion of this danced expression of “uniformity” is left unproblematized. Ireland became an attractive destination for economic migrants during this period, and there was a concurrent rise in racist incidents. It would be interesting to further develop this discussion of community and increased desire for “uniformity” in communal experience, to include a consideration of these more troubling aspects of Irish society.

O'Connor's work plays an important role in the insertion of a discussion of dance into sociological and cultural discourse concerning Ireland. The strand of gender analysis that is interwoven throughout the book, although almost exclusively focused on women's experience, is the most successful interrogative lens, often producing insightful contributions. Dance scholars and readers hoping to find reference to an embodied understanding of the dances discussed might miss the inclusion of movement description to illustrate and ground the analyses; at times the discussion feels quite removed from the dancing it studies. Nevertheless, this book is a very welcome and useful addition to the emerging wave of critical scholarship about dance in Ireland.