Review of Victoria O’Brien’s A History of Irish Ballet from 1927-1963
Victoria O’Brien's book, A History of Irish Ballet from 1927-1963 presents an account of the foundation of the Abbey School of Ballet and the legacies it created through the students that studied there and the teachers who taught there. This is a long-awaited and well-researched engagement with regard to ballet in Dublin, but the author curiously ignores all other developments in ballet outside Dublin during the mentioned time-period. Overlooked in the section on the roots of ballet in Ireland is Joan Denise Moriarty [JDM]. She was already working in Mallow towards the end of the Abbey Ballet School (1933/4) and she had studied with Marie Rambert. The patrons of the amateur company (Cork Ballet Company) were Rambert and Alicia Markova. The proposed influence of Diaghilev on ballet in Ireland came from two sources, one from de Valois herself and the other through JDM, JDM having studied with Rambert.
It becomes clear early in chapter one: we are not getting an Irish history we are getting a history of the Abbey School and ballet in Dublin. A total elimination of dance outside Dublin as being worthwhile in the study of ballet in Ireland becomes, sadly, an omission that runs through the book. Un-documented in the study is the first professional ballet company in Ireland, Irish Theatre Ballet [ITB], founded and directed by Joan Denise Moriarty in Cork. This company is falsely labeled a semi-professional company (p.138). ITB had 10 dancers; the first ballet master was the distinguished Stanley Judson, the pianist was Charles Lynch, manager Leslie Horne. It was a touring company bringing ballet all round Ireland during two annual seasons. It received a small grant from the Arts Council, and support from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, but most of its money was raised on an annual basis from businesses and individual supporters. In this uncertainty lay one of its main problems. In 1963, in an attempt to reduce costs, the Arts Council insisted on a merger of ITB and Patricia Ryan’s company National Ballet Company - the new company being called Irish National Ballet [INB]. But the merger did not solve the financial problem. O’Brien quotes a letter to the paper from Ryan (p.140/1) calling JMD’s competency as a dancer into question. This is used as supporting evidence regarding the reasons for the dissolution of INB. The reasons were, in fact, financial and had nothing to do with competency on any level. The roots of the ITB Company can be traced to the amateur Cork Ballet Company. Since 1947 it had been performing ballets to audiences in Cork and across Munster with guest soloists performing principal roles. This company was responsible for many commissions and re-staging of ballets by Irish composers and helped develop a solid basis for the recruitment of dancers for ITB. Also overlooked in the study is the huge education and outreach efforts made by both CBC and ITB – long before Peter Brinson instigated his “Ballet For All” movement in the UK.
Questions about JDM's qualifications (p.69) to choreograph in the traditional style are unfounded because JDM was a champion Irish step dancer. The suggestion that JDM presented an unacknowledged (Sara Payne) form of the ballet, Fair Rosamunde (p.70) in the CBC opening season (1947) is not true: the programme shows that JDM presented her own ballet Rosamunde based on the story for which Schubert had composed the music. Payne’s libretto was quite different. Further attacks on the integrity of JDM occur in the chapter on the Ballet Club: the suggestion that JDM used Cepta Cullen’s choreography of the ballet An Coitin Dearg without acknowledging her is unfounded (p.112/3), the music score is by a different composer and the JDM ballet is based on the MacLiammoir scenario. With regards to Puck Fair, Moriarty does attribute the original choreography and idea to Cullen in the programmes of 1948 and 1953. Correspondence between Cullen and Moriarty illuminates the discussion between the two on the best way to stage the ballet, as Moriarty did not have enough male dancers to re-stage the Cullen version. Cullen suggests she do her own version (letter dated 9 March 1948).
The disturbing subtext of anything outside Dublin being unworthy of documenting is carried into the conclusions of the study. The theory that JDM blurred the past and presents herself as the sole heir to the throne of Irish ballet is presented as one of the main conclusions of this study. The Cork Ballet Company programme of 1972 did state that when JDM began to work for ballet there had been no ballet tradition in Ireland. That is surely true if we compare it to the traditions of Russia or France – or, indeed, the one Britain had built for itself at this stage. All of the work done for ballet in Ireland since 1927 can be said to have been a novel undertaking - 5 years of professional ballet do not constitute a tradition in the normal sense of the word. It is, therefore, surely entirely unjustified to maintain that JDM ‘consciously or not’ eclipsed any past achievements in ballet in Ireland.
While this is a very useful history of ballet in Dublin it is not, as the title states, a history of ballet in Ireland.
