Dance, whether set, step or sean-nós, occupies a curious place in the Irish tradition.
Riverdance put it on the global stage, and those who speak the language of set dancing pass it down through the generations with enviable zeal. But for many lovers of traditional music, their encounters with dance are few and far between. It can feel as if the session and the céilí are a twain that never shall meet.
At the same time, traditional music has been steadily taking its place alongside other musical art forms – the ground-breaking recent music created by Lankum, Cormac Begley and John Francis Flynn, among others, will have lured in even more listeners.
The fiddle player and composer Zoë Conway, who cut her teeth with Riverdance, has played no small part in bridging the gap between performance and audience, in concert halls, fleadhanna cheoil and sessions.
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Conway is constantly pursuing new horizons, infectiously curious about where the music might take her. In 2023 she became an associate artist of the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. For her next appearance with them, at the Anam Éireann – or The Soul of Ireland – concert at the Helix in Dublin this month, she is drawing together singer Ríoghnach Connolly, piper Louise Mulcahy and conductor Ellie Slorach for a performance featuring the irrepressible sean-nós dancer Edwina Guckian.
Given the solo nature of sean-nós dance, opportunities to collaborate can be few and far between. Still, Guckian belongs to a community that’s not short of vim. She and her fellow solo dancers Stephanie Keane, Caitlín Nic Gabhann and Nic Gareiss have all made sean-nós their own.
Guckian has a particularly organic and inclusive approach to what she prefers to call percussive dance, as the term frees her of the fetters that can bind sean-nós dance to a tight set of conventions.
“If you do anything that’s off from the tradition at all, someone will turn around to you and say that’s not sean-nós dancing,” she says. “But I never said that it was. I might be dancing to The Beatles, but sean-nós dancing.
“As well as that, most people associate sean-nós dance with Connemara dancers and they expect you to dance in that way, but we never call it that. Where I grew up, people call what I do shuffling or battering.”
Anam Éireann will feature music that Conway composed for Guckian after RTÉ Lyric FM commissioned her to create a piece for its concert last year to mark the station’s 25th birthday. The pair worked closely to meld dancer and dance with the tune in a way that would surely please Yeats in its seamlessness.
“I was so honoured when Lyric FM asked me to compose a piece,” Conway says. “As associate artist with the orchestra, I felt it would be an opportunity to present a collaboration that shows the best of our living, breathing Irish tradition, and I immediately thought of Edwina.
“I wanted the piece to be celebratory and uplifting, and something that embodies the spirit of the people who came before us. I loved the idea of the juxtaposition of sean-nós dance with an orchestra, and how the rhythm of the feet could come through in the orchestration. Edwina’s passion for the tradition is infectious, so once I began composing, the piece wrote itself.
“This was actually the first piece I ever composed and orchestrated for full orchestra. I have to thank Bill Whelan for giving me the push to do that, as I was a bit reluctant. He acted as mentor on the project and checked the final scores to make sure all was okay.
Conway called the piece, which they performed together on the stage of University Concert Hall, in Limerick, Bualadh an Cheoil, Bualadh an Chroí, “which means Music Playing, Heart Beating, in honour of Edwina”.
Guckian was thrilled. “I couldn’t believe that someone wanted to write a piece of music for me, and that it was Zoë Conway, and for an orchestra too,” she says. “It was a real honour. For someone to compose for you, and not only that, but to ask what you like dancing to, was fabulous – and then having it orchestrated: I never danced to such power.
“Of course there was volume, but the power of the entire orchestra: I was literally up against the cello – she was nearly prodding me in the backside, I was that close to her. So that sheer force coming at you, with music that was written for you, was incredible.
“I was seven months pregnant when I danced. David Brophy conducted, and it was as if he was dancing beside me too.”
The dance school that Guckian runs, Áirc Damhsa Culture Club, in Leitrim, is built on her philosophy that, with young people, “if you imagine a big bucket of Irish culture – music, song, dance, folklore, language, customs, community – you dunk them in it.” You could almost call it a school for life; past pupils now return to teach the next generation, fired by the passion that Guckian has created.
Guckian’s extraordinary choreography was on show at the National Concert Hall in Dublin recently, for the Irish Traditional Music Archive’s Drawing from the Well concert in May. She danced her own set with seven other dancers, a celebration of both the percussive force of her own style and the community-building potential of set dancing, fired by an entirely new set of steps learned on the fly.
“When I want to choreograph something to learn off and remember I’ll learn to lilt the tune first, and then I’ll make the whole thing up in my head and practise it over and over in my head and then eventually I’ll let it come out in my feet,” she says.
“I’d been dancing that set in my head for about eight years, and it was so exciting. Then on the day of the performance we got seven dancers into the studio at the Irish Traditional Music Archive and I taught it to everybody.”
The joy of mining this much-neglected seam of the tradition for new gems is evident in Guckian’s dance.
“I think it’s lovely for the musicians, too, because they can see their tune coming out in my feet,” she says. “Because Zoë and I are working so closely together, even if she stops playing she can hear the tune in my feet.”
Guckian’s approach to dance is the same whether she’s in her kitchen, at a crossroads or in a concert hall.
“I have very bad eyesight – which comes in really useful, because I can’t see the audience and I’m away in my own world,” she says, laughing. “Whether there’s 100 or 1,000 people, it’s still a very personal performance. I tend to just go into my own world with that person who’s playing.
“I face them and not the audience, and I only focus on them and the music. When they’re relaxed alongside me, it’s lovely.”
Anam Éireann: The Soul of Ireland is at the Helix, in Dublin, on Thursday, September 11th
