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Article: Trinity Irish Dance Company. (Joyce Theater, NYC)
- Article from:
- Dance Magazine
- Article date:
- November 1, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 Dance Magazine, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Almost every traditional Irish step dancer is a furtive patriot who offers a mockingly demure, seemingly subservient front--then gleefully flouts it. Symbolically, step dancing celebrates extremes while half trying to hide this. As part of the disguise, the dancer stands unmercifully erect throughout the performance, as if prepared for military maneuvers or parodying a bygone ideal of civic decorum. The body is as vertical as geometry from the ankles up the face blandly basks in a childlike willingness to obey, and the arms are held near the body, oddly deprived of motive and the power inherent in motion.
Yet close to the ground, where the partial gaze of a British ...