February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
The dance, called ?Irish Roots, American Wings,? was commissioned by the Irish Cultural Centre, a non-profit group whose mission is to promote Irish culture in New England, which has the highest percentage of Irish than any other region in the United States.
The premier takes place Saturday, June 12, at 9:30 p.m. on the main festival stage.
Jordan, who teaches non-competitive dancing at several towns in greater Boston, said the dance will reflect the theme of this year’s festival, which focuses on how Irish music and culture found a common platform in America with other ethnic and racial traditions.
Joining Jordan on stage are dancers Kevin Doyle and Amy Fenton-Shine, along with musicians Mark Simos, Eric Merrill and Matthew Heaton.
“One big challenge is to create a piece that is powerful enough to captivate a large, outdoor festival crowd on a large stage,” Jordan said from her home in Dorchester. “My work tends to be soft and lyrical, best suited for small, indoor theaters.”
Jordan said the performance will reflect upon the way in which Irish dancing became integrated in other American dance forms starting in the 19th century, including tap-dancing found in minstrelsy and vaudeville, as well as clogging developed in the Appalachian tradition.
The dance commission is part of a more active role the Irish Cultural Centre is taking to “directly foster artistic endeavors related to various aspects of Irish culture,” according to Brian O’Donovan, who booked the performers for this year’s festival. A popular host of the NPR radio program ?Celtic Sojourn,? O’Donovan anticipates the Culture Centre getting more involved in supporting creative works by local Irish artists.
The center often explores the significance of Irish culture against the wider backdrop of American culture. Recently the Centre has hosted a night called ?Up Close with Irish Fiddling,? featuring fiddle maestro Seamus Connolly and old-time fiddler Bob Childs. Last year it hosted a show by Revels, a musical troupe in Cambridge that examined the interaction among Irish, Italian and Jewish immigrants who landed in Boston around the same time in the late 19th century.
Jordan, who performs frequently in the New England area, is excited about the state of Irish dance today, especially as the art form continues to develop in different directions.
“I am more interested in dance as performance than as competition,” she said. “Dance for performance allows for more feeling — more expression, imagination, emotion — in both the act of dancing and in the creation of the dance.”
Jordan credited the American and Irish influences of Donny Golden, Jean Butler, Michael Flatley, the Chieftains, and Mick Moloney’s Green Fields of America for creating an environment that enabled shows like ?Riverdance? to flourish. She is also influenced by modern dance, Cape Breton music, clog dancing and old time music because of how each maintains a vital relationship between the music and the dance.
“I wish competitive Irish dancers and Irish session musicians could hang out together on a desert island for a little while, to reconnect the dance to the music, and visa versa. We may have a lot to learn from the Cape Breton, American old-time, and French-Canadian traditions in that regard,” she said
“It seems to me that, traditionally, Irish step dance was about joy — a spontaneous eruption of fast-flying feet when the music lifts you up, and nothing can hold you down. That’s one quality I try to bring into my dances.”
The Irish Connections Festival runs from June 11-13 at the Irish Cultural Centre’s 46-acre campus in Canton, about 15 miles southwest of Boston. For the first 13 years the festival was held on the grounds of Stonehill College in nearby Easton, but organizers decided it was time this year to bring it to its permanent home.
For a complete list of activities at this year’s Irish Connections Festival, call 1 888 Go Irish or visit www.irishculture.org. For more details on Kieran Jordan, visit www.kieranjordan.com.