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DANCE

this is an Irish dance
Jean Butler and Neil Martin

Tickets from $25

Photo Credit: Lucy Dawson, John Midgley

Danspace Project, Irish Arts Center, and Project Arts Centre present
Jean Butler
this is an Irish dance
Choreographed by Jean Butler and Composed by Neil Martin

November 17 - 21
Tuesday, Thursday-Saturday | 8 pm

at Danspace Project
131 E 10th Street
New York, NY 10003

November 17: After the performance, join our Q&A with Jean Butler and Danspace Project’s Executive Director, Judy Hussie-Taylor.

Jean Butler’s last contemporary dance piece, hurry (2013), commissioned by the renowned Danspace Project, invoked the choreographer’s celebrated past in Irish Step Dance.

Her new duet, this is an Irish dance, created with Belfast-based cellist Neil Martin in a joint commission by Danspace Project, Irish Arts Center, and Dublin’s Project Arts Centre further unearths this iconic artist’s roots by returning to the interdependent relationship between live music and movement – and the often invisible interplay between dancer and musician in live performance.

The movement and music, created simultaneously through improvisation during the piece’s development, raises questions about who is leading and who is following, revealing a dialoguebetween music and movement, movement and sound, sound and space, space and sculpture, sculpture and body, body and instrument, cello and cellist, cellist and dancer, and ultimately a man and a woman.

A Danspace Project, Irish Arts Center, and Project Arts Centre Commission.

Promotional support provided by Glucksman Ireland House – NYU

Based in New York City, dancer and choreographer, Jean Butler is best known for originating the female principal roles and co-choreographing Riverdance The Show and Dancing on Dangerous Ground—the later of which Anna Kisselgoff of the New York Times reviewed as “channeling Irish step dancing into genuine artistic expression.” Her current work, which bridges the gap between a culturally specific practice and a contemporary approach to dance making, has been commissioned by Danspace Project, The Project Arts Centre, and the Abbey Theatre. Butler is Assistant Professor of Irish Studies at Glucksman Ireland House at NYU.

Belfast-born composer Neil Martin’s output spans dance, opera, film, theatre, television, studio, choral, symphonic and chamber works. A cellist and uilleann piper, he has collaborated with a broad spectrum of artists including Sam Shepard, Stephen Rea, Barry Douglas, Bryn Terfel, Christy Moore, The Chieftains, The West Ocean String Quartet, The Dubliners, the London Symphony Orchestra and all the professional orchestras in Ireland. In his roles as producer, arranger, musical director and performer, he has contributed to more than one hundred albums and his music has been heard everywhere from Carnegie Hall to Mostar Bridge, and from the PalazzoVecchio to the International Space Station.

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Irish Arts Center programs, are made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.	Irish Arts Center programs, are made possible, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.	Irish Arts Center programs are supported, in part, by Culture Ireland, the agency for the promotion of Irish arts worldwide.
Irish Arts Center programs are supported, in part, by government partners including the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; Culture Ireland, the agency for the promotion of Irish arts worldwide; the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Consulate of Ireland in New York; the Northern Ireland Bureau; British Council Northern Ireland; the Arts Council of Northern Ireland; The American Ireland Fund; Howard Gilman Foundation; Tourism Ireland; Bloomberg Philanthropies; and thousands of generous donors like you.