Dance Index

The journal Dance Index was founded by Lincoln Kirstein in 1942. Over the following seven years, 56 issues were published, presenting original scholarship on a wide range of dance subjects. In the spirit of its predecessor, the new Dance Index examines the multi-dimensional richness and diversity of the world of dance. Its intention is to surprise and excite a general audience with a new level of understanding and appreciation of the real and critical importance of dance in contemporary culture.

New Issue

Irish Dance: History, Form, and Freedom

by Jean Butler

DANCE INDEX, Volume 16

No. 1 Spring 2025

978-0-87130-104-8

32 pages, 25 illustrations

$10

In the program note for my production at Danspace Project in 2015, I wrote a brief history of the origins of Irish dance ending with the sentence: “Irish dance is a form of resistance.” I imagined that this note and the title of the work, this is an Irish dance, would make a bold statement and steer the audience towards meeting my artistic and choreographic intentions for what they were at that precise moment in time, free of the shackles of my starrier past. I had firmly established myself in New York’s downtown dance world, but the space I occupied — that of an Irish dancer working in a contemporary dance context — had no precedent. I was on my own, confounding expectations of audiences old and new on this singular journey of transformation.

- Jean Butler