Step Dancing in Ireland Culture and History

Catherine E. Foley is a lecturer at the University of Limerick, Ireland; she is also a dancer, musician and ethnochoreologist. She is the Founding Course Director of both the MA in Ethnochoreology and the MA in Irish Traditional Dance Performance programmes at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick. She also supervises doctoral research in dance at the Academy. Catherine is Founding Chair Emerita of the international society, Dance Research Forum Ireland, and is Founding Director of the National Dance Archive of Ireland. She is also a qualified Irish step dance teacher. Catherine has published in international journals including Dance Research, Dance Research Journal, and New Hibernia Review and has contributed many chapters to books including Dance Structures: Perspectives on the Analysis of Human Movement (eds Adrienne L. Kaeppler and Elsie Ivancich Dunin) and Ancestral Imprints: Histories of Irish Traditional Music and Dance (ed. Thrse Smith); she has also contributed articles to the International Encyclopedia of Dance, The Companion to Irish Traditional Music, and the Encyclopedia of Music in Ireland. Catherine choreographed The Sionna Set Dance (2005), a newly commissioned set dance, published in 2007 and also published her book and DVD, Irish Traditional Step Dancing in North Kerry: a Contextual and Structural Analysis, in 2012. She gives guest lectures, performances and dance workshops both within Ireland and further afield.