Shadow Dolls

Shadow Dolls

Student dancers at the Belltable Arts Centre, Limerick, May 2008: photograph from a current exhibition at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick, by Maurice Gunning, photographer-in-residence at the Academy

The creative interaction that comes from having students of traditional, classical and contemporary music and dance together in a large single university department is a marked feature of the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance of the University of Limerick. Here traditional hard-shoe dancing is brought into service in a contemporary-dance performance, choreographed by Breandán de Gallaí.

Established in January 1994 by Dr Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin after his appointment as the first Professor of Music in UL, the Academy builds on the innovative work he had begun from 1975 as a lecturer in the School of Music, University College Cork, in bringing Irish traditional musicians into academic life by devising specialised entry requirements, curricula and tuition. Irish traditional music performance and study is now a norm in third-level music departments throughout Ireland, north and south. The Academy currently offers undergraduate programmes, diploma courses and MA programmes in various genres of music and dance. In September 2010, it will be moving officially to a spectacular new 41,000 sqm home within the UL campus, in wooded surroundings on the north bank of the Shannon. Nicholas Carolan

Courtesy and © Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, per Irish Traditional Music Archive

Published on 1 August 2010

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