Step Dancing in Ireland

This book provides a rich historical and ethnographic account of step dancing, step dancers, and Irish cultural institutions. Catherine Foley tells the story of step dance from its roots in eighteenth-century Ireland to its modern globalized appeal. Foley applies a regional focus to her examination of step dance, looking at three step dance practices in North Kerry, in south-west Ireland: the rural Molyneaux step-dance practice; the urbanized, staged, competition-orientated practice, cultivated by the cultural nationalist movement, the Gaelic League; and the stylized, commodified, theatrical practice of Siamsa Tíre, the National Folk Theatre of Ireland.