Dancing the Great Arc Darrah Carr Dance Irish Arts Center

Darrah Carr Dance Visitor (Photo: Margarita Persico)

Darrah Carr (Photograph: Margarita Persico)

By Margarita Persico

Darrah Carr observes three of her dancers as they practice tap in hard shoes at John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, in Boston, where they expect a crowd of 700 for St. Patrick's 24-hour interval celebration.  She slightly changes the choreography while four other dancers rehearse with no music to Slip Jig, a ballet like Irish dance.

"All of the group dances take very specific spatial patterns whether they are circles, diagonals, or squares.  These interlacing patterns are often replicated in Celtic knotwork, jewelry, and embroidery," she says most the style she is reinforcing during rehearsal.

Carr is doing something different as a choreographer—mixing the old and the new into traditional Irish dance. Carr fuses Irish music, step dance footwork and spatial patterns with the freedom of modern dance such as hip-hop. Coincidentally, Carr'south life is a fusion of career interwoven into her passion for Irish dance.

Carr has been doing this virtually of her life—step dancing as a traditional Irish gaelic dance professional.  At 33, she is an artistic director at her own trip the light fantastic company, Darrah Carr Dance, Brooklyn, NY; teaches at Hofstra University dance history and teaches modern Irish dance to children in New York Urban center and around New England.

"Irish trip the light fantastic provides the choreographic construction and modernistic trip the light fantastic provides a keen sense of freedom," says Carr, explaining what led her to a career in Irish dance.

"I traveled to Republic of ireland a lot when I was a child," says Carr who competed yearly for a decade in Irish dance effectually the country, Canada and Ireland. When she was 6 years sometime, she already had an idea of what she wanted to practise for the adjacent 27 years.

"Nosotros had Irish records in the house, and my [three] sisters did the Irish dancing with me," says Carr.

She forth with her three sisters spent most of their younger years in Ohio studying at Tim O'Hare Schoolhouse of Irish Dance.  During high school she ran a ballet company doing 2 annual productions. Simply by the time she finished high school she needed a break.

"I was sort of burned out from the pressure of competing and the force per unit area of having to maintain a very low body weight for ballet and I wanted to stop."

She quit dancing for a while to pursue an English major at Wesleyan University, in Connecticut, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa.  She took literature courses and audited a modern dance class during higher years, which put her back on track to dancing.

That's when she decided to accept a double major in dance and English at Wesleyan. With a grant during her senior year, she traveled to Ireland to do field research on the history of Irish dance.

"Past the fourth dimension I finished at Wesleyan, I decided that I wanted to movement to New York and pursue a career in mod trip the light fantastic."

Carr noted that this happened in 1996, when Riverdance, a musical about Celtic mythology and Irish history became internationally famous.

By that time, Carr felt happy she was able to back up herself by educational activity Irish gaelic trip the light fantastic and performing with her step dance partner Niall O'Leary. Irish dancing connects to something bigger than Riverdance and St. Patrick's Day, she says, equally an Irish American it means celebrating and embracing her heritage with pride.

"Irish gaelic trip the light fantastic toe resonates throughout the year and in many contexts, given its deep connection to traditional music, its ability to maintain cultural continuity over fourth dimension and distance, and its remarkable capacity to engage people," says Carr.

Thanks to Riverdance, Irish gaelic dance became popular, which brought her more than opportunities in a difficult career.

"I call up Riverdance happening at the same fourth dimension every bit Ireland'south economic boom in the whole sense of the Celtic tiger," Carr says, "became a great source of national pride."

Carr worked as assistant choreographer to Sean Curran for the Tony award winning Broadway musical James Joyce's The Expressionless and on numerous assignments on and off Broadway, throughout the Us. Amid the memorable moments of her career, she cites her show with O'Leary in Disney World and at Osaka Festival Hall in Nihon. She was as well featured recently in a BBC documentary where she performed with BANSHEE, an Irish gaelic Women's arts collective.

Merely Carr is not only focused on showing her work. She has been increasingly interested in passing her noesis to the next generations. Since she graduated from Wesleyan University, she became an educator who prides in teaching young children and adults on Irish gaelic dance history, step dance and ModERIN, a term she coined for mod Irish dance, which is a unique blend of traditional Irish pace and contemporary modern dance.

As a choreographer, she is particularly interested in Irish dance based on Irish gaelic traditional folk music. To her, it provides and then much structure such every bit the rhythms of the footwork.

In her classes, students larn traditional dancing besides equally modern where they motility arms and torso, which is non done in traditional Irish trip the light fantastic considering, co-ordinate to 1 of the legends, it was considered by the Catholic Church building "frivolous and provocative."

Carr is proud of her students and dancers' work. They, as well, experience rewarded.

"It'due south my passion, I guess what I always wanted to do," says Chris Armstrong, 20, Carr's student and dancer. "I am happy when I am dancing," he adds, while performing his movements' minutes earlier the St. Patrick's prove at the JFK Library.

Niall O'Leary, Darrah Carr (center) with her dancers (Photo: Margarita Persico)

Now dressed in a dark-green velvet short wearing apparel with her loose brunet shoulder length hair adorned with a jeweled barrette, Carr and her visitor are ready for the testify.

When they come up on to phase, the crowd cheers and they start dancing Traditional Reel, Jig, and Slip Jig.

Traditional Reel, she says, is a "virtuoso exposition of difficult shoe reel steps," like to tap dancing, to the tune of Celtic music while "Slip Jig is an unusual dance," Carr says, "Information technology is counted in 9/eight time.  And, only women and girls perform the Skid Jig."

At the backstage, Carr is more than focused than always, making sure the dancers follow the leads.

Carr's step dance partner Niall O'Leary dances and later plays the piano accordion and the spoons.

Niall O'Leary (Photograph: Margarita Persico)

At the finish, x children from the crowd join them on stage and dance following Carr's directions. They jump, spin and trip the light fantastic on phase while showing big smiles.

"Spring, knees, step, step, step," utters Carr; mimicking children keep their pace on stage.

(2008)

laportehouseenjut.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.margaritapersico.com/?p=1388

Share this post