Moving silver screen tribute to Mallow’s ‘mother of Irish ballet’
THE woman widely credited with introducing ballet to Ireland from her home in Mallow will be the focus of a fascinating documentary set to be screened next month at Cork’s Triskel Christchurch Arts Centre.
Entitled ‘We Are Moving’ it depicts Joan Denise Moriarty as a visionary who overcame enormous odds by doggedly following her cherished dream of bringing ballet to communities across the length and breadth of the country.
Although little is known of Joan Denise Moriarty’s life prior to 1931, it is believed she was raised in Liverpool, moving with her family to their native Mallow in 1933.
What is known is that prior to this she was already an accomplished dancer and musician, winning the 1931 Irish Step Dancing Championship of England and was highly commended for solo war pipes at the 1932 GAA Tailteann Games in Dublin.
A year after moving to Ireland Moriarty set up her first school of dance in Mallow, establishing the Moriarty School of Dance in Cork City in 1940. Seven years later she established The Cork Ballet Company, which was in existence until 1993 and in 1959 founded the country’s first professional ballet company, Irish Theatre Ballet.
The company had a corps of 12 dancers who toured towns and villages across the country up until 1964 when it was disbanded due to lack of funding. In 1973 Moriarty founded her second professional company, The Irish Ballet Company (later renamed the Irish National Ballet), which toured the country with a core group of 16 dancers.
In 1979 the Arts Council purchased the Firkin Crane in Cork City as a permanent home for the Irish National Ballet. However, in 1989 the Arts Council withdrew funding to the Irish National Ballet, which was to close the following year.
In April 1992, three months after Joan Denise Moriarty died, the Firkin Crane was finally opened as the Cork Dance Centre with the final performance of the Cork Ballet Company taking place the following year, attended by President Robinson.
The Joan Denise Moriarty School of Dance still exists in a purpose built studio in Cork City.
Described as an “intimate portrait” of Cork’s famous dance mistress, ‘We Are Moving’ is directed by the award-winning Irish director Claire Dix and features contributions from Ruth Fleishman, Colum O’Clerigh and Michael Blair.
Dix said she had a long harboured desire to pay her own deeply personal tribute to the woman she described as “one of the most impactful figures in the history of Irish ballet.”
“Joan Denise Moriarty was a name that I was very familiar with as a ballet fan growing up in Cork, so it was surprising when I realised how few people had ever heard of her. Indeed, she had become little more than a footnote in the history of dance in Ireland,” she said.
“The more research I carried out, the more fascinated I became with the story of this woman and her life’s work. It was the sheer devotion she showed to her craft that inspired me to make the film.”
Dix was also taken by Moriarty’s eagerness to persevere in the face of intense criticism.
“She was laughed off the stage at one of her first performances in Cork, while her fledgling amateur ballet company was denounced from the pulpit. However, she persevered, establishing Ireland’s first professional ballet company and fostering generations of ballet lovers across the country,” she said.
“I consider Joan Denise Moriarty an artist in the truest sense of the word and find it poetic that she kept going to the bitter end, giving up everything to realise her dream and keep it alive. It is my hope that this film will in some way help to educate a new generation on Miss Moriarty’s strong legacy, and to revive the somewhat forgotten memory of her strong contribution to Irish culture and the arts.”
‘We Are Moving’ will screen nightly at the Triskel from May 7 – 10 with tickets available from the venue on 021 427 0022.