Gaeltacht Epistemologies: Exploring the Knowing of Dance at the Intersection of Embodiment and Endangered Language Practice

This paper centres on the performing body as an interpretative tool, utilising traditional dance and music performance to explore the intricate symbiosis between embodiment and musicality. Responding to Downey’s theorisation of listening as a whole-body act, in which movement is considered a crucial element of hearing music (2002: 498-499), and drawing on a range of interdisciplinary works across Artistic Research, Oral Theory, Ethnochoreology, and Choreomusicology, this performance-based theorisation will problematise the perceived dichotomy between music and dance, purposefully blurring conceptual boundaries between the two, and allowing instead a renewed engagement in the multifaceted meanings inherent in the Irish-language concept of 'ceol' for Gaeltacht communities of practice. In combining ethnographic and Artistic Research methods, this reflective performance will combine theoretical analysis with a focus on performance practices and socio-cultural discourse (through the medium of Irish) that surround traditional sean-nós dance in the Connemara Gaeltacht region. Sean-nós dance practice is further conceptualised as 'composition in performance' (Lord 1960) that draws on embodied formulaic structures in response to live music performance, and which recombine and regenerate to create a distinctive sense of style, either individual or regional, or a blend of both. Through a combination of theory and practice, this paper will therefore provide an insight into the dancer’s embodied understanding of music and composition, from within the aesthetic conceptual world of Connemara sean-nós dance.