Irish Dancing: The Festival Story

by Angeline King

The festival tradition of Irish dancing has played a significant part in Ulster's culture over the past century. This historical account takes the reader on a journey from courtly ballrooms and cottage firesides across a landscape of barn dances, harvest homes, fancy dance classes, feiseanna and festivals, narrating how Catholic and Protestant children held hands in town halls, parochial halls and Protestant halls even when bombs splintered communities and deepened mistrust. Highlighting the various provincial towns that nurtured and helped grow the festival movement throughout the 20th century, Angeline's work explores significant figures in the development of both 'feis' and ‘festival’, the champion dancers, influential teachers and unsung community ‘heroes’ who kept this cross-community activity alive. Containing source and archive material drawn from newspaper reports dating back to the 1700s, Ordnance surveys, diaries, journals and interviews with more than 80 of the 20th century's festival dance teachers and pupils, this work will fill a significant gap in Irish dancing publications and appeal to the tens of thousands of current and former festival Irish dancers and Irish dancing enthusiasts in Northern Ireland and further afield.

350 pages, Hardcover

Published October 11, 2018