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Virtuosity: Dance, Entrepreneurialism, and Nostalgia in Stage Irish Performance

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Performance, Feminism and Affect in Neoliberal Times

Part of the book series: Contemporary Performance InterActions ((CPI))

Abstract

Aoife Monks considers how virtuosic Irish performers became vehicles for the particularly intense production of nostalgia during Ireland’s ‘Celtic Tiger’ period in the 1990s, through the global circulation of such Irish dance shows as Riverdance (1994). These shows monetized a global nostalgia for an ‘Ireland’ that was imagined to exist outside of, or beyond, neoliberal modernity. Monks argues that, on the one hand, the solo virtuosity of Michael Flatley offered a heroic form of masculinity linked to his entrepreneurialism and business acumen and to the aspirational qualities of his diasporic identity. On the other hand, the chorus line of dancers, feminized in their collectivity and apparent docility, offered a form of virtuosic uniformity that mapped onto the service economies emerging in Ireland.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Queen Mary, University of London, London, UK

    Aoife Monks

Authors
  1. Aoife Monks
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of English, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA

    Elin Diamond

  2. School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Denise Varney

  3. Department of English, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA

    Candice Amich

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Monks, A. (2017). Virtuosity: Dance, Entrepreneurialism, and Nostalgia in Stage Irish Performance. In: Diamond, E., Varney, D., Amich, C. (eds) Performance, Feminism and Affect in Neoliberal Times. Contemporary Performance InterActions. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59810-3_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59810-3_12

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-59809-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-59810-3

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

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