The Dancing Body: Dancing at Lughnasa

Abstract

Of the plays considered here, Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel is the most widely recognised and produced. Accordingly, much research and criticism on Dancing at Lughnasa has already been written, from dedicated works on Friel such as The Art of Brian Friel by Elmer Andrews (1995) to collections of interviews and articles such as About Friel by Tony Coult (2003). I am not seeking to replicate these works but to add to the discourse with specific reference to the performance of the dancing body in the play. I consider this work in the context of Performing the Body in Irish Theatre to question Friel’s use of the body as an expression of authenticity, and the relationship between the image of the dance and its description or containment within the language of the text. This chapter explores the staging of the authentic, nostalgic, ‘native’ dance, and how all of these combined to form an attractive theatrical product, which sold widely on the international market.

Dancing as if language had surrendered to movement — as if this ritual, this wordless ceremony, was now the way to speak, to whisper private and sacred things, to be in touch with some otherness.

(Friel 1990: 71)