Between 1980 and 1950, Muckross House Folk Museum commissioned collectors to go out into County Kerry to collect the music, song, and dance of South Kerry.[1] Concerned that the music and songs of the older generation was passing away, they sought to preserve it. The oral and aural tradition of transmission was lost through the modernisation of Irish culture. In 1983, the project expanded under the direction of Edmond Myers to collect the step dances of North Kerry. It is the archival material collected by Catherine E. Foley from 1983 to 1985 that is the subject of this post. With an experiential and academic background in music, and a completed TCRG (Teagascóir Choimisiúin le Rincí Gaelacha, which translates to “Commission Irish Dance Teacher) from CLRG (An Coimisiún Le Rincí Gaelacha, The Irish Dancing Commission), Foley was uniquely qualified for this project which defined her academic career.
Through this work, Foley began to address one of the main problems with academic research into Irish dance in the early 1980s, that is, a lack of published resources, none of which investigated solo step dancing as the focus had previously been on the collection and assessment of céilí or figure dancing. She went on to publish numerous articles on the subject and two monographs: Irish Traditional Step Dancing in North Kerry: A Contextual and Structural Analysis[2] and Step Dancing in Ireland: Culture and History.[3] Both of these books derive from her field work from 1983 to1985, with supplemental interviews conducted in the intervening years. Foley researched under the aegis of ethnochoreology, that is the anthropology of dance and she undertook to learn dances and steps from the North Kerry Dancers. The dancers in question had learned their dancing from Jeremiah Molyneaux (1883-23 February 1965), the last of the travelling dance masters in North Kerry. Molyneaux taught actively from circa 1903 to 1953. Foley’s interviews with the dancers shed light onto the experience of dancing in the community. Some of the dancers only learned a single step from Molyneaux, others were tutored by him at length and themselves went on to teach dancing. Because of their participation in the research and collection process, these dancers have become famous in the North Kerry circles. Many of them were regular people who simply enjoyed dancing, for nothing more than connecting with community through music and movement.
Housed in the research library, collected from 1980 to 1900, are over 400 tapes of music song and dance. Transcribed, this accounts for roughly 3000 items. The original collection was done on reel-to-reel tapes, which were later transferred to VHS cassettes, and later digitised. Should you be curious, some of the dancing videos are available on the Muckross House website.[4] Sitting in front of the hearth at Teach Siamsa Finuge, the dancers dance on the flagstone floor, which has since been covered with a sprung floor. Under the sounds of the dancers’ feet, you can hear them or Foley lilting a tune. Some of the dancers were recorded sitting in a chair as they no longer had the stability to dance standing up. It was common for the dance masters to us a súgán chair to support themselves while dancing in their old age,[5] so it was that the Molyneaux dancers would follow suit. Stylistically, the dancers are upright with their arms held loosely by their sides. Dancers typically stay in this centred position while they dance, though there are occasions for small movements forward, backward, or laterally. The North Kerry style almost never travels in a circle, though a dancer may choose to do so, adding their own flair to the style.[6] In the bars leading up to their steps, dancers will smile at the audience but as soon as the dancing begins, their faces become serious. The energy required to concentrate on the steps does not leave space for smiling.[7] The performers keep their steps close to the floor, marking the rhythm of the music with their feet. It’s unclear from the videos whether this is true, but it did happen at times that a dancer might improvise their steps, though this is attributed more to the men. This improvisation, however was not random, but rather a building up of the step, extending a motif or a musical expression as a demonstration of virtuosity and technical ability.[8]
Salient to Foley’s research was her embodied practice, wherein through aural and visual transmission, she would learn steps from the Molyneaux dancers. Her body became a methodological tool by which she was able to “embody, sense, and store their dance knowledge.”[9] Noteworthy of the style is a sense of performing for oneself, rather than for the audience. There are embodied differences that also feel strange for a dancer trained in the style favoured by CLRG. The North Kerry style is softer and looser. Feet are kept close to the floor and the feet become part of the music. It is a contrast to the rigid, elevated style Foley had trained in. Foley describes the sensation that each of these steps “kept me, or brought me back in a fraction of a second, to the ground… I was feeling and sensing these rhythmic movement patterns in order to understand how these movements fit the music, and also how they fit my body.”[10] The sensations she describes provide an anchor point for those of us who must access this knowledge through the archive.
On 14 June 2025, Muckross House celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of its opening to the public. This event culminated with a celebration of the fortieth anniversary of the conclusion of Foley’s work on behalf of the Trustees of Muckross House. The celebration included dancing from Foley, Jimmy Hickey, Jonathan Kelliher, and the last remaining Molyneaux dancer, Mossie Walsh. Foley’s legacy inspires me to go into the archives, to draw out more of the stories and steps from Molyneaux dancers.