Joan Denise Moriarty
|
Joan Denise Moriarty LLD |
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| Died | 24 January 1992 Dublin, Ireland |
| Nationality | Irish |
| Occupation | ballet teacher, ballet company director |
| Years active | 1933–1992 |
| Notable work |
The Playboy of the Western World live music by The Chieftains |
| Style | classical ballet, traditional Irish dance |
Joan Denise Moriarty (died 24 January 1992) was an Irish ballet dancer, choreographer, teacher of ballet and traditional Irish dancer and musician. She was the founder of professional ballet in Ireland.
Little is known of Moriarty's early life. Her year of birth is estimated between 1910 and 1913 but no documentation has been found. The place of birth is also unknown. She was the daughter of Marion (née McCarthy), wife of Michael Augustus Moriarty, and was brought up in England, possibly Liverpool, and studied ballet until her early teens with Dame Marie Rambert. How long she was enrolled in the Rambert School is not known, as there are no records of students, but only of performers. She was an accomplished Irish step-dancer and traditional musician; she lived in Liverpool with her mother from at least 1931 to 1933 and was a member of the Liverpool branch of the Gaelic League. Her early dance and music awards include:
In the autumn of 1933 she returned with her family to their native Mallow in County Cork. In 1934 she set up her first school of dance there. From 1938 she also gave weekly classes in Cork in the Gregg Hall and Windsor School. During the 1930s she took part in the Cork Feis, annual arts competitions with a focus on traditional dance and music, competing in Irish step-dancing, war pipes and operatic solo singing. She performed on the war pipes in various public concerts and gave at least two broadcasts. In 1938 she was invited by Seán Neeson, lecturer in Irish music at University College Cork, to perform at a summer school which the Music Department organised for primary school teachers.
Moriarty's mother died in February 1940; the following November she moved to Cork where she set up the Moriarty School of Dancing. The early years during the war were very difficult financially. In the early 1940s she performed with her dancers in musicals and variety shows at the Cork Opera House. In 1945 the composer Aloys Fleischmann invited her to perform in his Clare's Dragoons for baritone, war pipes, choir and orchestra, which had been commissioned by the national broadcasting company, Radio Éireann, for the Thomas Davis centenary. Moriarty agreed, on condition that his Cork Symphony Orchestra would play for her Ballet Company's annual performances. This was the beginning of a lifelong collaboration.
...
Wikipedia