I’m looking forward to shooting an arrow of futurity about Lucia Joyce’s Modern Dance career at Dance Research Forum Ireland’s “UpRising” Conference at New York University (Tisch School of the Arts), next Friday, June 24th, at 2.30pm.  The title, “Arrows of Futurity: Ireland’s Lost Modern Dancers” is inspired by the speech that President Michael D Higgins gave on International Women’s Day, when, speaking about reclaiming the women of 1916, he quoted philosopher Paul Ricoeur:

The past is not only what is bygone – that which has taken place and can no longer be changed – it also lives in the memory thanks to arrows of futurity which have not been fired or whose trajectory has been interrupted.  The unfulfilled future of the past forms perhaps the riches part of a tradition.

I’ll be thinking aloud on a few ideas that have occurred to me on Lucia Joyce since I started my current (BAI-funded) radio documentary project “Georgie’s Vision”, on the extraordinary George (Mrs. WB), Yeats.  Lightbulb moments! So far I have been immersed in copious reading around George, A Vision, and have had the pleasure of kicking off the documentary recordings with an interview with Professor Margaret Mills Harper, of University of Limerick.  Later this month I’ll be following that up with a long distance interview with Ann Saddlemyer, George Yeats’s biographer.  So it’s all systems go to be ready for the RTE Lyric FM broadcast in Autumn.George+Yeats%2C+by+Edmund+Dulac

George Yeats Reading Pile

I also enjoyed reviewing Dublin Dance Festival in two installments last month for RTE Arena.  It was a wonderful, eclectic, festival curated by new festival director Benjamin Perchet – a breath of fresh air in the Dublin Dance scene.  If I do this right, you’ll be able to listen back to my chats with the great Sean Rocks here:

http://www.rte.ie/radio1/arena/programmes/2016/0518/789348-arena-wednesday-18-may-2016/?clipid=2183043#2183043

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http://www.rte.ie/radio1/arena/programmes/2016/0524/790709-arena-tuesday-24-may-2016/?clipid=2188452#2188452