HELEN BRENNAN 

Helen Brennan is an author, educator, and scholar. Through her work, she has become one of the preeminent voices in Irish traditional dance. Her seminal work “The Story of Irish Dance” is now in its 4th edition. Since its publication, this book has become an important source in Irish dance curriculums for scholars and dancers alike. Helen holds an M.A. in Ethnomusicology from Queen’s University, Belfast where her research focused on the sean-nós dancing of Connemara. 

Her accolades also include many public appearances championing the value and importance of Irish traditional dance through lectures and appearances on radio, television, and film in Ireland and abroad. A few of these public appearances include lectures delivered at the Barbican Centre in London, the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, at NYU with Mick Moloney, at Queen’s University, Belfast, and the University of Limerick. Helen also organised and presented at several festivals including Féile Rince Traidisiúnta, the first ever festival focusing on Irish traditional dance. She also appeared in the film “Steps of Freedom”, a documentary directed by Ruan Magan. 

Helen was born in Dublin and raised in Athenry, Co. Galway where she grew up surrounded by traditional singing and dance. Her interest in dance began at an early age when she attended Irish dancing classes given by Annie May Fahy, sister of the fiddle player Paddy Fahy, who was a founding member of the Aughrim Slopes Ceili Band. 

However, it was not until she moved to Spanish Point in County Clare in 1970 to work as a primary school teacher that her focus on research about Irish traditional dance bloomed. Encouraged by a request from leading collector Breandán Breathnach, she began to document the traditional dance of Clare. This field research coincided with and informed Breathnach’s major work, “The Folk Music and Dances of Ireland.” This led her to the door of Willie Clancy, who is primarily known as a piper, but also learned dancing as a young man from Thady Casey, a legendary local dancing master. 

Helen’s first ethnographic field trip to document traditional dance in 1976 led her to meet many local dancers including Jimmo Sexton and John Joe Moroney. With the assistance of photographer Roy Esmonde, she organised her first recording session aimed at documenting traditional dance. This was the first of many trips Helen made to conduct ethnographic research on traditional dance across Ireland. 

After moving to Drogheda and marrying notable collector Sean Corcoran in 1971, her field recording trips continued. From the 1970s to the late 1990s Helen made more than 10 trips in search of dance. During several of these trips, she took advantage of new portable video technology to record interviews and dance steps with dancers all over Ireland.  

Helen Brennan’s collection represents an early example of collecting traditional dance on video in Ireland, much of which was recorded before the set-dancing revival in the 1980s. The collection consists of 16 VHS tapes and three 8mm films. These materials document some of Helen’s field trips ranging from the late 1970s to the late 1990s. These recordings include interviews with dancers as well as dance performances and demonstrations in locations across Ireland from Miltown Malbay to Drogheda and many places in between. Notable performers include Willie Keane, Ollie Conway, Jimmo Sexton, Brendan Bonar, Mike Dwyer, and others. 

For the first time the ITMA has digitised this collection along with a new interview with Helen Brennan and made them available for dancers and researchers to reference and enjoy.