The Times We Lived In: The grand dame of the Firkin Crane

H ands up who thought shoe-gazing was an indie rock thing, to do with bands who play guitar very, very loudly while never removing their eyes from their boots? Well, not always. This week’s image features shoe-gazing of a much older vintage. Roll over My Bloody Valentine: this lady was shoe-gazing before you guys were playing air-guitar in your cots.

A legendary figure on the Cork arts scene, Joan Denise Moriarty founded the Cork Ballet Company and was instrumental in the setting up of the Firkin Crane Dance Centre.

"Miss Moriarty", as she was usually known, was ahead of her time in all sorts of ways. Nearly two decades before Riverdance, she used the music of The Chieftains to fuse Irish folk-dance with classical ballet in her choreography for The Playboy of the Western World.

Long before there was such a thing as a free online calorie counter, she was running keep-fit classes for women – and not only that, but encouraging the participants to think of themselves as dance ninjas by donning black polo-neck tops, tights and soft ballet shoes.

Here she is studying just such a shoe with the sort of reverence more usually associated with the Holy Grail or the Ark of the Covenant. Indeed, there’s something a bit Indiana Jones about Miss Moriarty’s ramrod-straight posture, sharply tailored skirt and dreamy expression.

It’s as if she has been beamed in from a totally different movie to the one which was scheduled to take place on that touchingly shabby pouffe, with the stained mirror in the background and the untidy pile of shoes on the floor.

As a woman on a mission to bring glitz, glamour and the rigours of professional dance to Ireland in the 1950s, Moriarty must have been as much a daydreamer as a grande dame – and our picture manages to show both sides of her at once.

Arminta Wallace