The real academy

While music and dance educators in Dublin have been huffing and puffing over siting a new centre for the performing arts in Earlsfort Terrace, the University of Limerick has, relatively unnoticed, initiated three new postgraduate courses, adding to the six already available at the Irish World Music Centre (IWMC). The range of courses is diverse but they all reflect the concerns, both artistic and academic, of their initiator, Prof Micheal O Suilleabhain.

When it was set up in 1994, the IWMC housed research students working in the area of Irish traditional music. A five-year plan was initiated and led to the creation of what O Suilleabhain calls "an interactive suite of MA programmes". In choosing what courses to offer, he had to look at the resources at his disposal. "I knew that I couldn't get 20 staff members to teach in one particular area. But what if I chose interrelated areas that had connections and contexts in existing work? I could get just one staff member in one area but that staff member would actually be seeding prepared ground," he explains.

"The Irish Chamber Orchestra are based here so why not have an MA in Classical String Performance? Daghdha Dance Company are here so let's have an MA in Dance Performance. Glenstall Abbey is nearby and have a living liturgical context for chant so we could have an MA in Chant Performance. Then you might look around to see if there is an MA in Chant anywhere else and discover that what you are doing is unique and valuable. This is the case with all of our courses: although we are starting with a strong locus, we are also thinking globally, to the extent that there is no reason why any student from anywhere in the world shouldn't be here."

The offhand, almost flippant, manner in which he describes the birth of these courses shouldn't fool you into underestimating the amount of planning for each. In the Arts Council report Shall We Dance, writers Victoria Todd and Anna Leatherdale acclaimed the MA in Dance Performance while it was still in the planning stage.

In the midst of fairly bleak findings they wrote: "Clearly we cannot begin to comment on the standard of a course that is still being proposed. However, we were impressed by the serious consideration that the proposed programme was being given . . . If aspirations for this programme were to be realised it would have a significant impact on dance practice within Ireland."

The significance of establishing a dance performance course within an academic setting should not be underestimated. When Margaret D'Houbler established the first dance major at the University of Wisconsin in 1926, she had to wrestle it from the physical education department. Similarly the formation of Daghdha Dance Company in the University of Limerick took place within what was then Thomond College of Physical Education. But placing dance, or indeed chant or classical string performance, alongside hard-core academia is another matter.

When outlining what seems a well-rehearsed argument, O Suilleabhain refers to Howard Gardner, a widely espoused psychologist who articulated the notion of multiple intelligences in his book Frames of Mind. "We are moving into a century where universities who are at the cutting edge - and many of them aren't when it comes to performing arts - are really resonating to multiple intelligence theory. There are seven intelligences, so why should a university only deal with two of them: numeracy and language. If dance is one and if music is one, can you provide for them on their own terms? If you can't, then you are failing an intelligence, failing five-sevenths of the human brain."

This liberal thinking also permeates to the day-to-day running of the centre. O Suilleabhain is determined to break down the barriers between theory and practice, or what he calls "reflective practice and performing practice". Performance is valued as highly as academic work, and the staff appointments reflect this. The director of the MA in String Performance is Ferenc Szucs, former principal cellist with the BBC Philharmonic, with ex-director of Daghdha Dance Company Mary Nunan heading the MA in Dance Performance. Szucs was attracted to Limerick by the openness of the course and the high level of interactivity between students on different courses.

"This is very important because these are modern times, and musicians have to be more adaptable and fluent in many ways of working," he notes. "For example we have three violin players, including one Australian, who have chosen traditional fiddle as their elective in the last semester. Others have chosen less obvious options: one is doing an analysis of the bow arm with people from the Sports Department and another is developing a computer programme to aid practice with the Music Technology Department."

Catherine Foley, director of the MA in Ethnochoreology and a teacher on the traditional strand of the MA in Dance Performance, points out that the three students on the dance performance course have all elected to do ethnochoreology as an option and the ethnochoreology students have all opted for dance performance. She is clearly delighted by this: "The cross-over between the two courses has actually lifted and enhanced both. What we have is the two sides, the reflective practice and the performance practice, brought together in the one dancer."

With the different postgraduate programmes criss-crossing, there is a real sense of a "community of learning". The natural curiosity of the teachers encourages this cross-fertilisation, and frequently guest teachers give workshops or lecture demonstrations to the entire faculty, whether they are talking about music technology or step dancing. This reflects the desire to let the students "find their own voice", a phrase that reappeared as I talked to each course director.

FINDING your voice is not only for recent graduates but is also an option for more experienced practitioners who need to step back from the rat race of new productions, press reviews and Arts Council grants, and redefine their own artistic needs and goals. "There is a layer of people working who have a practical body of knowledge but haven't the opportunity to focus on their vision and artistic makeup," Mary Nunan points out. "I would love to help create an environment for research in practice. It's not about the product, but the time to research yourself as a performer, to try things out. Even in the very short time we have been here, the Irish World Music Centre has been identified as a place that artists can come and work."

So how does the IWMC's novel programme fit into the national picture, in particular the plans for the Irish Academy of the Performing Arts (interestingly referred to as the Dublin Academy of the Performing Arts in the Programme for Government). A response to the commissioned Renshaw Report is expected within the next few weeks, but a spokesman for the Department of Arts, Heritage, the Gaeltacht and the Islands said that it might not appear until after Christmas. This report has four terms of reference: the appropriate scope and content for the academy; the area of immediate and longer-term specialisation appropriate to the academy; the process to be adopted to achieve the preferred model; and the potential, if any, for the rationalisation of existing resources.

O Suilleabhain's view on the matter is unambiguous: "If the IAPA had never been promoted as an idea, then a national academy of the performing arts would have already have been happening here. But to be quite blunt about it, we didn't set out to create such a thing. And it's probably even more impressive that it has happened without us intending it. I'm not saying this to make myself look good, but it needs to be said.

"If the IAPA initiative doesn't happen, then it doesn't actually matter because - to be quite arrogant - it is already happening here. If it does go ahead, then I have every reason to believe and expect due recognition will be given to what is happening here. Remember, our work isn't in the minds of anyone; it is actually happening. It isn't a plan; it's a reality." This bullishness is indicative of the sure-footedness by which he has gone about the first five years at Limerick. Future plans seem limitless, and he is insistent that as long as innovative ideas keep coming, then the money and facilities will follow.