He says it all started with Saturday Night Fever. Paul Johnson was 16 when he became, em, the John Travolta of Raheny. Yes, disco reigned supreme for one year until the road forked and he moved on to discover many other types of dancing. He's been choreographer in residence at the Project Arts Centre for the past two to three years.
Looking over at his parents, Frank and Chrissie Johnson, he says that yes, as ballroom dancers "they'd be able to do a turn". But, sadly, no-one does a turn at the launch of Johnson's book, fine lines on shifting ground, which is "a reflection, through words and images" on his work at the Project from April 1998 to this week's premiere of Without Hope or Fear, which has its last performance tonight at 8 p.m. The only bit of dancing we see at the launch comes from Mary Nunan, course director at the University of Limerick of the MA in dance performance, who raises her leg effortlessly above her head. How high can she kick her leg? "I don't measure the height any more," she says. "I measure it in depth." Mmmm, dancers are lithe and limber and there's no mistake.
She and Paul first danced together in 1986. Tonight at the Project Arts Centre, Nunan congratulates Johnson on his book which gives us "the distillation of (his) experience". The publication, which includes hand-written notes, drawings and sketches, is on sale for £8, Kathy McArdle, artistic director of the Project, reminds us. Other dancers who fail to dip or glide across the floor are Catherine Nunes and Triona Ni Dhuibhir. Marcella Reardon, formerly a dancer from Cork and now an artist, presents Johnson with a bunch of peach roses and a kiss on the cheek. As for Joseph Long, chairman of the Project Arts Centre, well, he's about to dash up to Whelan's on Wexford Street for the opening of a show called Kurt Weill Kabaret. "It's a mixture of song and theatre and it's very lively," he says of the show of which he is the director. Does he perform himself? "I only do so at board meetings," he quips with a wicked glint in his eye.