Joan Denise Moriarty (died 24 January 1992) was an Irish ballet dancer, choreographer, teacher of ballet and traditional Irish dancer and musician. She was the founder of professional ballet in Ireland.
Early life Little is known of Moriarty's early life. Her year of birth is estimated between 1908 and 1916 but no documentation has been found. She grew up as the daughter of Michael Augustus Moriarty (an alumnus of Stonyhurst College and contemporary of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) and his wife, Marion (née McCarthy); John Francis Moriarty, Lord Justice of the Court of Appeal in Ireland, was her uncle. The Moriartys were originally from Mallow, County Cork, where her grandfather John Moriarty was a successful solicitor.
Moriarty was brought up in England, possibly in Leeds, or Liverpool, where she was living in the 1930s. She studied ballet until her early teens with Dame Marie Rambert. How long she was enrolled in the Rambert School is not known, as there are no records of students, but only of performers,Aideen Rynne: "Joan Moriarty's Early Years", in: Ruth Fleischmann (Ed.): Joan Denise Moriarty: Founder of Irish National Ballet, Mercier Press, Cork 1998, pp. 117–21. but her training there was referenced by Dame Ninette de Valois.
She was an accomplished Irish step-dancer and traditional musician, and became the champion Irish step-dancer of Britain on 24 April 1931. She also won a swimming championship. She was a member of the Liverpool branch of the Gaelic League. Her early dance and music awards include: 1931 London: Champion Irish Step-dancer of England at the London Irish Step Dance Championship. Gold Medal 1932 Dublin: Awarded a special silver medal for solo war pipes at the Tailteann Games 1933 Killarney: Winner of the Munster Open Championship in solo war pipes 1933: Participated in the solo war pipes competition at the Scots Gathering and Highland Games at Morecambe and Heysham in LancashireRuth Fleischmann (ed.): Joan Denise Moriarty, Ireland's First Lady of Dance, Cork, 2012, p. 75. Certificates, medals, and newspaper cuttings in her personal scrapbook are among the Moriarty Collection, Cork City Central Library, Grand Parade, Cork.
Return to Ireland In the autumn of 1933, she returned with her family to their native Mallow in County Cork. In 1934, she set up her first school of dance there. From 1938 she also gave weekly classes in Cork in the Gregg Hall and Windsor School. During the 1930s she took part in the Cork Feis, an annual festival with a focus on traditional dance and music, competing in Irish step-dancing, war pipes and operatic solo singing. She performed on the war pipes in various public concerts and gave at least two broadcasts. In 1938 she was invited by Seán Neeson, lecturer in Irish music at University College Cork, to perform at a summer school which the Music Department organised for primary school teachers.
Moriarty's mother died in February 1940; the following November she moved to Cork where she set up the Moriarty School of Dancing. The early years during the war were very difficult financially. In the early 1940s, she performed with her dancers in musicals and variety shows at the Cork Opera House.
In 1945 the composer Aloys Fleischmann invited her to perform in his Clare's Dragoons for baritone, war pipes, choir and orchestra, which had been commissioned by the national broadcasting company, Radio Éireann, for the Thomas Davis centenary. Moriarty agreed, on condition that his Cork Symphony Orchestra would play for the performing ballet group she was planning to found. This marked the beginning of a lifelong collaboration.Aloys Fleischmann: "The Ballet in Cork", in: Ruth Fleischmann (Ed.): Joan Denise Moriarty, Founder of Irish National Ballet, Cork 1998 p. 15.
The Schools of Dance Branches of the Moriarty School of Dance were established in Bandon, Clonmel, Fermoy, Killarney, Mallow, Tralee, Waterford, Youghal. Moriarty bequeathed her Cork school to Breda Quinn, a long-standing member of the Cork Ballet Company, who ran it with another Moriarty student, Sinéad Murphy, who created a new dance school (Cork School of Dance) after Breda's death in 2009.Breda Quinn: "The Schools of Ballet", in: Ruth Fleischmann (ed.): Joan Denise Moriarty, pp. 87–88.
The Ballet Companies The Cork Ballet Company (1947–1993) Moriarty founded the Cork Ballet Group in 1947, the members recruited from her school. The Cork Ballet Group was now the only performing ballet group in the country, the five Dublin performing groups by then all having ceased to operate.Patricia O'Brien, A History of Irish Ballet from 1927 to 1963, Bern, 2011, and Ruth Fleischmann, Joan Denise Moriarty, Pioneer of Ballet in Ireland, Boydell Press, 2026, Chapter 3. It gave its first performance on 1 June of that year in the Cork Opera House, accompanied by the Cork Symphony Orchestra under its conductor Aloys Fleischmann. Stage scenery was designed by Marshall Hutson, Frank Sanquest and later by Patrick Murray; costume designs were provided by Clare Hutson, Maeve Coakley, Rachel Russell, who also made many of the costumes. Alec Day and Leslie Horne took charge of the lighting. From 1948 the group gave an annual week of ballet, also bringing its show to towns in Munster. In 1951 part of the classical ballet Coppélia was performed (the complete work in 1955), Giselle, for first time by an Irish ballet company, in 1957.Patricia O'Brien erroneously states in her History of Irish Ballet, p. 148, that Patricia Ryan's Dublin company gave the first Irish performance of the ballet. See the Cork Ballet Company's Tostal Corcaí programme for 12-18 May 1957, Moriarty Digital Archive, Cork City Libraries, Cork Past and Present.
In the autumn of 1953 the group was renamed "Cork Ballet Company". Its patrons were Dame Marie Rambert, Dame Alicia Markova and later Dame Ninette de Valois. For the first ten years, Moriarty danced in many of the ballets, her final performances were as Myrtha in Giselle in 1957. From 1956 the Company performed with international guest artists – among them Peter Darrell, Marina Svetlova and, at a special ballet recital of 1965, Sir Anton Dolin.Ruth Fleischmann: "Cork Ballet Company", in: Harry White, Barra Boydell (eds.): The Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland, Dublin 2013 p. 248.
From 1970 to 1973 the company had very successful appearances in Dublin, in 1971–74 performing with the Cork Symphony Orchestra for a week at the Gaiety Theatre to packed houses. In 1992 the Ballet Week was given in tribute to its founder, who had died in January of that year; the President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, attended the opening. The following year saw the last of the company's 46 seasons.See Monica Gavin, "The Cork Ballet Company: A Brief History", in: Ruth Fleischmann (ed.): Joan Denise Moriarty: Ireland's First Lady of Dance, Cork 2012, p. 25.
The Folk Dance Group of the Cork Ballet Company Moriarty founded this group in 1957. It participated in the Cork An Tóstal Festival for many years, travelled in 1958 to the Youth Festival of Wewelsburg (near Paderborn, Germany) and in 1961 to the Dijon International Folk Dance Festival in France. As a prize-winner, it was invited back to Dijon in 1965. In 1966 the group travelled to Berlin and participated successfully in the Deidesheim and Dillenburg Folk Dance Festivals. In 1966 and 1967 the group, together with the Cork Ballet Company, was commissioned by RTÉ, the state broadcasting service, to give 13 television programmes of Irish dance called "An Damhsa" (the dance), choreographed by Moriarty, costumes by Clare Hutson.Monica Gavin: "The Folk Dance Group", in: Ruth Fleischmann (ed.): Joan Denise Moriarty, Founder of Irish National Ballet, Cork 1998, pp. 82–84.
Irish Theatre Ballet (1959–64) Irish Theatre Ballet was the first professional ballet company of Ireland, and the first touring ballet company, founded by Moriarty in the summer of 1959 for the purpose of bringing ballet to the four provinces of the country, which it did for four years despite inadequate funding. It gave its first performance in December 1959 in the presence of its patron, Marie Rambert. It was a small company of 10 to 12 dancers, which travelled all over Ireland, north and south, going to some 70 venues annually with extracts from classical ballets, contemporary works and folk ballets.Ruth Fleischmann: "Joan Denise Moriarty, The Making of a National Figure in Irish Ballet" in: Mallow Field Club Journal, No. 31, Mallow 2013, pp. 83-4.
Its first ballet master was Stanley Judson of the Anna Pavlova Company; then came Yannis Metsis of Ballet Rambert, then Denis Carey of Guatemalan State Ballet and finally Geoffrey Davidson of Festival Ballet. Charles Lynch was the company's pianist. Marshall Hutson and his wife, Clare, produced stage designs and costumes for many of the shows. 25 new ballets were created for the company; new music was commissioned for five of these, among them two folk ballets for which Seán Ó Riada provided scenarios and music, the latter performed by his Ceoltóirí Chualann.Ibid.
Irish Theatre Ballet received a small grant from the Arts Council of Ireland, and aid from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, but depended mainly on funding from business and private patrons. In an attempt to resolve the constant financial difficulties, the Arts Council in 1963 insisted on a merger with Patricia Ryan's Dublin National Ballet. But the amalgamation did not bring a solution to the financial problems besetting both companies, and after one joint season in Dublin in the late autumn of 1963 and in Cork the following January, the amalgamated company, Irish National Ballet, had to be disbanded in March 1964.Geoffrey Davidson: "Irish Theatre Ballet", in: Ruth Fleischmann (ed.): Joan Denise Moriarty, Founder of Irish National Ballet, Cork 1998, pp. 157–58; see also there accounts by dancers Julia Cotter, Pat Dillon, Joahne O'Hara, Domy Reiter-Soffer, and Maureen Weldon, pp. 158–75.
Irish Ballet Company/Irish National Ballet (1973–1989) In 1973, given the successes of Moriarty's amateur Cork Ballet Company in Cork and Dublin, her plan to form a professional ballet company was accepted by the government. The Irish Ballet Company received a government grant at first and was subsequently financed by the Arts Council. Ninette de Valois was patron. She attended the first Dublin performance unannounced and donated half the Dutch Erasmus Prize, which she had just received, so that Moriarty could bring in distinguished teachers to give master classes.
Like Irish Theatre Ballet, Moriarty's first professional company, it was a touring company, which travelled all over Ireland in two annual seasons, including Northern Ireland, despite the Troubles. David Gordon of the Royal Ballet was the ballet master, Muriel Large was the administrator. Conditions were difficult for the dancers: salaries were small, as was the grant with which the company had to make do; the buildings that had to be used for training and rehearsal were far from ideal; performance facilities in the provincial centres were often dire. On the other hand, the dancers performed in a greater variety of roles than they would have done in a bigger company; they worked closely with many international choreographers and were encouraged to choreograph themselves.Kathleen Smith-Epstein in: Ruth Fleischmann (ed.), Joan Denise Moriarty, Founder of Irish National Ballet, (Cork 1998), p. 193.
In 1975, for instance, Sir Anton Dolin, Toni Beck and John Gilpin came to Cork to produce some of their works with the company. The Israeli choreographer, Domy Reiter-Soffer, who had been a member of Irish Theatre Ballet, became the company's artistic advisor and created many new works of great range in theme and type.Kathleen Smith-Epstein in: Ruth Fleischmann (ed.) Joan Denise Moriarty, Founder of Irish National Ballet (Cork 1998), p. 194.