{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.0393574297188755, 'fraction_numerical': 0.01325301204819277, 'mean_word_length': 5.370843989769821, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Making 1916: material and visual culture of the Easter Rising

dance became a more integral part of American public culture in contrast to Britain where it was more hidden within exclusively Irish communities” (119). Finally, O’Connor investigates the globalising potential of Riverdance. Comprising “textual analysis” (125) alongside oral testimony, O’Connor explains the diverse attitudes of critics regarding Riverdance’s success: it is not only a “master signifier” (123) for global Ireland in 1990s Europe, but is connatural with the Celtic Tiger (127) and “repackage[s]” (129) tradition and folk dance for sale back to its initial producers. Riverdance brooks the global with the local, for both positive and negative ends. Throughout, O’Connor draws particular attention to women. From comparative outsiders to the commonest partakers, women have benefited from dance’s growing popularity. However, with greater visibility in the public sphere come negative and positive stereotypes: the angel versus whore narrative (e.g. 47), countered by women’s greater agency (e.g. 88). On the balance of O’Connor’s arguments, dance is a liberating force for women, if tempered by social problems that attend advanced and globalising economies. Certain problems do emerge in O’Connor’s narrative. Though her oral testimonies are helpful, they are sparse and unrepresentative (as the author attests, 135). When O’Connor uses them as complement to documentary analysis, the argument often seems cut short and missing her own critical opinion. Similarly, when O’Connor offers “textual analysis”, the result occasionally becomes a collation of others’ research without any serious exploration, as in the opening of the Riverdance chapter. The later chapters suffer most from this methodological buffet. This somewhat undermines the expertise of the opening chapters, where substantial claims are made about the ambivalence of dance to women’s agency and to social forces that would otherwise stymy the onset of modernity. Ultimately, however, we must judge O’Connor on her own terms. She hopes that “this volume will help to bring what was a relatively ‘unmarked’ aspect of popular culture into the foreground and stimulate further reflection” (154). I too hope that dance scholars, critical theorists and sociologists pick up The Irish Dancing to inform and constitute their own research; for, as O’Connor writes, when bodies dance, they carry on accruing and producing meaning, pleasure and power.