About the Company
The Solas An Lae Dance Company was established in 2005 by Deirdre Lowry (Artistic Director) and Patrick Brown (artist, musician) as a performance extension of Lowry’s School of Irish Dance. which she had founded in upstate New York at the age 17 in 1998.
The name she choose was fitting, for Solas an Lae translated from Gaelic means,”light of day.”
From the beginning, Solas An Lae’s mission was to bring into the light works that expressed a greater freedom of movement and rhythmic pattern inside and outside of the technical structure of Irish Dance. Critical praise for this approached followed, “..they will change the way we think of Irish Dance” wrote the Irish Echo.
Yet change will always remain at swords point with tradition. The company, composed of dancers that have trained with Lowry from the school’s inception, is young but their experience, training and devotion to the Solas An Lae style and technical structure is evident.
Deirdre has stated “There is a strong need today to create new horizons and introduce challenging new ideas for this beautiful and powerful art form in performance and education. otherwise in time it will loose its vitality.”
Regarding SAL’s stylistic and technical approach, Patrick adds,
“ The vocabulary and step work is traditional by nature, yet the movement of the work is dictated by the music. The tap sequences are all embellishments of traditional reel/jig steps, the departure is found in a freer upper body, which is a well documented aspect of traditional Irish dance, but seldom utilized. The soft shoe work has been created to allow even greater freedom of movement due to the time signatures and melodic structure of the music. Here again you will find many traditional steps and upper body positioning. yet the movement has been specifically designed to be expressive, utilizing movement that appears stylistically closer to a ballet and contemporary dance form.”
