Order and Disorder: Celebrations of Music, Dance, Passion, Paganism and War

Abstract: The essay proposes to analyze Brian Friel’s work, Dancing at Lughnasa, in a peculiar perspective – that of dance, language and music forms, in which the ‘warrioresses’ Mundy are involved. Exploring these forms intrinsically attached to public and private lives which are issues to that society, we will try to go beyond the text and understand what Friel intended to say to the Irish society. Beyond the language movement and its contrasts, we will analyze in what performance can, at certain point, mystify life. We will be (re) organizing the rituals and myths absorbed in the Mundy family and Irish society in order to contextualize them in present Ireland and world. Equally important, relate the motifs in Ballybeg inside-out world (the carnivalization invoked in Friel’s work). Finally, the essay tangles the different efforts of Brian Friel’s in Dancing at Lughnasa when using representative forms of speech (music, dance, silence) and what considers being a more viable and broader definition of Ireland itself.

Key Words: Dance, Music, Friel’s play - Dancing at Lughnasa, and Family.