Patricia Ryan

Patricia Ryan. Press Photo 1960 Michael Kinneen © Collins estate

Teacher, choreographer and artistic director of The National Ballet School and Company Dublin 1957-1964, Patricia Ryan directed and staged classical ballet repertoires, collaborating with international guest dancers, conductors and choreographers.

Working with music composed for original narratives and poetry by contemporary Irish literary figures Patricia choreographed productions that challenged Irish cultural and social histories. Russian ballet dancers performed in Dublin for the first time with her company in The Olympia Theatre Dublin in 1962, and working with the Arts Council, she negotiated membership in trade union ‘Irish Equity’ for dancers in Ireland.

“The work of the National Ballet School and Company was an important period of intense artistic interchange between dancers, musicians, artists and writers. This purple patch of artistic collaboration put an end to a relatively unproductive period of Irish ballet (1945-50) where developments in dance had shifted away slightly from ballet and towards the introduction of contemporary dance into Ireland through the work of Erina Brady (1891-1961), a disciple of Mary Wigman. The National Ballet Company was instrumental in initiating a renewed interest in the art form that had been absent since the waning of the Sara Payne Company and the Irish Ballet Club in the mid 1940’s.”

— Victoria O'Brien, A History of Irish Ballet from 1927 to 1963