Park City audiences will learn a bit about Irish culture when Celtic Angels Ireland lands March 2-5 at the Egyptian Theatre.
Louise Barry, director, writer and choreographer, looks forward to sharing her home country’s music, dance and tales with Park City, especially this close to St. Patrick’s day.
“Everybody likes to be a little Irish at this time of year, and that’s completely fine with me,” said Barry, who hails from Dublin, and has been with Celtic Angels since 2021. “My approach to these performances is how I could make all of the amazingness of Ireland come through with some little twists that I have been fortunate to experience as a child. I wanted to find a way to make what people perceive as Ireland a little bit cooler.”
For starters, Barry looked back on her experiences growing up in the performing arts in Ireland.
“My mom is a dancer and my dad is a rock singer, and my grandad was the percussionist for the Royal Philharmonic in London, so I grew up on the sides of stages in venues and arenas,” she said. “It was so cool, and it’s very infectious when you’re around that. So I want everybody to see how cool it can be, while keeping true to the traditions as best I can.”
Secondly, Barry wants to showcase a brief history of what is known locally as Éire.
“We have a piece of jewelry at home that has 12 symbols that emulate Irish culture and what it is to be Irish, so we base each scene from the show around those symbols,” she said.
The performance includes the Trinity Band Ensemble of Dublin, five female singers including Barry, Victoria Sexton, Searlait Ni Caiside, Olivia Bradley and Michaela Groth, and five male Irish dancers, known as the Celtic Knights, whose dances are choreographed by Dan Drew.
“The dancing itself is so percussive,” Barry said. “It’s so powerful and dynamic that you do physically feel it in your chest when you watch the show.”
The music itself goes back to a song called “A Deer’s Cry,” written by St. Patrick in the 5th Century, and traditionally sung by a church choir, according to Barry.
“We start with that and move through the times while blending in some American songs with the Irish music,” she said. “There are some songs that people may not be expecting to hear that are very American.”
The inclusion of these American songs results from Ireland’s history that reaches back 10,000 years, Barry said.
“A lot of circumstances throughout those centuries saw nearly half of Ireland’s population disappear to other countries,” she said. “Because of this incredible diaspora, we have this amazing melding of the world’s cultures.”
The songs selected for the performances also tell the tales and legends of Ireland, Barry said.
“When we’re doing this show, there will be moments of pure joy and gut-wrenching heartbreak, because that is part of the fabric of being Irish,” she said with a laugh. “The thing about Irish people is we do love a good story. We do talk a lot, and if you ever read the lyrics of an Irish song, you will see an awful lot of them have a good 17 verses.”
Some of the show’s insights were inspired by Barry’s own experiences as an Irish immigrant living in New York City.
“I base a lot of this homage to immigration on personal aspects of being in New York and hearing how cultures have collided,” she said.
Performing the Celtic Angels show each night keeps Barry connected to her home in the Land of Saints and Scholars, she said.
“In reality, I’m physically home three or four times a year, but when I’m here in the States, I lament not being home,” she said. “So doing this it feels like I’m bringing people into my own personal experience and into my house.”
The popularity of “Riverdance,” the 1995 revue that introduced Irish step-dancing to the world, is why Celtic Angels Ireland exists, Barry said.
“Not only were they dancing and making the dancing look cool, they made a fusion,” she said. “They had a flamenco dancer and an American tap dancer, and showed how percussive dance could come from any tribe, any part of the world, and how it could be fused together and work. And that opened the door for us.”
Barry looks forward to Celtic Angels Ireland’s four-night residency at the Egyptian Theatre.
“The vast majority of us have never been to Park City, but I also want to make sure the audiences know that I’m a very bossy person,” she said with another laugh. “I will be expecting audience participation — clapping, singing and dancing.”