Chicago’s Trinity Irish Dance Kicks off 2022 Season, Ending with 8th Tour of Japan
Chelsea Hoy, 3rd from L, and other members of the Trinity Irish Dance Company visit Motomiya City in Fukushima Prefecture, where local residents have been forced out of their homes due to the 2011 disaster at the nearby Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. (All photos courtesy of Trinity Irish Dance Company)
Trinity Irish Dance Company (“TIDC”), Chicago’s “progressive” Irish dance troupe, is poised to kick off its 2022 multi-city tour with a one night-only stage performance at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago on Feb. 5.
After shows in New York, Philadelphia and other U.S. cities, the dynamic and powerful dance troupe will continue on to a three-week tour in Japan.
TIDC was founded in its present form in 1990 by young choreographer Mark Howard.
Under Howard’s leadership, it is now a leading American Irish dance troupe that continues evolving while maintaining its roots in traditional Irish dance. It’s known for a breadth of celebrated dancers who have won world championships in Irish dancing.
Since 2004, the Company has been touring Japan every other year, performing 10-12 shows across the country. The upcoming Japan tour this summer will be its eighth.
It has built a strong relationship with Japanese communities through performances, outreach programs, and visits for the people displaced by the 2011 Fukushima disaster and those affected by the Kumamoto earthquake in 2016.
“When we go there and share our art with Japanese people, we absorb quite a lot and we bring it back home,” Howard says.
The Chicago Shimpo interviewed Howard, an Emmy Award-winning choreographer, along with Chelsea Hoy, TIDC’s Associate Artistic Director and dancer, to ask about their experiences in Japan and prospects of the future of Irish dancing.
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Interview with Founder Mark Howard & Associate Artistic Director Chelsea Hoy
IMG, the world’s largest agency for performing artists, was TIDC’s agent. It had done a lot of work in Japan, and Toshitake Nakamura, a representative of a Japanese promotion agency, worked to bring TIDC to Japan through IMG. Howard said Nakamura “fell in love with Trinity,” while Trinity fell in love with Japan in turn. Nakamura, now runs his own agency, still takes care of TIDC’s tour in Japan.
In Japan, TIDC’s performances are usually preceded by a promotion tour, in which multiple media outlets collaborate. During one of such tours, the troupe performed for a Japanese princess and the Prime Minister.
“We are very lucky to be able to tour in Japan because Japanese audiences are very selective,” Howard said. “We are treated better in Japan than anywhere else in the world.”
Outreach to Local People after Natural Disasters
In the aftermath of the 2011 Great Earthquake and Tsunami that hit northeastern Japan, Nakamura invited TIDC to Motomiya in Fukushima Prefecture. The Company had a command performance in front of an audience of 1,500 - 2,000 people, including the mayors of Motomiya and the nearby city of Fukushima.
Mark Howard (L), Chelsea Hoy (R2) and the members of the Trinity Irish Dance Company are welcomed by the people of Motomiya City, Fukushima
Two years later, he and the troupe went back to Motomiya, taking some time off from their tour schedule, and were reunited with the residents there.
When a major earthquake hit the southern city of Kumamoto in 2016, TIDC’s scheduled performance in that city was canceled because the venue had been damaged.
Howard explained that Chelsea Hoy, then only 19, worked with a TIDC associate and launched a fundraising campaign to help rebuild the damaged theater.
A member of the Trinity Irish Dance talks with a fan after a command performance in Kumamoto City, Kumamoto
Eventually, they raised as much as $20,000. Their promotor Nakamura, along with his partner (a large candy maker in Japan) matched that amount.
With such help, the theater was rebuilt. It was where TIDC later had a command performance for the local audience. “It was a victorious, amazing night,” Howard said.
Japan’s Influences
Howard said that Japan has changed him and his company quite a bit. “Japan influences us more than we influence them. That’s what I’m trying to say,” he said.
For example, the taiko (Japanese drums) drummers of Kodo – a taiko drum ensemble based on the island of Sado, northwestern Japan – had a “big influence” on him when he was starting up TIDC.
When he saw them perform, Howard recalled, it allowed him to believe that Irish dancing could be a legitimate art form.
It was long before Irish commercial dancing of Riverdance and the likes became popular, and Irish dancing had not been viewed as good enough for stage performance.
“[Kodo drummers] gave me the idea to start my own ethnic dance company that would perform on a big stage,” he explained.
One of Howard’s works is a piece called Black Rose. The title is from a nickname for Ireland which was used during the times of Irish resistance against the British. People called Ireland a “poor little dark rose.”
In Howard’s dance of the same name, dancers use taiko drum sticks to create crisp tempo and sharp intervals in the quick movements.
A collaboration tour was planned for TIDC and Kodo some years ago, but it never materialized because of a recession in Japan at the time.
Toshitake Nakamura (L) promotes Trinity’s shows in Japan
Howard couldn’t accompany TIDC on its first and second tours in Japan.
When he went with the company on its third tour, he came to know why Trinity was so special to the Japanese audiences.
Japanese critics and presenters explained to him that the way TIDC dancers use a quiet pose between movements reminded them of similar movements in classical Japanese dances during noh and kabuki theater.
He was also told that people had great respect for Trinity because it has so many skilled dancers who had won world championships.
“Our dancers have been shaped by Japanese culture and the work we do has a lot of influences from it,” Chelsea Hoy added.
“We are interested in the Japanese/Japanese American communities here in Chicago, and we want them to get to know Trinity, because we have such special relationships in Japan,” she said. “We would like to build that relationship here at home as well.”
Flourishing Irish Dancing in Japan
Japan tours by Trinity have triggered interest in Irish dancing among the people of Japan. Since TIDC began touring Japan in 2004, the number of Irish dance schools in Japan has constantly increased.
During a Japan tour four years ago, a documentary filmmaker accompanied the troupe to interview its followers. Among them was an older Japanese woman.
She turned out to be the founder of the first Irish dance school in Japan. The filmmaker interviewed her and found out that she got interested in Irish dance when she saw a Trinity’s video.
One of her students, a woman named Tomoko, eventually went to Ireland to study Irish dancing and opened her own Irish dance school in Tokyo upon her return.
Mark Howard (C) with Tomoko (R) and her Irish dance students
According to Howard, Tomoko is now a very good friend of Trinity’s, and one of Tomoko’s students is coming to Chicago to attend a dance school. Howard hopes that she will be a member of Trinity next fall, as the first Japanese dancer in his Company.
Trinity’s Unique Way to Diversity
This year, TIDC welcomed an African-American dancer, the first in its 30-year history, as well as a dancer from Mexico.
Howard stressed that Trinity is unique because it embraces diversity and individuality, unlike other Irish dance companies that celebrate sameness.
“I always look for artists who appeal to an audience because of their gifts, not because of their body type or ethnicity,” he said.
Howard, who started dancing at the age of eight, has been aiming to create something new by changing the traditional Irish dancing styles while still celebrating the roots of tradition. His view of Irish dancing is something progressive – something that changes and evolves all the time.
“Mark is really the first person who let Irish dancing break out of the box,” Hoy explained. “We are trying to protect and celebrate the rich tradition of Irish culture, while also making it exciting to new audiences.”
“When someone comes to see us perform, they can see art form in it,” Howard added. “We don’t do anything just for spectacle; all of it is about honoring an art form and celebrating our traditions.”
Upcoming Show in Chicago
Trinity’s Feb. 5 program will feature its “greatest hits” repertoire, which celebrates ITDC’s entire history of evolution.
It will include Howard’s own classics such as Soles, a tribal and timeless rhythmic study; Push, an “explosion of virtuosic footwork”; and Johnny, the early work that “altered the Irish dance landscape”.
Also among the program are some of the more recent works, including An Sorcas (The Circus), one of the Japanese audience’s favorites, and American Traffic, a hybrid of Irish step and American tap “that plays at the intersection of rhythmic sensibilities and rebellious histories.”
Sparks is a world premiere of Howard’s creation, where All-Ireland fiddle champion Jake James and America’s 2014 world solo Irish dance champion Ali Doughty come together for a rarely-seen combination of unique gifts. It pays tribute to Jackson Sparks, the eight-year-old boy who was killed in the recent Waukesha Parade tragedy.
The closing pieces will include classic TIDC works including Black Rose, A New Dawn and Communion.
Members of the Trinity Irish Dance Company with TV Tokyo crew in Chicago
Following the Chicago performance, the Company will continue on to a U.S. tour, stopping in Philadelphia, New York, Milwaukee, Madison, WI and other cities. Its Japan tour will run from June 30 to July 18 and is scheduled to stop at such cities as Hakodate, Tokyo, Yokohama, Sendai, Aomori, Nagoya, Fukuoka, Kumamoto, Mie, and Osaka.
In addition to Japan, TIDC has toured Australia, Germany, France, and Taiwan.
Howard and Hoy always look forward to touring Japan, in part due to their appreciation of Japanese food.
“Sandwiches from a convenience store tasted great,” Howard recalled. “And food at an Italian restaurant tasted better than the food I had at a restaurant in Italy.”
Hoy remembered how she enjoyed a bowl of chocolate ramen, a novelty food over there.