Cultural Tourism,Meitheal, and Representation of Heritage: Traditional Step Dancing and Siamsa Tíre, the National Folk Theatre of Ireland

Abstract

Cultural brokers at national and local levels, recognizing the lucrative potential of tourism, have learned to construct commoditized cultural packages for tourist consumption. In this paper I examine one such packaging phenomenon, and ask, “What is the effect of the commoditization of culture for purposes of tourism on local communities?” This paper investigates how a traditional step dance practice in North Kerry, Ireland, was contemporized and commoditized in the 1980s by Siamsa Tíre, the National Folk Theatre of Ireland, with a view to informing cultural understandings of Ireland and attracting tourists. Examining the impact of cultural tourism on the development of Siamsa Tíre, I argue that Siamsa Tíre's appropriation and re-presentation ofthe local Molyneaux traditional style of step dancing produced something new and gave the Molyneaux style a new lease on life at a time when this traditional dance practice and its associated rural contexts of performance were in decline.