Two new publications dedicated to dance in Ireland are a welcome addition to a neglected area, writes Christine Madden

This year's Dublin Fringe Festival featured more dance than ever before; even the Dublin Theatre Festival presented two superb dance productions, with both responding to escalating audience interest in dance in Ireland.

To watch and tend that growing public must be gratifying to the many practitioners in the dance sector who have struggled for years for recognition, funding and a slice of the stage on which to demonstrate their art. Now, dance is now finding its place in the spotlight.

To help secure the rightful respect and arena for dance, however, it needs a conversational forum, a place where discussion, criticism and ideas can be exchanged.

Publications such as Irish theatre magazine, Circa, and a fistful of literary magazines exist for other arts, but publications for dance in Ireland, few and far between, have never managed to capitalise on the initial toehold they got on the market.

As part of their innovative agenda, however, the Institute for Choreography and Dance (icd) in Cork has nurtured several programmes to promote dance in Ireland, and one innovative idea has produced impressive fruit - two new volumes that open the podium to dance practitioners.

Earlier this year, the icd published Choreographic Encounters, a collection of essays by dancers, choreographers and critics, followed by Dancing on the Edge of Europe: Irish Choreographers in Conversation.

These attractive publications indicate the ground-breaking work done by Diana Theodores. Once writer of a weekly dance column in the Sunday Tribune from 1984 to 1992, and now a reader in theatre as well as co-ordinator of a new BA honours degree programme in choreography at Dartington College of Arts, Theodores has long been in contact with Mary Brady, director of the icd, as to how to develop dance in Ireland.

In an inspired act, Brady created a new position, dance writer-in-residence, and set the able Theodores to the task. "Through dialogues, it was about opening up a space for writing about dance," explains Theodores.

"It was an experimental commission, to form projects for giving a language to dance." In her role, Theodores carried out a series of interviews with choreographers, talkshops and workshops for dance writing. From those involved, she commissioned work for inclusion in the publications. The results proved rich and varied.

As a juxtaposition of "writings, drawing and a photo essay", as Brady describes it in her foreword, Choreographic Encounters appeals on several levels. This attractive presentation offers a variety of writing on dance, from musings on the choreographic process to historical/critical assessments of the sector.

The contributors include dancers, choreographers and critics from Ireland and thoughout the world, such as Deborah Hay, Loretta Yurick and Robert Connor, Fearghus Ó Conchúir, Liz and Jenny Roche, Lily Kiara and Michael Seaver, as well as Theodores. Through them, you get a colourful patchwork of the dance practice. Expressive black and white photographs by Derek Speirs of everyday Ireland give both a classy accent and an atmosphere of visual appreciation to the book.

This line goes further with Dancing on the Edge of Europe, which presents Theodores's conversations and interviews with choreographers - both individually, and as a group - throughout her residency. Those represented include David Bolger, Finola Cronin, Marguerite Donlon, Cathy O'Kennedy and John Scott, as well as several contributors to Choreographic Encounters. It gave them not only an opportunity to present their experience and views on the craft of dancemaking, but also a chance to get together and work communally in what can be a very lonely and insular process.

"It's all about thinking outside the box," Theodores says. "We're all collaborators and conspirators in creating and finding meaning in art. This project also created opportunities for choreographers to meet and talk shop, cross the field and not just work in isolation on the next show," says Theodorou. "Anything and everything to foster opportunities for collaboration is good."

She has seen great change in the Irish dance scene over the years of her involvement. "Dance in Ireland is a very profound part of my life. I feel a great passion and enthusiasm about it, having watched all these choreographers age and grow - as artists, dance-makers and thinkers."

Her next project is a retrospective of her interest in the Irish dance world, the entire collection of her newspaper columns, to be published by the new dance publishing company Kinetic Reflex, headed by dance critic Michael Seaver.

The collaborative effort and, hopefully, publications will continue. In her foreword to Choreographic Encounters, Brady hints at more, describing this as the "inaugural issue".

She and Theodores are discussing the next step for the dance writer-in-residence programme, because, as Theodores states, particularly in a literary culture such as Ireland, you need to attract and build an audience through the written word.

"I'd like to make a formal plea to editors of all papers and magazines to make more room for serious critical work on dance," she says.

"The public will only ever embrace dance as an art to be valued if it is written about well. If you read really good writing, you're persuaded. We need good writing to bring dance more into the public imagination and consciousness." And, with these two volumes, she has issued starter's orders.