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Halfway through Jean Butler\u2019s \u201cWhat We Hold,\u201d the audience is invited to sit at a long table surrounded by 50 chairs, as if at a wedding banquet. Instead of place settings, three dancers are before them. As the audience settles in, voices begin to float through the room, like snatches of lost conversations.<\/p>\n
\u201cDancing was the poor man\u2019s game, you know,\u201d says one recorded voice. Another: \u201cIt was like he was telling you a story with his feet.\u201d As the voices recall the past, the three dancers enact a kind of ritual. First, they stand casually. Then, with great precision, they slide a foot forward, pointing their toes. Their postures change \u2014 shoulders back, heads high, arms straight at their sides, hands in loose fists. A transformation happens: They are not just dancers but Irish dancers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the very first thing we learned as kids, that posture,\u201d Butler said after a rehearsal. It is something all Irish dancers hold in their bodies, like first position in ballet.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
For fans of Irish dance, Butler \u2014 one of the dancers on the table and the creator of the show, which is at the Irish Arts Center tomorrow through March 3<\/a> \u2014 represents the epitome of the genre. As a star of \u201cRiverdance,\u201d she delighted audiences with the clarity, delicacy and airiness of her dancing. And it is because of that show, which premiered in 1995 and continues to tour, that perceptions about Irish dancing changed; it became something it had never been seen as before: exciting, even sexy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Butler walked away from all that in the early 2000s and remade herself as a contemporary dancer and choreographer, working in an introspective, pared-down, almost minimalist mode<\/a>. Now, after years of investigating a different way of moving, she has returned to Irish dance with \u201cWhat We Hold,\u201d this time through a different, more inquiring lens.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s almost like every moment in the show represents something I\u2019ve experienced as a dancer,\u201d Butler said, \u201cand I hadn\u2019t even realized until I tried to articulate it.\u201d<\/p>\n