The Monthly talks to DU Dance’s Artistic Director, Mags Byrne – Part 1 – A connection with physicality

What are your earliest memories of being attracted to the arts generally or dance specifically?

My first experience of dance was dancing socially, I learned to dance on the feet of my dad. We waltzed around the kitchen and I absolutely loved it.

I can remember being at primary school, and a Theatre Company came to our school and while I can’t remember much about the specifics of the performance, I was about 9 or 10 years old, I do remember being very excited about the performance.

What about support at home?

I didn’t come from an arts background, or an arts family. My family had no experience of the arts and dance performance wasn’t thought of as a particularly proper type of activity.

Several years after I had been working professionally as a dancer, my mum came to see some of my work. She was unsure how to describe what she’d seen, but did say to me that she’d enjoyed it.

Did you get support at school?

I was a very physical kid, I did a lot of athletics as a teenager, so I came at things from that angle. At school I had an option to do Dance and Drama as a GCSE subject. That seemed like a win-win situation for me, dance was physical and the arts and drama allowed me to express myself.

And how did that work out?

I was lucky to have a very passionate teacher, and so I felt I did get a little bit of support at school, There were only 5 of us in the Dance and Drama class, and we were the only ones allowed in to the drama area during break time, so there was a little status in being part of the group.

What happens after school?

I wanted to go to drama school but my grandmother was against me doing that. She was very much, “you have to get an education!” Education was everything to her. She was from a working class background and so she understood that the only way out of that was to do a degree. So I went to the University of Wales and did a Humanities degree. And Theatre was a component part of that degree. Again I did that predominantly because it allowed me to be physical and to express myself. As I moved through the degree I specialised more and more in dance. In the end, I majored in dance and minored in Documentary Form.