Abstract This paper centres on the performing body as an interpretative tool, utilising traditional dance
and music performance to explore the intricate symbiosis between embodiment and
musicality. Responding to Downey’s theorisation of listening as a whole-body act, in which
movement is considered a crucial element of hearing music (2002: 498-499), and drawing on
a range of interdisciplinary works across Artistic Research, Oral Theory, Ethnochoreology,
and Choreomusicology, this performance-based theorisation will problematise the perceived
dichotomy between music and dance, purposefully blurring conceptual boundaries between
the two, and allowing instead a renewed engagement in the multifaceted meanings inherent in
the Irish-language concept of 'ceol' for Gaeltacht communities of practice. In combining
ethnographic and Artistic Research methods, this reflective performance will combine
theoretical analysis with a focus on performance practices and socio-cultural discourse
(through the medium of Irish) that surround traditional sean-nós dance in the Connemara
Gaeltacht region. Sean-nós dance practice is further conceptualised as 'composition in
performance' (Lord 1960) that draws on embodied formulaic structures in response to live
music performance, and which recombine and regenerate to create a distinctive sense of style,
either individual or regional, or a blend of both. Through a combination of theory and
practice, this paper will therefore provide an insight into the dancer’s embodied
understanding of music and composition, from within the aesthetic conceptual world of
Connemara sean-nós dance.