Trinity Irish Dance Company

Against the backdrop of an overly commercialized Irish dance industry, Founding Artistic Director and Choreographer Mark Howard’s Trinity Irish Dance Company is leading and increasingly winning the battle between substance and spectacle. His internationally-renowned, Chicago-based non-profit company is in the middle of its 35th Anniversary Season, which kicked off at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art before its historic week-long run at the world’s most prestigious dance festival, Jacob’s Pillow. Howard’s work was presented as the first full program of Irish dance in the festival’s storied 93-year history. They will continue to their 5th engagement at New York City’s number one venue for dance, The Joyce Theater, this coming February and onto their 10th tour of Japan.

One of a kind in his genre, Howard’s work maintains integrity while simultaneously going beyond the framework of ethnicity to carve new traditions. As the father of progressive Irish dance – a unique movement genre which “ushered in a new era for Irish step dance” (Chicago Tribune), his most recent work ‘The Sash’ shattered all notions of how far his unprecedented movement vocabulary can take the form bringing to life Northern Irish composer Kevin Sharkey’s dream inspired by his childhood during the “Northern Ireland Troubles” and reminding audiences that unity is stronger than conflict.

Mark’s father, Mike Howard, was from Port Laois, and his mother, Agnes, was born in Yorkshire of Irish parents from Clonmel.  Mark was born in Yorkshire but came to the United States on the Queen Mary at the age of one.