Contemporary dance in Ireland is slowly gaining recognition, with a Choreographer-in-Residence (Paul Johnson) at Project @ the Mint, and now a Dance-Artist-in-Residence (Finola Cronin) at UCD. This week Irish Modern Dance Theatre received a Jerome Foundation Commissioning Initiative award for its production of Sean Curran's That Place Those People, which premiered at last November's Belfast Festival. The award goes towards assisting a New York- based choreographer to create a work for performance by the company in New York. In April, That Place, as well as John Scott's Intimate Gold, will tour to New York's Danspace at St Mark's Church - hallowed ground for dancers. "It's where Meredith Monk and Baryshnikov perform, and where, in the 1920s and 1930s, Martha Graham, Isadora Duncan and Ruth St Denis danced," says IMDT's artistic director, John Scott. "We feel honoured."

Next month a programme of short works by Rui Horta, the innovative Munich-based, Portuguese choreographer, will be performed by Dance Theatre Of Ireland, from February 20th. Made To Measure is set to music by Mozart (The Magic Flute and Requiem) and performed by the French percussion troupe, Les Tambours Des Bronx, and it will tour to Galway, Waterford, Kilkenny and Dublin.