This was an exceptionally active year, with over 40 professional dance events taking place in Ireland. These included a record number of visits from overseas companies.

Thanks to Sean Doran and the Belfast Festival at Queens, we saw the splendid Royal Ballet with Manon and Enigma Variations, as well as top contemporary dance companies Trisha Brown and DV8 from the US and UK respectively. Even outside the festival, however, Belfast had Northern Ballet in April with the late - for sadly he died in October - Christopher Gable's remarkable reworking of Swan Lake at the Waterfront (which also hosted the Mexican Los Lupenos Dancers and the Adonais Ballet Company with Orpheus and Bach with Bite). Moreover, the Grand Opera House presented an excellent Sleeping Princess by the National Ballet of Latvia in June.

Outside the festival, Dublin had highly creditable, if somewhat cramped, performances in the National Concert Hall in May of Swan Lake and a much-truncated Don Quixote by the St Petersburg Ballet Theatre, while the Perm State Ballet of Russia gave a concert programme as well as La Sylphide, followed by Act Three of Swan Lake in the Olympia in October.

Limerick's Belltable presented the versatile Swiss Tanz Ensemble in February, while in Cork the enterprising Mary Brady brought to the Firkin Crane Wayne McGregor's Random Dance Company in May and the Leat Dror Nir Ben Gal Company from Israel earlier this month. Better still, she commissioned work from Irish choreographers as well as presenting many Irish companies.

These included Irish Modern Dance Theatre's Real Pearls (seen in Dublin at Project @ the Mint in February) and That Place, Those People, choreographed by the exciting Irish/American dancer Sean Curran (SFX, November); Daghdha Dance Company in Chimera (Project @ the Mint, October); Dance Theatre of Ireland with Tombs (Tivoli, March) in collaboration with Blok and Steel from Amsterdam and CoisCeim with Seasons (Project @ the Mint, December) and an only partiallysuccessful collaboration between artistic director David Bolger and Gina Moxley in Toupees and Snare Drums (Peacock, September).

In June, Lord of the Dance proved unsuitable for staging in the RDS showjumping arena, though it was able to reach a much wider (and highly appreciative) audience there; in August the Shawbrook Showcase at the Backstage Theatre Longford continued to give unique opportunities to young Irish dancers, but failed to provide them with challenging choreography; the Project made history by being the first Irish theatre to appoint a choreographer-in-residence in the person of Paul Johnson, while the welcome foundation of Ballet Ireland was somewhat tempered by its poor handling of the talented young Irish dancers it collected for its Ballet Extravaganza (Gaiety, October).

Highlight: Fabulous Beast Dance Company's double bill of Sunday Lunch and The Good People by Irish choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan, which packed the Samuel Beckett Theatre during the Dublin Fringe Festival and kept the audience laughing, even leaving the theatre.

Lowlight: Couleurs de Femmes (Project @ the Mint, October) which had repetitive choreography based on animal movement by Compagnie Yun Chane from Reunion Island, which only the eponymous dancer was capable of performing, leaving her two co-performers looking embarrassingly awkward throughout.