When the dancer, choreographer and teacher Joan Denise Moriarty died in January 1992, she left her entire archive spanning the years 1940 – 1991 (approximately) to her close friends, the Fleischmann Family. The family donated the entire archive to Cork City Libraries in 2005.

The collection contains costumes, programmes, scripts, scores, photographs, personal correspondence, prizes, gifts, 3D objects and general ephemera. She also maintained scrapbooks which included newspaper and magazine reviews, correspondence, programmes and photographs pertaining to performances of her ballet companies including the Cork Ballet Company, the Irish Theatre Ballet, the National Irish Ballet and the Folk Dance Group of the Cork Ballet Company.  The collection forms an integral part of the Cork Music Archive.

Maintaining a record of her professional life like this echoes the maintenance by her friend and colleague Aloys Fleischmann of scrapbooks throughout his long and successful career. These scrapbooks have already been digitised as ‘The Fleischmann Chronicles’. Taken together these scrapbooks preserve an important record, not only of music and dance in Ireland but also a social history of the period covered.

The digitisation of these scrapbooks will make the material held by Cork City Libraries widely available not only to those who are interested in ballet and dance but also to social historians internationally.

Please note that the details of events listed above are provided by the relevant Local Authorities.