Jessica Bonenfant made the transition from New York city to rural Co Cork just under a decade ago. The story of how that came to be begins in an Irish bar – in France.
Keen to make friends during a month-long excursion to Montpellier, and lacking much French, the Italian-American choreographer went to the nearest Irish pub. Getting more than she bargained for, Bonenfant was introduced to her future husband, Hughie, on his last night working there.
Now the couple live in a derelict Georgian house turned arts residency, Greywood Arts, in the east Cork village of Killeagh at the foot of Glenbower Wood, where they have welcomed more than 100 artists through the doors since its opening in 2017. Their home is now a hub of activity, hosting year-round workshops and cultural events as well as offering studio space and accommodation for visiting creatives.
Having first visited Ireland to meet Hughie’s family in Wicklow three months before they married there, Bonenfant recalls the first cultural differences she noticed in the lead-up to the big day. (Well, days – as the pair tied the knot first at a ceremony in Connecticut, where she grew up.) She recalls asking the venue owner, “What time do we have to be done?”
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“When you rent a wedding venue in the States, you’ve rented it for four hours or five hours or whatever that is. And if you stay later, they start to charge you by the hour. Like, a really high fee. And so the woman just didn’t understand my question.”
In a “sort of cultural faux pas”, Bonenfant says she made the grave error of thinking there would be “no need for dessert if we have cake”, much to the dismay of her in-laws, who in typical Irish fashion were “afraid people are going to think we’re mean”. And so dessert was put back on.
She is now well-settled into life in Ireland and says that although the people here have been “really friendly and warm” towards her, Bonenfant sometimes finds “it’s hard to get into a deeper friendship”.
“You get lots of acquaintances, and people are generally really willing to help you with whatever it is you need or you’re looking for, but to get behind to a deeper level – past the sort of superficial – I found challenging.”
She recalls the kindness shown by people in the local community when Storm Babet hit last year, causing their building to flood mere months after renovations had been completed on the grounds’ coach house.
“We ended up with 65 people here to help on the Saturday after we had put out the big clean-up day and it had a huge turnout for that, which was amazing.
“That was really energetically a big knock in terms of, you know, working so hard to get a space open and six months later being underwater. We had a full house of artists at the time.”
Impressed by the financial support she has been able to avail of to get Greywood off the ground, Bonenfant says: “I just don’t think I could have done anything to the scale of what we’re doing if I stayed in Connecticut or New York.”
Having an MFA in choreography from University of Michigan and a BA in dance from Marymount Manhattan College, she founded her own New York-based dance and theatre company where she spent over 10 years presenting work for stage and screen. Now, she channels her creative energy into Cork’s arts scene, serving on the planning committee of the Midleton Arts Festival and volunteering with First Cut! Youth Film Festival alongside running the arts residency.
The funding opportunities afforded by Creative Ireland, the Arts Council and Cork County Council have been encouraging for Bonenfant, who says that while “you’re still always working on a tight budget and it’s not easy”, prospects are greater here “compared to New York, where any funding is so competitive that you often don’t even put yourself forward because you feel the chances are so slim”.
“You really are developing relationships with your funders in a way that I didn’t in the US,” she adds.
Embracing Celtic traditions has formed a large part of her work in Greywood, where she has reinstated the long-standing May Sunday Festival, which she says ran from the early 1800s “all the way to the year 2000″.
“When the woods were a private estate in, like, the 1830s, the landlord had done improvements. He’d built bridges and improved the estate. And the story is that he opened the gates and invited the villagers up for music and dancing on the first Sunday in May.”
Bonenfant would happily retire in Ireland, not envisioning a move back to US in her future.
“Politics don’t help. It has become really divisive. I definitely prefer the quality of life here. I like the people. I like the possibilities ... It’s just I think it’s easier to be working in the arts here.
“Being so close to other parts of Europe where you know in the US, if you get on a plane for two or three hours, you’re still in the States. Here you can see somewhere that is still western European, but feels like somewhere totally different too. So I feel like there’s so much to explore.”
On domestic politics, she finds local councillors to be easily accessible. “I think we’ve developed relationships with local councillors and that’s something I never really did in the US ... It was hard for me to get my head around the ranking system when you’re voting because it’s really different.
“I voted in the local elections for the first time this year. I’m still not a citizen, but it’s something I’d like to do.”
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We would like to hear from people who have moved to Ireland in the past 10 years. To get involved, email newtotheparish@irishtimes.com or tweet @newtotheparish
