Olivier Award-winning actor Fiona Shaw will serve as artist-in-residence during IRELAND 100, the Kennedy Center’s celebration of Irish culture.

Every spring, the Kennedy Center stages a festival that highlights a certain country, region, or cultural touchstone. Past events have traced the Silk Road, from China to India to Arabia. Audiences have had the opportunity to explore the Nordic countries and Mexico without leaving the city. Memorably, the Kennedy Center became one of the country’s first major arts institutions to devote weeks of programming to celebrating hip-hop culture.

Beginning tomorrow and through June 5, the Kennedy Center will shine a light on the Emerald Isle’s culture and its relationship to America with IRELAND 100: Celebrating a Century of Irish Arts & Culture. The event commemorates the 100th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising, which led to Ireland’s independence, and also celebrates John F. Kennedy, the venue’s namesake and the most well-known Irish American President.

Dancer Colin Dunne is one among the nearly 500 artists who will perform during IRELAND 100‘s 50-plus events. He rose to prominence through Riverdance, the hit show that helped fuel an intense cultural interest in all things Irish during the 1990s.

“For years, you used to have to explain to people what Irish dance was,” Dunne recently said to DCist. “Now people call you a Riverdance-er, which is equally frustrating because it’s a show, not a form. You don’t call a ballet dancer a Swan Lake-er.”

In some ways, that period of attention paralleled Ireland’s own ascension on the global stage, as many looked at the country as a model for economic growth. Ireland was hard-hit during the 2008 financial collapse, and similarly, the popularity of Irish culture in the decades prior caused artists to scrutinize what it meant to be an artist from Ireland.

“There was a debate among practitioners,” Dunne said. “Many practitioners of contemporary dance or contemporary theater started to make work in counterpoint to Riverdance, looking at ways of expressing Irish identity and issues that Irish people wanted to address.”

Dunne will be featured in tomorrow’s opening performance with the National Symphony Orchestra. Olivier Award-winning actress Fiona Shaw directed and will host the show, while also serving as the festival’s artist-in-residence. Soprano Tara Erraught, tenor Anthony Kearns, fiddler Liz Knowles, actor Louis Lovett, and a trio of uilleann pipers from Na Píobairí Uilleann will also share the stage.

In addition to directing the festival opener, Shaw will appear in Blowing the Heart Open, a piece based on the texts of W.B. Yeats and Emily Dickinson. In Imagining a Future — Shakespeare: A Conversation with Fiona Shaw, she will lead a discussion on the Bard’s works and legacy.

IRELAND 100 will also launch the Kennedy Center’s year-long celebration of JFK’s centennial. The program includes performances of selected plays from a nationwide playwright challenge on his legacy, documentary screenings of his visit to Ireland, and a multidisciplinary and inter-generational program, Celebrating the Past to Awaken the Future.

As with all of the Kennedy Center’s major festivals, this is a cross-cutting event that covers music, theater, literature, as well as the visual and culinary arts. Installations will adorn the Center’s grand spaces and free evening performances will take place on the Millennium Stage. Throughout the festival, the center’s North Plaza will be transformed into an outdoor green space for picnicking, performances, food, drinks, and workshops.

For Dunne, the opening night will serve as the prelude to his final presentation of Out of Time, taking place on Friday and Saturday. The 65-minute, solo dance is the result of Dunne’s internal tug-of-war when he struggled with walking away from, and then returning to, traditional Irish dance forms.

“They’re gonna see a solo dancer negotiate this form through movement, sound, video, and speaking,” Dunne said of the audience experience with Out of Time. “People expect to be wowed by virtuosity, but this is going to be more experiential and will be one man’s soulful journey through the form of Irish dance.”

IRELAND 100: Celebrating a Century of Irish Arts & Culture runs from May 17 to June 5, 2016. Visit the festival web site for full schedule and ticket information.