How do you get involved in dance?
I started out in Irish dancing as a child, around 5 or 6 years old. Well, I do have a very vague memory of going to a Ballet class before that, but toddler me wasn’t very impressed with running around on tip-toes waving ribbons or a star. With hindsight, it may have been useful to stick at it seeing as how life turned out but I like to tell myself that taking a slightly different path into working as a dancer has had its values!
I will be forever grateful for my years in Irish dancing. There was a rhythm and a structure, there was live music at events, my teachers were brilliant, and all of that drew me in as a young child.
Weekly classes with the McCullough-Curran School were in community centres on Ormeau Road (Belfast) and féises (competitions) were dotted around the country every month. I laugh when I think that maybe my parents got me involved in Irish dancing to have a couple of hours per week without my incessant chitter-chatter about the house (I was very talkative and curious as a child) but they definitely suffered many a sore head after hours in a féis at weekends listening to the incessant trebling of hard shoe dances and accordion music.
Would it be reasonable to say that Irish dancing has a high level of discipline attached to it, an expectation that the standards students should reach are quite high?
In Irish dancing, for me, it was always about the rhythm so I guess that structure could be likened to an idea of discipline. Discipline in the sense of form and understanding of the music in the sound and in the body as opposed to a strict or regimented class atmosphere. My teachers kept us in line for sure, but always with a smile. In the classes, as kids, you were shown the steps and you just copied them in action and in sound. That is the way we were taught. There was a sense of, you see it and then you did it. Don’t complicate the process if you don’t need to. Thinking about it now, that actually helped me a lot during the Covid-19 pandemic when teaching and attending dance classes online (the styles would have been contemporary, ballet, Argentine tango and folklore). With no physical presence, you had to be extra clear with instructions and encourage people to trust that what they were doing was right. And trust that what you were doing was right both as a facilitator and as an attendee. It was actually very helpful in building confidence from all sides. To go back to your question, I think the discipline and structure from those early years came through in encouraging self accountability and trust!
Another element to the Irish dancing training was that you learned to transfer all movements to both sides of your body, the right and the left. I think that has helped much later on when working in other dance forms, especially Contemporary dance.
So, yes, there was a sense of discipline. My teachers were very good at transferring those skills. I think it is also worth saying that when you are a young child, you are not thinking so much about the technique of how you are doing something – that comes later. You really just do things automatically and, in a way, I suppose that starts to build your own standards.
Clearly there was some support at home but what about school?
There was a lot of support at home – and there continues to be. My parents and brother deserve medals. I should say that I was never pushed into anything – no ‘Dance Moms’ traits! – rather I was given countless lifts to classes, support at performances, encouragement to do whatever my best was just for me rather than in comparison to others. In school, no, it was was never really dance orientated, it was not a feature of the school curriculum, and that was no different whether it was Primary School or Secondary School.
I went to St Bernard’s Primary and Aquinas Grammar later on, and apart from the odd jig in a St.Patrick’s Day event, or maybe dancing in the background of school plays, my dancing self never really transferred inside the school walls. It was certainly never ever mentioned as something you could consider as a career.
All that being said, I must thank my wonderful Spanish teacher (Séana Maguire) for opening up the world of that language to me as it has played a huge role in my life in Argentine tango and folklore.
You kept going to Irish dancing outside of school?
I did keep going with the Irish dancing lessons right up until I was 13 and I really loved it, but I was sick for quite a while in my early teens and I had to stop.
When I got moving again, ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ was in its prime on TV and my cousin suggested going to a Latin class in Clarke’s Dance Studio (Belfast). That was just for fun, an hour on a Friday night when we chatted, giggled, and occasionally managed a few steps in time! I was around 15 then and it was brilliant to dance again.
I found that I really, really liked dancing with someone. Try as I might, I couldn’t find a male partner to dance with. Male dance partners were just in very short supply and, naïve as I was, I thought that a dance couple in the Latin & Ballroom world had to be male:female so probably narrowed my window of possibilities without realising. Thankfully, in many genres of partner dance now, the issue of gender roles within the dance couple is more open. Yes, there is still a way to go but at least it’s starting to change.
Anyway, I was always quite taken with the idea of Ballroom dancing because I thought it was dreamy, romantic, and elegant. On the Friday nights in Clarke’s, my heart lit up on any occasion we got to do some Waltz to Nat King Cole, for example. It was a group of ‘energetic’ 15-16 year olds so these occasions were very seldom! I really loved the old stars like Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, and Cyd Charisse. All of the dancing in those old Hollywood films I just thought was fabulous. But again, I just couldn’t find a way of making this Ballroom notion a reality because I didn’t have anyone to practice with. The numbers in the classes also began to get smaller and smaller so, at some point, they stopped.
What happens then?
The best thing! I discovered something which will become part of my life forever, Argentine Tango. This came through my mum. I used to get very nervous about exams in school. There was a tango course in the Crescent Arts Centre, supported by Belfast Argentine Tango Society. I remember very clearly, it was on a Friday night and my mum asked if I fancied trying it seeing as there was no need to revise for any exams the following day. I went along, I loved it and I was hooked. Argentine Tango was the thing.
