The Monthly discusses dance, circus and musical theatre with Emily McDonagh – Part 1 – Dance was already in the family

Do you have any early memories of being interested in dance?

Oh yeah; well I come from a very privileged position in that my sister became a professional dancer before I did. My sister’s twelve and a half years older than me so she was dancing when I was growing up. She was a go-go dancer as well so she was doing roadshow tours and things like that.

That meant that dancing was always in my world. It seemed always within reach, and given that she was my favourite sister, I’d always copy her and so I was sent to dance summer camps and I developed my interest in dance from that starting point.

That sounds like a good starting point?

I do have a particular memory where my mum used to send me to ballet class but I hated it. This was when I was four. I didn’t like the uniform and I didn’t like the structure; I was always crying in the changing rooms. I just didn’t like it. I didn’t like how it was set up.

It was very strict and very serious. And it wasn’t my decision. I didn’t ask to go to ballet. I loved dancing, but I didn’t love ballet at the time.

So that doesn’t sound like such a good starting point?

Well much later on, when I was around 9, I watched a pas de deux on the BBC. I think it was from “The Nutcracker” or something like that. They were showing it on the BBC, and we very rarely got the BBC down south in rural Ireland, anyway, I went in to my mum and asked her if I could start ballet classes again. From there I was doing ballet every week for the rest of my childhood right up into my teenage years.

You had support from your family?

Well, yes, and I remember I used to make my family watch me dance after dinner. I would do some serious contemporary dance piece that I’d just made up and I’d make them shine a lamp on me and I’d create a fake stage and everybody had to watch me do a dance to whatever my favourite song was at the time.

And how do you develop from that starting point?

There was a bit of dance at school, more by accident than anything else. When I was about seven or eight, a woman called Vivian came to our school and started doing weekly dance classes with us. She would take classes in the school for an hour and she’d teach us a routine, or play rhythmical games with us, and things like that. And I remember loving that and always wanting to be up the front to learn the choreography.

And one year the school did a recital and each class had a routine they had to learn over a few weeks. And then we did it in the local parish hall. This was in Boyle. We had moved there by that stage. And Boyle has a great musical society, it has a great Am Dram Society. So we had the facilities to put on little shows in the town and we put one on there.

I was very fortunate, because that went so well, a few years later they did a musical, and the whole school was involved. We did “Honk the Musical” and I got to play The Cat. I got to play The Villain. And that was when I was 12. So I was always dancing right up until I went to college.

Like I said, I went to ballet classes where I grew up in Carrick-on-Shannon, 15 minutes away from Boyle, County Roscommon, and we would dance in primary school on the carpet every Tuesday evening and as soon as I realised how much I loved it I just did every class that the Sinead Leonard School of Dance had to offer.

I danced with her until I was 18 and then I went off to college and studied dance in Sallynoggin College of Further Education for two years before I went to England and studied musical theatre.

You went to college to develop your skills?

When you grow up down south, you have to stay in school till your leaving certificate; so till you’re 18. I was just dancing one evening a week and dancing a lot at home, practising at home, and getting my ballet grades.

When it came to going to college, Dublin’s the only place you could go, at the time, to get any kind of dance training that was outside of the dance studios and part of a third-level education. I went to Sallynoggin and I got the equivalent of an HND (Higher National Diploma) which was a level five in dance.

So that’s what I did for two years in Dublin at Dún Laoghaire. I went to that college and danced every day, five days a week from nine to five. You were doing jazz, contemporary, and ballet, because ballet is so important for technique.

What happens then?

After that I went to CPA Studios. I auditioned for a few dance colleges, actually I did loads of auditions, but I ended up doing musical theatre at CPA Studios, which was a tiny little college in Romford, Essex. It doesn’t exist any longer. I spent three years in that college studying musical theatre. And it was nice because it was such a small college, so you got a bespoke training.

I’m glad I ended up there because I think if I had just been in a standard dance college, I don’t think I’d have come out of a pure dance college as good a performer. It was because I got that very varied training coming out of the musical theatre that increased my skills.

For example, acting really changed how I danced. Learning to act really made me a better dancer. Once I got good at acting, my dancing suddenly turned into a completely different beast. I’m very grateful for doing musical theatre for the impact it had on my dancing.

And also, it’s not ever boring. You’re never bored in musical theatre. There’s too many things to be thinking of. There’s acting, singing and dancing, and you have to be able to do all three. And that kept me very much engaged. I think that training meant that I was always thinking there was something to strive for and that I think suited me quite well.