Dance life

Happy St.Patrick’s Day!

In the spirit of the holidays I’d like to share my experience and opinion on Irish dancing.

When I was younger my best friends and I decided to take Irish dancing at Cameron school.  It’s a very disciplined dance with a lot of foot work.  Irish dancing has such a beautiful visual effect for those who watch it because every move is perfectly in sync.  The secret to this, or the technique my class used, was to turn the steps into a song.  I have trouble remembering dances after I’ve finished performing them and the costume rests in my closet untouched, but I still remember the Irish dance I learned when I was in elementary school.

♪toe down heel, hop hop, spring two three and spring two three, tip hop back, tip hop back, hop back two three four five change point♪

Irish dancing was fun to learn, and beautiful to watch.  It is such a stunning style of dance that everyone’s grandparents were suddenly interesting in our dancing career.  I had been dancing for years, jazz, ballet, and hip hop, but when I started learning Irish my family seemed to care so much more.  I was constantly putting on shows at home for my family, and I’m not sure they even noticed that I kept showing them the same jig.  My Italian grandparents asked me to perform my Irish dances for them, so I kept showing them my ‘toe down heel’ dance even after I stopped Irish dancing.  My friends and I loved how our families were so encouraging with our Irish dancing, but after years of learning variations of the same dance and performing countlessly for our families, we stopped taking the class.  My family hasn’t been that enthused to see me dance since. 

I have to admit that my friends and I all missed the classes (and our parents encouragement) throughout the preceding years, and every St.Patrick’s Day when I see the parade I wish that I could be one of those Irish dancers doing the jig on the floats.