Irish Dance Lessons, How are yours going?

[Irish Stepper]

Heya to all of the Irish Dancers on here! I just figured I'd see how everyone is doing with their dance lessons.

I've been with my new school for 5 months now. It's going well enough I suppose. I'm a bit more advanced than others in my class so I get frustrated a bit with the lack of new material being taught, but then again, they can't interupt a class of 30 people just for me! I think I'm going to get with the director of the school and see if he can show me a few steps so that I'm ready for competition in April.

Anyway...how's everyone else doing in their dance lessons???

[cardiac_celt]

Hi there,

I am new to this forum, but not to Irish Step dancing (so to speak). I started as an adult newbie two and a half years ago and have been at my current 'school' since September. I mostly did hard shoe performances before coming to my current 'school' and had to basically start all over again with soft shoe. I have been to two feis competitions this year already (having never competed before this) and have held my own, newbie and all. I compete in six dances, four soft shoe and Trad Set and Treble Jig for hard shoe since I haven't learned the Hornpipe yet. The Trad Set I know currently is St. Pat's, but my teacher wants to teach me the Blackbird since I have trouble with St. Pat's. I am not a young bird anymore, so the shins and back really take a beating doing all this dancing, but I love it! I hope to compete in another feis at the end of April and maybe do a performance for St. Patrick's Day!

Thanks for having a thread for Irish Step Dancing!

[Raven]

Hey Card

I will never be competative but I am trying to learn how to do a reasonable facsimile of this while playing guitar.

My hat is off to your for doing so well!!

Any idea of where I can take lessons on line? I have a feeling that I will not get so out of breath if I just do it on line

Slàinte

Mikel

[Irish Stepper]

Online dancing, eh? That's a cool idea. Certainly not as tiring!

Hey Cardiac Celt! It's nice to have another dancer on here. I was getting lonely. I currently do the St Patrick's Day dance. I'd love to learn the Blackbird, but haven't had time yet. I think it's such cool dance.

I was dancing for 3 years at a different school before changing to this one. My 6 month "restyling period" or suspension (for lack of a better description) will be over in March. I'll be dancing at the West Virginia Feis on April 1st. I still need to pick up a couple of hard shoe steps from this school so I can be ready. The purpose of taking the forced break is so that you don't use your old school's steps in competition anymore. It's kind of a no-no.

Right now we're breaking our necks getting ready for March Performances...hehe. This week alone I have 4 different practices and rehearsals, and 1 performance on saturday night. My boys dance as well, so between us all we're constantly on the move from now until after St Patrick's Day.

[morgana_l_f]

Unfortunately, Irish Dancing Schools are few are far between here in Montana. I've been learning through video tapes and copying performance moves. I've been working on soft shoe off and on for about 6 years. Now I'm trying to choreograph a piece for our spring performance and teach the moves to my dance group. I finally have to take the dance seriously.

The dance I'm working on is very unique. It is to an arrangement of Walking in the Air from the Snowman and uses dance wings. They look like cloaks but with sticks on the edge so when you grab them and hold your arms out, they are giant wings. they are so fun to play with. Most often they are used in Belly dances, but dance is all about imagination and creativity.

So if I have piqued anyone's interest, the performance is in Bozeman Montana, last weekend in April. I'll probably post pictures here.

[cardiac_celt]

Thanks for the 'high-fives' everyone!

Mikel: Online Irish Dancing! It certainly wouldn't hurt as much! Probably be great fun to try to describe your steps... Jump, two, three and hop, two, three and turn, two, three, four, five....

I think it is great there are a few of us here who love to dance so much that we endure almost anything and do almost anything to be able to do it!

Morgana: Cool that you have pretty much been self taught and that you are using your creativity to incorporate what you have learned into something new. I hope you have a great perfomance and look forward to pictures!

Irish Stepper: I had no forced break period because I had to start from scratch anyways. I had to relearn the beginner reel using my new school's steps, but other than that one dance I didn't even know what a Single Jig, Light Jig, etc. was before this past fall! My old school wasn't acredited anyways, so I didn't compete at Feis'. Although I had fun (most of the time) at my old school and still talk to one of the girls still there, I am glad to be gone from it. My treble got wrecked at my old school because I was struggling to keep up with the pace. I lost a lot of my treble sound in hard shoe and because I have sore shins I have trouble staying on my toes during my hard shoe dances. The only difference between this school and the old school that I found hard to adjust to was having to learn to call a treble a 'treble' and not a 'rally'.

Keep us posted on your upcoming performances, be great to hear about them.


Still 'tappety-tapping'!
Valerie

[Cordelia]

I will be taking lessons as soon as I graduate!

[Irish Stepper]

Well Friday Night was our BIG performance with the whole school. We had a sold out show in a theater of 500 seats. It went really well. I have to admit that I messed up one part in the finale but recovered it well and kept on moving.

Valerie...my last school called them "rallys" as well. This school just says "tip-tip". I think it's all up to the teacher and what they like to say, or how they were taught. "tip tip hop, tip tip hop back, hop back 2 3 4" What's funny is that both my last teacher and my current one were both taught by the same person 30 years ago.

I won't be doing the West Virginia Feis since the hotel that's hosting it is booked for the night. But that's ok...I'm too busy between dance, taking care of my mother-in-law, and baseball will be starting for my boys at the beginning of April. I'm about to find out just how well I can function on minimal sleep!

[Raven]

Hey Stepper

I did find an adult class that is offered here in Indianapolis. 2 actually and they travel here from Dayton to give them.

I went to Fionn MacCools pub last night to see some friends of mine play and happend to run into the people who put on the Indy Irish fest and they were a world of help.

Should be posting the info at www.indyirishfest.com this week.

I guess I better plan on staying out of breath

Mikel

[Irish Stepper]

That's Awesome Mikel! I hope you enjoy the lessons. Plan to bring a towel with you though, cause you're gonna sweat a lot! If you weren't in shape yet, you soon will be!

[Raven]

I have been watching that video on the link you sent me hoping that will help get my wind up.

So far I am up to being able to watch for an hour at a time all the steps and I don't even break a sweat

Seriously, I am dancing right now and have been working on it for some time. Just not exactly what I want to do with the steps. I ad the difficulty of wanting to play my guitar while doing this so it will definitly take some doing regardless.

Also I use my eliptical trainer every day. As a long term (33 yr) type 1 diabetic, exercise is essential to my longevity

Thanks again for the encouragement and I will post the info here when I get it.

Mikel