Chapter Four
Pat Hall Brings the
The middle part of
the 1980s saw the first fully accredited teachers to teach in
The
The
Pat Hall, who is also an ADCRG, is the Regional Director of the Western
Region of the Irish Dance Teachers Association of North America (IDTANA). In
addition to being a past chairman of the Western Region, Maureen McTeggart Hall
is a vice-president of the Irish Dancing Commission and adjudicates every year
at the North American and World Championships.
Fiona McNulty Behan stated plainly the difference between these new teachers and the ‘older’ group.
[Pat Hall and Ron Plummer] were a little bit more competitive. It was a little bit more serious. And they had more material. They could teach us more.
Charles Flint was one of Pat Hall’s early dancers:
Pat’s main group was, at the time,
Fran Rogan talked about the beginning of Pat’s classes:
In the beginning, she held
them in George O’Leary’s mobile/motor home park, and she had a studio for a
while. [She had classes] once a week. I watched her teach classes sometimes,
but it wasn’t encouraged... [Her style of dance] is very traditional. For me, it’s what Irish dancing
[should be], it’s very traditional....
Mattie Heenan’s children were in Pat Hall’s early classes.
In
the beginning when they first started taking classes, they were doing it over
at George O’Leary’s Mobile home park over on the east
side. He gave Pat space to teach. Of course [most of] his
children [danced]. I don’t even know if Matt was born at that point, and
his older daughter never took dancing, but he gave Pat space to teach. I
remember that when we went to the first class, I peeked in a
the other kids who were dancing, and it happened to be Trese Concannon and Gwynette Vath. They had been
dancing for probably six months to a year, and so they already knew their first
couple of dances. I looked in and remember thinking that, ‘Boy, this looks
awfully complicated for little kids who are the same age as my children’. In
the beginning, we were allowed to sit and watch classes, if we wanted to. After
we were at George’s - I really can’t remember the order of where things were - I think some
of the parents had said that, ‘We don’t want to come over to George’s because
it is too far on the East side and we are so far away’. So we went to a more
central location, which was the dance studio at
When I have seen Fran Rogan and the Concannons and the Vaths, and
everybody over the years we have always said that our favorite memories of our
kids growing up were the [feiseanna] that we all got
together. Fran and I traveled to a couple of [feiseanna].
We went to maybe the Brothers’ Feis, which is always Memorial weekend. I think
Fran and I went to
Mattie Heenan also talked about starting the Tucson Feis.
We started the [feis]. There hadn’t been one in
My kids started dancing between the first and the second feis. The first two [feiseanna] were held a George’s mobile park. those two were smaller. I wasn’t there for long periods of it, and I don’t remember too much about it, but it wasn’t the big deal that the other [feiseanna] became. I think by the next year we had moved to a hotel because Pat said, ‘Well, this is just not okay, because we need to have a place for people to be drinking, and we need to have facilities that can have people staying overnight so we can draw people from out of town. So we moved into town to one of the hotels.
We had a feis committee, and
I would say the active people were the Concannons,
Mary Concannon, the Matriarch of the family, the Vaths, Fran Rogan, Winnie Hennessy, Winnie Nanna, myself, and Jean Lloyd, who was a little bit on the
quiet side. She was treasurer. Peggy Ryan, who is married to Dan Ryan, who is a
sports newscaster from NBC here in
Leisl Shaughnessy von dem Bussche talked about her
experiences in the
When I came out here, Pat
had a lot of students who were just in it for fun. They weren’t interested in
competition. Unless you had the support of the parents, and the children would
actually practice when they were at home, which most of them didn’t, we would
just go once or maybe twice a month... We may have had it every week.
I think [Pat] had to work
with what she had to work with, and the students were not that serious about
it. You really can’t force the issue, and make them practice and make them do
what they don’t want to do. She worked us a little harder, I think, than
Kathleen. Kathleen was definitely more easy going, but neither of them were
disciplinarians, you know, harsh.
I only went [to Worlds]
once. I went when I was probably 12 or 13. I think it was more for the
experience. I have family in
The Daughertys danced with Pat Hall after the
Mostly it was at St. Simon
and Jude. It was the same place. She pretty much kept the same schedule, and
then when
Pat was a little bit more gruff
with the kids, but she was still very good with the kids. She pushed them a
little bit harder maybe. Ryan got along well with Pat. He liked Pat. He got
along well with
Patricia Prior talked about the different classes:
The
Liesl Shaughnessy von dem Bussche remembered some other dancers in the region whom she remembered to be particularly skilled:
There was one from
Trese
Concannon remembered the familial nature of the
school in
[Classes] were a lot of fun,
actually. We were separated by age and by how well we were doing, like beginner
one, beginner two, Novice... They were a lot of fun. A whole bunch of us
learning together and practicing together, in the same age group.
We were like sisters, all of
us. We danced together and went to [feiseanna]
together, and did birthday parties together. I mean, we were together a lot. We
danced at least two-three times a week.
We were a lot closer than it
seems to me the girls are now. We were like a family.
When I was smaller,
everybody thought you were cute, and you’d dance, and [everyone would say] ‘Oh,
you’re so cute’. I wasn’t as competitive. They’d win, or they would give
everyone a medal, and then as you got older, obviously you had to know more
steps, it became more competitive.
You’d travel around...I had
lots of friends in all the different states that we danced in and [I] would go
and see them all. [From the other McTeggart schools I knew] mostly just
When I first started, we danced at my house and we put boards down, and then we moved out to I believe my cousin’s house [Gwynette Vath]. We danced in her garage. We danced at George O’Leary’s mobile home park, and then we danced at Vanessa Lloyd’s, and we danced in her garage. [The location didn’t make very much of a difference]. We just all danced.
When I was younger, I was
usually not where I was supposed to be. Charlie Singleton, who was older, used
to always have to dance with me, and Pat would say, ‘Keep her where she has to
be, Charlie, I don’t care!’. He used to get so
frustrated with me! He was like my big brother, he
took care of me... As I got older,
Vanessa was a lot of fun. She was very much the big competitor... very, very much into
the dancing. She would help us out sometimes [but] when it came to competition,
she was totally focused on what she needed to do. Erin Rogan was very playful,
all the time. She always had a smile. We had a great time with
Mattie Heenan talked about some of
the prominent
The Concannons
have been here since about 1945..and they are a very
established
Fran Rogan was definitely
another presence in the community because, as tiny as she is, she is a strong
woman, and also had a good dancer in her daughter. Winnie Hennessy was another
force to be reckoned with, who had a good dancer in her corner.
Liesl Shaughnessy von dem Bussche also talked about the
costumes that the dancers wore in the
We hand embroidered our solo
dresses. [They were] not as elaborate as they are now. Usually we had two or
three colors of embroidery thread. Almost all of them were black velvet. Most
of them were lined with white satin, some of them had
a color. We had a single or double strand of rhinestones around the waist. We
had the crocheted collars and cuffs, there were the bell sleeves. And you actually had to earn them,
you didn’t just start out as a beginner and get to wear a solo dress.
All the moms kind of pitched in. Some moms could sew, some could embroider, and there was a lot of trading that went on in dresses and different things. No gold lamé. No lace panels or anything. Not anywhere near as elaborate as they are.... When we came out, [they] didn’t curl their hair for competition. It was just something kids didn’t do. We wore headbands, a natural headband with elastic underneath.
I think they had [the
patches for the class dresses] machine embroidered somewhere - the panels that
were on there for the class costumes. Then they just were sewn on. It was a
black wool jumper style dress with a red blouse underneath.
[The hard shoes] had nails
on them, and then we went to fiberglass. I think they were put into wood heels,
and there might have been a little tiny toepiece, but
I think we went from skinny heels to bubble heels, and
back to skinny heels again. And the heels were made out of plastic or fiberglass
after the wood. And they would get handed down through five different people,
and they would have chunks of wood [broken] out of them. And then when they
switched to fiberglass, when you would do a click, it was so much more crisp. But I miss the bubble heels, because it is
harder to make [clicks without them]. And then we went through buckles on the
shoes to no buckles on the shoes - elastic straps around the foot to the
leather strap that went around the ankle. We used to wear a lot of elastic. They
weren’t flexible, like what they are now. I see these kids get up on their toes
now. The whole back
of [the shoe] buckles in. The ghillies went through a lot of changes too. It
seemed to be a kind of regional thing maybe, or who your teacher was. There were
kids who used to wear these long toes ghillies. It got shorter and shorter and
closer to the toe as time went on, which I think made it look like you were up
on your toes. [We bought them at competitions.] There were a couple of places
here in town that would sell the ghillies. The jig shoes initially would have
the nails and stuff, and then when fiberglass was brand new, we would send them [back
east].
Charles Flint remembered the McTeggart boys’ costumes:
It was a grey tweed kilt
with black jacket, and the boys had a patch on the jacket that had ‘McTeggart’,
and a shawl. And the bright red socks.. Luckily for me
all I had to do was wear a kilt, buy a black jacket, get a patch, and sew it on
there. My dad could figure that out.
Being a boy we started out
with the soft shoes, and then it got changed where we couldn’t wear soft shoes
anymore. We had to wear the light soft shoes. That was before they changed the
heel, where you could have bubble heels. I remember that, that was kind of nice
because we could bubble up the heels a lot more and get better clicks that way.
We actually tried to make bigger heels by putting fiberglass on the heels. That
didn’t work, because the first click that we did, the fiberglass just
shattered. We just thought we’d make thicker, fatter heels, and that would
improve our dancing. A lot of the shoes were hand-me-downs. They were passed on
from other kids from other states.
Mattie Heenan talked about the costumes, and the expense in particular:
At the time, I think my daughter’s
class costumes ran about 150 dollars. Well, you would get the patches and you
would get the black jumper and also this red... shirt underneath it, that was like, the hottest thing in the world to [wear].
Probably warmer than long underwear. And so the
dresses were wool, so these poor kids survived. That was the original one, and
then they went to something a little bit more modernized. I believe that my
daughter’s last solo costume that we bought was between $350 and $500. She had
one of the dresses at that time. The solo costume that we kept of hers was black
velvet, turquoise underneath, with the traditional flowers, and no rhinestones,
and I guess she has a rhinestone belt but no other sparkles on the dress. It
was before the flash that they have out now. And I guess we paid about $125 for
hard shoes, I think, if we bought them new. It has
always been an
expensive undertaking, that is for sure. No one was wearing
wigs or falls at that time; you had to curl your hair.
Trese Concannon compared the dresses she wore to the dresses that are currently worn:
The dresses have certainly changed. They are a lot more frilly. They’ve gotten really into bright fluorescent colors and a lot of shiny stuff. The dresses are a lot lighter too. Ours were heavy, and they had the velvet. They were heavy and hot.
Chris
Locke, who was a mother and dancer for the Maoileidigh and
Some people, if they did
well or if they didn’t do well it was the dress’s fault or the judge’s fault or
whatever. Sometimes they decided that the dress was too heavy or it didn’t flow
well or whatever, and that was reason for not doing
well. That was one of the reasons, aside from the deciding that I didn’t have
time, that I stopped making dance dresses. I could never predict. I would take
too personally the reactions of people who blamed their dancing mistakes on the
dress. Some of the people who I thought were going to be picky were really
easygoing, and some of the people who I thought were going to be easygoing were
really uptight.
I think that the disadvantage of having the dresses be all alike is that they are generally more expensive. One of the advantages is that not all people have equal sewing and embroidery skills, and there were some really different variations. Every mother was expected to be a seamstress and an embroiderer.
Mattie Heenan talked a little bit about the demeanor of Irish dancing teachers.
I have always felt that Pat was a wonderful teacher. I think that Pat’s knowledge about dancing and her own dancing style is exquisite when you can get her to dance, which isn’t terribly often. But she is a beautiful, beautiful dancer herself, and she is very creative in what she comes up with. Which is the flipside of the fact that if a kid messed up at the feis, instead of her being someone who would say, ‘Oh, I know you didn’t do your best job, you know, maybe you can do something like this’ she would basically come over and, ’What... are you doing!’ you know and ‘beat them over the head with a book’ or something, and I used to think, ‘Gosh, can’t you just be a little bit more gentle or nurturing?’, but that just wasn’t Pat’s way. I guess the Irish dancing teacher over the years is not meant to be that loving or nurturing soul that I would like them to be [and that is part of how they reach their standards of technique and ability], as I know more about dancing. So she probably was the typical dancing teacher in that respect, after all. But I definitely consider Pat a friend outside of dancing, she is someone I still occasionally socialize with.
Charles Flint spoke about the chances to perform that the kids had:
We really didn’t have many
performances that I remember, locally. For St. Patrick’s Day, we always had a
group of things to do. Every once in a while we would dance at like a center
for elderly-type-thing. I remember a lot of things that we did were at St. Patrick’s day. We were dancing in bars when we were little
kids, which was kind of funny. It was kind of the middle of the day, so it
wasn’t like it was at night or anything. At the time, we were still wearing
kilts, so it was always amusing to have drunk old ladies saying, ‘Hey, whadda you got under your kilt?!’ Competition-wise I want
to say every three or four months we would have a competition in different
places. A lot of times we knew far ahead when the competitions were coming, so
the parents could save up money to get their kids to go. Usually we had six months notice
of when things [were going to happen].
Liesl
Shaghnessy von dem Bussche remembered the performances the dancers did in
Every St. Patrick’s,
obviously, we were in the parade. We did downtown. I think we did the Colleen
Pageant one year. That was at
[The
[The Phoenix Feis] was
probably bigger than the Tucson Feis. That’s when they had them at St.
Gregory’s, which, I went to school there, so that was kind of neat. We had
quite a bit of competition come in from out of state for that. We would have
that at
Mattie Heenan also talked about the performances the children did
in
The girls have danced with
the Chieftains. They have danced at weddings. I think it might have been Gwynette, who danced with Mick Maloney one year. They would
perform in bars, danced in churches, danced in restaurants and danced at
private parties, at nursing homes, and retirement homes. They have danced at
numerous schools over the years.
Because the Concannons had so many kids dancing, they just kind of organized
things…Also, because Gwynette was sort of the premier
dancer in town for a long time. There were times that I did the announcing at
performances, and later on Terry Concannon did most
of the announcing. I think Pat always arranged the performances. More often two
would do the same step and then step back and then two more would do a step. They did a lot more
figures than I have seen Tom Bracken do. They would always use several figure dances in the performance.
They usually ended up with a reel where everybody would come out, and they would extend the music
for as long as it took for each set of dancers at their level to do whatever
their steps were.
Trese Concannon talked about the performances as well:
We would do like 10 to 13
performances [on St. Patrick’s Day]. That was a long day, starting off with the
parade and then we would dance all day, and we would end up dancing for Sam and
Winnie Nanna at the Harp and Shamrock. We did a lot
of performances during the year and we raised money that way, to go to [feiseanna] and for our costumes and stuff.
We had step outs, each
[person dancing] depending on what level we were. We would [include] everybody
in there, and everybody would jump out and do a step. We did an ending reel,
which was a hardshoe. Depending on where you were in
your hardshoe you would do certain steps. You had to
know your steps or you weren’t in the performance. Other than that, it was
mostly more ceílí stuff. We did some figures, but everybody got to step out,
you would step out with somebody else in your group or maybe two or three
people from the section you were in and you would all do that step.
Patricia Prior said that Pat Hall mostly had her kids perform ceílí and
solos during the
She didn’t do any special choreographies. I think she had it in mind to do it when she
started, but [it never happened]. Also Ron Plummer had a couple of things in
mind to do, but he never did it either. I know Pat had talked about it, and she
may have started one for the Irish Fair one time... She didn’t have enough kids
to do a piece.
Fran Rogan talked
about social events in
We would bring in concerts, bands. Every year we
would have an Irish picnic... The first parade was in
Margaret McNulty
talked about the new level of dancers that was beginning to emerge in
There were a couple of dancers [who were on the same
level as the
Patricia Prior concurred:
Leisl was our first Preliminary
championship, and the twins, the blond haired kids that were championship
dancers that came in with Pat Hall. They were the first champions. We never
really had any championship competition unless you got one or two from
Asa Markel talked about the
dancers that were prominent in the
Well, when I started [and]
pretty much the whole time I danced the largest family were
the Concannons. They included…well it’s kind of
difficult because their cousins were the Vaths that
were actually Concannons on their mother’s side...so
it was actually seven or eight kids that were all related. So in the smaller
class you had Mara, she was like a little elementary school kid. The two others
were Adam and Colleen, and they were both mid-level dancers and eight or nine
years old when they started out. They would always do two-hand together and
stuff. And then Colleen’s older sister was Trese, and
she was, I guess, mid-level. I did two hands with her and she was one year
younger than me. She had a brother named Casey who was two or three years
younger than me. He danced for a little while. Then I guess he started again
after I left. Then their other cousin besides Adam was Gwynette.
When I started she was a Preliminary championship dancer and she was my age and
she was an Open dancer when I left. In that class, there was Vanessa Lloyd who
was one year younger than me. I think she was the only Open dancer there when I
started out. I met Tanya Lloyd but I never saw her [dance]. I know she’d been Open,
because we had
practice in the Lloyd’s garage for awhile and there were a lot of trophies in
there and a lot of them were Open. This was, like, the
second generation, because there was Charlie Flint who danced before. I met him
but he stopped a few years before I started. There was that whole generation of
people. I know their names but I’ve probably never even met them, because the
girls would just go on and on and on about it, so I don’t really remember it.
Now when I talk to girls that I used to dance with they go on and on about when
I was actually there so I actually know what they’re talking about. So the rest
of the people in my group were the Heenans. There was
Darragh who was one year younger than me and Brenna who was one year older. They were both about
Preliminary when I started. And then there were the Rogans
and both Sheila and Erin were Preliminary.
Leisl Shaughnessy von dem Bussche talked about the
differences between
I had been out of it for a
few years so getting back into it was a big adjustment, but the level of
competition was very different. There wasn’t as much competition. It was definitely a lot
smaller out here. There wasn’t as large an Irish community out here as opposed to in
When I grew up back east,
all the states are so close in
I think when I started here
I had to start as... I had competed probably as Preliminary back east, so when
I started out here, I think I started Prizewinner solos, and then did
Preliminary, and then went into Open. That was fairly quickly because I think I
had been dancing at Preliminary level back east.
There were usually 3, 4, or
5 competitors. The competitions weren’t gigantic. Back then, I think they used
to have boys separate from girls. I don’t know. Boys wore kilts back then, and
now they wear pants, and I think it is kind of an unfair advantage, because you
can’t see their knees. You can’t see if their legs are wide apart or
whatever... My brother used to dance and he did not like wearing a kilt... We
didn’t have a lot of boys. When we would do eight hands and there was one boy we
would all fight over him.
Patricia Prior talked about a difference between the Phoenix Feis and the Tucson Feis:
The Halls attracted a lot of top class [dancers to the Tucson Feis].
Sharon Judd spoke about the time conflicts that some children have between scheduling competitions and excelling as well in other areas:
I saw [Gwynette]
when she was still competing down there with McTeggart before she went to
college, and all I remember is that she came to the feis after a swim meet,
and had these horrible blisters
on her feet from fins or something. She was trying to do this big change into
the feis mode... Sometimes out of town competitions are better, because then
that’s all you’re there for. You pack it up. Either you go to the competition
or you don’t. When you are in town everybody always tries to do their swim
tournament or their band concert, or their soccer game, and then they come and
try to switch gears real fast.
Charles Flint talked about the seriousness of Pat Hall’s teaching, and about her expectations. He also talked about the results it brought him:
At that time we were still
pretty strict as far as dancing. Hands at the sides. No smiling. Everything was serious
stuff. We all acted like we were serious, we were going to win, and that type
of thing. Back then, it was serious. If your arms bobbled, you got the bobble
can, it was time to go. Fix that arm.
We had a Western Regional
Oireachtas, and I won first in two years, and one year I got third. I competed
in
I was pretty much at the top
of my group, along with a couple of other people. The only other people in my
competition the first couple of years got firsts right away, and they got
forced into a higher bracket, and forced to learn more and practice more.
Trese Concannon also remembered this emphasis of Pat Hall’s:
I love Pat. She is a great encourager. I mean she was strict and you had to know your stuff. She is an awesome dancer, and her figures always won, we always won with our figures, she made us work hard at them. She made us do well or we weren’t allowed to perform.
Mattie Heenan talked about the conflict between encouraging all children and the desire to produce good competitors, and the tenuous balance that she thinks that teachers should try to uphold:
Brenna was somewhere in
Preliminary championships, basically. Darragh stopped
competing probably two years or so before they dropped out. Darragh was someone
who loved dancing, still loves dancing, but competing was not in her nature.
I think there has been [a
pretty heavy emphasis on competition] for a long time, probably since the
seventies, anyway. I don’t think it was as fierce then as it is now, but I
definitely think it was there, for the kids to compete, and to do well. That is
part of how Irish dancing is set up, and that is how the teachers become
recognized. They receive their accolades by how their students perform. It is
part of the system. It is nobody’s fault. But I do think there should be room
for kids, I would hate to see any child discouraged from dancing because they
don’t want to perform. I would hope that a teacher would say, ‘Well, kids A, B, and C all like
dancing and competing, and it is all right if kids D and E to come and dance
and perform and not compete.’ I think there is something to be said for the
culture as well, and not every kid is meant to be a competitor in everything
they try out for. I would hate to see a kid discouraged from dancing simply
because they don’t want to compete. It certainly helped to enrich my kids’
appreciation of their culture and all of those things. I would hate for her to
have missed out on it just because it isn’t in her nature to be competitive.
Sharon Judd talked about the different expectations that teachers can have for different kids:
It’s just fun to see the
kids stick with it, and to move up into Prizewinner and Championship. I don’t
even think a lot of the parents realize how high the standards are to get that
far in Irish dance. They don’t realize what it is like to get up there, feis
after feis. When the kids get all their stuff in Novice, and you know that
takes a lot of work to get there, and then they go to [feiseanna]
and they don’t always win, because everybody in Novice, you know, is fine. It just
takes so much courage for them to stick with it, and to keep practicing, and to
get up there and do it again and again, until they get that first, and how many
times do they have to get second, before they get that first. I’m just very
proud to see that they
build that kind of character, and go that far. That will stay with them whether they get to
the Worlds or don’t.
I think you have to be careful to leave room, and appreciate and encourage the beginner dancers at the same time as you are keeping your champions competitive and sharp.
Asa Markel compared the sense of competition from that time to that of today:
The thing is the difference
between the two time periods is in the old days, before Riverdance, because
everybody was in a big family and everybody knew everybody else’s family and
everyone was there because their parents probably made them do it when they
were younger sort of like going to church or something. Nobody ever talked
about anybody else’s dancing. I never remember anybody talking about that
really, once or twice girls in the same class would talk about ‘well this girl
needs to learn this’ or whatever, but when you were at a feis nobody ever
talked about that stuff. It was
extremely rude and I don’t think, I don’t remember anybody ever talking about
it. But it’s a little bit more vicious now. All these kids sort of watch
Michael Flatley, and I guess they’re all very
competitive and it’s not as much of a cultural-social enterprise as it is an
actual competition now, I guess. So it’s a little more cutthroat. I’ve heard
the girls I was helping teach and so forth complain a lot about other dancers,
basically telling them off, or saying ‘We’re gonna
win’ or whatever. I don’t remember that really ever.
Patricia Prior remembered one occasion in which she got to see Pat Hall perform:
I only saw Pat dance once, because [she would only go] through a couple of steps [in class] and then she would stop. She danced [on the stage one time] with Donny Golden. That was the only time I ever saw Pat dance. It was totally unexpected. Donny Golden was dancing with the Chieftains. He was a fabulous dancer. That was the top. Pat Hall came up with him for every step. She was fantastic. To see the two of them dance together...
Mattie Heenan talked about a particular Tucson Feis where she herself danced.
Did you ever hear about
Pat’s adult dancers winning first place at the feis? One of the [feiseanna], Pat said, ‘I want to enter some adults in adult
competition because it is embarrassing, I don’t have any adults dancing, so who
is going to dance?’ So Winnie Hennessy and Winnie Nanna,
and Fran Rogan and myself, and then Mandelberg, and
Neil Flint, and that was six of us, and there would have been two more, and I
am not sure who the last two were. We ended up with eight dancers.. Oh, my husband, I don’t know if said him. Pat taught us
the Sweets of May, that was going to be the dance that we performed, and we
practiced and practiced our little butts off. And my husband, you have to
understand, I have been trying for twenty years to teach him to waltz, and he
can’t learn how to waltz. He honestly, he came home after our practice one
night, and the girls said, ‘Well, how are you doing?’, and Dad said, ‘I am
doing great. I have learned my hop out two three fours.’ And the girls were
going, ‘Dad, it is hop out two threes! You don’t do hop out two three FOUR!’
‘No wonder I am having trouble!’ So we practiced and practiced, and Rory
basically became the body that you sort of threw around on the stage. So if he had
to swing my arm and then go into his corner and do something, I would swing
him, and then I would just kind of push him into the right direction. Forget
footwork! We were just glad to have the body standing in the right place. So we
would just get him from position to position to do what he needed, and he did
learn the clap clap slap slap
and all of those little parts, but he couldn’t do any of the proper footwork. So, the night of the
performance came. We were all wearing black and white, we had white blouses on
and black skirts, and the guys were wearing black pants, and all of the other
dancers from the other communities were wearing flashy outfits… We knew we
weren’t good to
begin with, we were not going up there thinking that
we were any good, because we knew our limitations with Rory in particular. So,
the day of the
competition came and
Rory realized that we were going to be dancing in front of all of these
hundreds of people, and he goes into the bar, and he was going to fortify
himself with a drink before he faints. The feis was running behind, and I think
that was one thing that used to happen a lot more I think than you guys do now,
was we would run quite behind. It was more behind than Rory realized, and we
sort of forgot that he was still in there drinking, because we were still doing
other things. And all of a sudden, I realized, ‘Where’s Rory, where’s Rory?’
and I go running in and I find him, and Rory has gotten himself so sloshed that
he could barely stand up. I went, ‘God, Rory, what are we going to do, you are
drunk as a skunk, it’s horrible, you have to dance in a little while.’ and he
said, ‘Well, I’ll quit drinking now.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s great. You are
disgusting, and I don’t know what to do with you!’ So he stopped drinking, and,
fortunately, the feis was so far behind that Rory actually had time to sober up
before we went out. So we finally go out like three and a half hours later, something horrible,
and go out and do our dance. And I remember Donny Golden was one of the judges,
and he was judging the adults. Danny Golden was the teacher of Jean Butler, who was the star of
Riverdance, and she was at the feis that year.
We went out to do our Sweets of May, and you know,
when they do the figure dances, they usually have you dance maybe two different
steps of your figure, and then they ring the bell and you are done. All I
remember was glancing over at Danny, and he has blonde hair and he was so red
from laughing that he looked like his head was going to explode. He made us do the entire dance
and take our bows at the end. I thought he was going to fall out of his chair,
he was laughing so hard. And he did award two first places, one to the real
winners and one to us for having the nerve to get up and perform the way we
did. So we have often talked about our first place finish at the Tucson Feis.
That was our short performance career. That was our one and only dance that we
ever did together. Fortunately they didn’t have to burn the floor when finished
dancing. It was pretty bad.
Leisl Shaughnessy von dem Bussche also had an amusing ‘parental dancing’ story.
My favorite memory was at the Phoenix Feis, a few years ago, they used to have a parent-child two-hand, and my dad and I did the parent-child two hand. In fact we were up against Margaret McNulty and maybe Sarah, maybe Anne Marie. I don’t remember, [maybe both]. I think my mom danced with my brother, and I think my mom and my brother won that year, and I am convinced it is because it is a boy... My dad and I got some sort of a trophy, and several moons ago, I think we left them somewhere, all the trophies, all the medals. I remember he and his buddies drinking beer out of that afterward, passing it around. He won some sort of an honorable mention or something, and it was the funniest thing. The man has never danced, he is not a dancer. He got up and had his number in his back pocket. Margaret (this is one of Margaret’s funniest memories too, probably) pulled it out of the back pocket and held it up like this for the judge, and pointed the toe and made a whole production of it. Everybody was just in stitches... He and I practiced it, he was really taking it seriously, Pat was over there practicing us over to the side. It was hop two threes and whatever, and he just couldn’t get it, and he was prancing around trying to do it, and he was kind of a bigger guy, so it was pretty funny. Pat was trying not to laugh and take him seriously. It was hilarious. The year after that Margaret got up with one of her kids and repeated the same thing and held up her number.
Regardless of
whether adult men were let off the hook or not, Charles Flint did not feel that
he was separated by Pat Hall from the girls in terms of expectations or steps.
[I don’t remember that the dances were very much differentiated by gender]. I remember doing the Blackthorn Stick with everybody else for a couple of years, everybody did that. Most of the dances, I remember Pat making them up as we were going along. It was just like, ‘Ok, [so-and-so] doesn’t like it this way, let’s try a double click here and a slide here and a turn around there.’
Asa Markel remembered, however, that boys were treated differently in competition:
Well, the thing about being
a boy is that you get used to winning against girls. The thing that you get
really upset about is the boys specials and stuff like
that, then you really find out where you are [with] judges. Because it’s such
an aesthetic sport, [I think] there’s so much subjective judgment going on. You
totally see tall, thin girls winning all the time. I knew these two guys who
were a little overweight and they weren’t really that up there but I thought
they were some of the best dancers I had ever seen; their hardshoe
and light shoe was amazing. So you get sort of cynical about that, and as a
boy, after a while, after competing, people can tell you that’s all that you
want, but it’s not until you’ve won a bunch of times that you sort of think,
‘Well it’s because I was against all these girls and the judges just had me
win.’ Which isn’t always true, but you kind of expect to place. You know you’ve
done really badly if you didn’t place. I got to Preliminary championship in
something like 5 or 6 [feiseanna] and I just sort of
told people that that’s because I’m a boy and most of the girls in my class sort of agreed
with me and we just sort of left it at that, so I guess I never really thought
about it that much. But I remember being a lot more stressed out about boys
specials because then you can be totally smashed in front of everyone by some other
guy that you’ve never danced against otherwise. Those are the most fun anyway
because the boys clicked and it was always really cool seeing this big
competition where they do one step that’s supposedly really cool. Later on that
was the big trend. When I started it was still boys
specials and boys doing soft shoe reels and clicking their heels and doing all
this cool stuff. About when I was starting to leave, the big treble reel craze
took off and, at least in
Asa also remembered the girls fawning over the champion boys. He and I had a conversation on the subject:
Yeah, [I had friends from
other schools]. Well the guys, because like you’d see any other (male), you’d
always remember who he was because there’s only one other, come back a month
later and ‘oh yeah it’s you again,’ so yeah. There’s this guy Jeff MacLeod who
was about my age, he danced for Harney in Redwood I think.
Elizabeth Venable- Yeah,
that’s so weird, because I knew that guy too and had a crush on him for like
five months...
Asa- Well,
that was just the scene, like it was totally like that, like girls would
totally be in love with. They picked either Gene or... Matt, yeah, Matt was his
name, Matt Martin and Gene, they were sort of like N’SYNC or something, like
girls just picked one or the other, they were in that or the other camp, at
least from my perspective. I didn’t know any of the Jeff admirers because
I would actually sit
with Jeff and hang out with him so I didn’t really, I guess girls weren’t
talking smack when I was around him, just when I was over with Jeff, so
whatever. But also some of the guys with Harney I knew from my first feis but I
didn’t really get along so well with a few of them... There were a bunch of
guys in that class actually, whenever those guys danced there were like four or
five guys which was pretty amazing, so they were kind of close knit I guess,
but I can’t even remember their names right now. There was a guy that I knew
who was really nice. Man, was his name Ryan? I don’t know, but he had long blond hair and
he eventually was really an amazing dancer, by like ‘95, ‘96, like really,
really good, probably a Open championship level guy, I can’t remember his name. But Harney had
really good dancers anyway. At least the boys, And I
knew the twins, I can’t remember their names even, I think their last names
were Rego or something.
Elizabeth
Venable- Oh, Sego [from the
Asa- They started out dancing in slacks and ended up wearing kilts, which was a lot nicer. In those days guys did wear kilts so it was kind of cool.
Trese Concannon talked about her experiences as a child at the Tucson Feis and the Phoenix Feis:
The Phoenix Feis that we
went to had arts and crafts for the kids to do. The Tucson Feis is at a hotel
with swimming and stuff. I remember the Tucson Feis being huge, though, I mean
we had like four or five stages going at one time, it was a big feis when Pat
was here.
Leisl Shaughnessy talked about the perceptions her school classmates had about her dancing:
I think [my classmates] thought it was kind of funny. I mean, people would always imitate it, and, of course, what they did was hideous. But some people appreciated it. I always danced at school for St. Patrick’s Day, if we had a talent show, I would dance for that. My teachers always seemed to have more of an appreciation of it than the kids, the kids kind of made fun. I think the curly hair and the whole bit was not how they were used to seeing me.
Heather Stewart, who, at that time, was dancing for Doireann Maoileidigh, also remembered stigma being attached to her talent.
Growing up through school, when I was in grades through high school even, people thought I was a freak. I was a little leprechaun person. Until I would get up at the talent show, and they would see it, [and they would be amazed]. They would think it was all lucky charms, clicking your heels in the air.
Charles Flint also reflected on the subject:
At the time, I enjoyed it, but I was kind of embarrassed of it. It wasn’t popular. Now it is like, ‘That is pretty cool.’ Well, at the time, it wasn’t that cool, because, one, you are dancing, and it didn’t seem to be that cool at the time. Second, I was wearing a kilt. That was just thoroughly embarrassing. I didn’t want to have any of my friends know. Only my best friend knew, and somebody else knew because they saw me performing. I was kind of embarrassed of it, but I enjoyed it, and I kept doing it. Now I see the little boys that are dancing. It has been popularized by Michael Flatley, and those types of groups. Everybody knows about it, but at the time that I did it, nobody knew about Irish dancing. It wasn’t really that popular.
At the same time, Charles was allowed
opportunities through dancing that might have outweighed the troubles that
dancing might have caused him. For example, he was able to go with the Halls to
I went on this trip and saw
He spoke more about the dance trips he used to make:
A lot of
the trips that we did, like to
Trese
Concannon also talked about getting to travel through
the school, and especially about the workshops that the Halls hold in
We went up to
Mrs. Maureen Hall,
ADCRG, eventually began teaching classes for the
When I started classes down
in
Asa Markel also talked about the relations between girls in dancing and himself:
Well, I was the only boy
above the age over eight and most of the dancers were girls between the ages of
eleven and sixteen and so forth. So, [there] was really, sort of, a lot of
gossiping – a lot of girl politics, I guess.
I don’t really know, because I wasn’t really included in a lot of the
conversations because there was so much gossip and stuff between girls about
people that had danced before that they knew, or people that they ran into at
school or whatever. I didn’t really know
what they were talking about and I couldn’t really add anything to the
conversations about all kinds of girl fashion and stuff like that – I really
didn’t have much to say. But usually
there was a lot of chatter in the background.
I remember Pat yelling a lot about the girls I danced with anyway
because they were always talking, whereas with the younger kids... the problem
was always this or that little boy. I
think there were usually two at most, who would usually get out of hand –
that would be the big problem. And with the older girls it was always too much
talking, and it was always about boys or what their next solo dress would look
like, and stuff like that. I never
really worried that much about that stuff. But, I guess it was pretty cool school, especially
if you were a girl, because you would pretty much just hang out and just talk
about what was going on.
Asa Markel also talked about the
instability that it seemed the
Most people in the class
didn’t really know her that well, so if she got upset about people talking and
stuff kids were more apt to shut up after a while. I guess it was just sort of funny because for
some reason, even though she was supposedly with the same school, her dances were completely different from
Pat’s. So I remember I probably talked
more with the girls that I danced with then than I ever did before, just
because we were trying to figure out what we were supposed to do, because we
rarely understood what was happening. I
guess people were more apprehensive at first. I don’t think Maureen taught for
very terribly long [here] at all, really, so it probably stayed that way for a
while, really, just because people had danced with Pat for such a long time
that everyone would just sort of come and hang out because they kind of knew
what to expect.
Around the middle
of the 1990s, Rosemary Browne, MD, TCRG, moved into town with her family. She
had danced back east and started her daughter (Caitlin Meaney)
in classes with the
There were several Irish-American cultural
groups in
Mattie Heenan also remembered this incident as being very heated:
I know there was one
downtown that my children got in a lot of trouble for, which is an interesting
little aside. What happened was, they were called the
Tucson Six. Actually they weren’t raising money for the Tucson Six who were six
guys who had
Rosemary Browne mentioned that the end of the McTeggart school in
Sharon Judd talked
about the difficulty of being a teacher so far away from students. Of course,
Maureen Hall continues to come in to teach the school to this day, but
I think [Pat] had been
flying in every week, like Doireann had, and when you are flying into town from
somewhere, even driving around town teaching class, just takes an awful lot of
planning and time. I think when you are flying in every week like that, it
just wears on you, and then it is every three weeks, three weeks out of the
month, and then you’re there twice a month, and you’re there once a month, and
that’s not enough. So [you] have got to do something else.
Trese Concannon reflected on the changes of the time:
When Tom came it was different. I think the school
broke up [for more than one reason]. Number one, Pat had to move back to
As the girls got older, Vanessa Lloyd, her
sister Tanya was a dancer, and she was in Prelim championships, and she went to
the Oireachtas a few times, and maybe the Worlds, she got older, she graduated
from high school, and went to college and got married. I mean, as they grew up , they were in high school when we were babies, and so as
we all got older, we still danced, but I think there were about 25 or 30 of us.
There were quite a lot of us, I remember there being a lot of people when we
were younger, and then as we got older it kind of [became] a smaller group. And
then when
Asa Markel remembered that Pat Hall still thought about him even when he wasn’t under her tutelage anymore:
She called me because I won
my first championship and she was telling me that I should keep on dancing for
her mom. One of her friends was one of the judges and after I won that she
called Pat and told her, ‘Your boy just won’ or whatever, and so Pat then
called me, and said, ‘I heard you won and I heard you have to do this or that
or the other
next time,’ and
we just talked about stuff. I told her, ‘Well, next time we’re going to