The
Beginnings of the Bracken and
The Mid to Late 1990s
The 1990s was the first decade that
Brandy Johnson talked about what it was like in the period when Doireann was stopping her classes in the area:
I remember that there was a period of time when... Doireann would come like once every four to six weeks, and Heather would be teaching the class. That was always kind of confusing. They were kind of, we never really knew what was going on, I think they were kind of secretive when Heather was teaching. But then I remember really distinctly the time when Tom came in for the first time, and Tom and Doireann and Heather were all there, and Doireann introduced Tom. I remember, the very first week, I know I didn’t like him, and I don’t think anyone else did, either. Not so much that they didn’t like him, but they just wanted Doireann to stay, because we were accustomed to her, and liked her a lot. I remember thinking a lot of things like not wanting to change my dress. I liked my dress. I remember not wanting to be taught by a man. I thought Doireann was a lot more maternal, more comforting. I remember being really mean, just the first week, I think that was common among everyone. I remember thinking his accent was really funny... And then, I remember the next week when it was just him. He watched me dance, and then he said something really nice about me, about my dancing, he said I was really good, or he asked me to help him, with the littler kids. He was really sweet. By the second week, I totally loved him. I thought he was just the greatest. I think everyone else was still not cool with him yet. I think it took a lot of people a long time to get accustomed to him, and I think some people just never did, and those are the ones who quit, or started their own school, or went other places, or whatever... I’m totally happy with how things worked out between the schools. I think it is cool that Heather started her own school... I’m really happy that Doireann is happy now. She has a family, and I think that is really cool. I love Tom, so I think it all worked out nicely. I think it is kind of unfortunate that some people just didn’t like him, or missed Doireann so much that they just couldn’t stay.
Patricia Prior thought that Tom Bracken’s and Doireann Maoileidigh’s styles were fairly similar.
I would say that there was a
similar style of teaching [between Tom and Doireann], but that was because both
of them were taught by the same person.
Brandy Johnson talked about the differences between Tom Bracken’s and Doireann Maoileidigh’s styles:
I think [Tom] and Doireann
just had very different teaching styles, I remember that being very confusing
to me. He was a lot less explicit about his instructions. He would say things
were right. It was hard for him to explain why. He was more of a visual or performative person, and I think Doireann was more verbal.
She could say the steps out, and I could say them in my head, and then it would
work out... He would always just do them. He is a lot less structured. We never
knew what we were going to do when [he got in a creative mood].
Chris Locke also compared the styles:
Doireann’s dancing was
always very strong in terms of the amount of strength it took but it focused
more on slower
movements that were just as hard but in a different sense. Tom seems to focus
more on fast movements... Tom is a very intense person [for whom] every
performance is [extremely] important, and I think Doireann is more relaxed. If
you [don’t] pay attention, Tom might make a remark to someone else and wonder
why you need consistent direction, but Doireann would be very direct and tell
you what to do. Tom is a disciplinarian but he is a disciplinarian by what he
says and the feelings he expresses. Doireann was a disciplinarian simply
because she was such a quiet and serious person.
Tom Bracken is a three-time All-Ireland
champion. He taught both Irish dancing and in academic schools in
Margaret Hyland Cunningham talked about Tom Bracken’s choreographic abilities:
Bracken is a choreographer, and that is what makes him so special, plus, musically, he is absolutely right on correct.
Chris Locke also talked about Tom’s particular abilities:
I think he likes the
challenge of individualizing and taking from each modern style to include in
his dances. He would develop a whole new
set of steps for dancers when you were past the beginner level. You were never quite sure that the steps
would be the same if you missed a week or two. I think that has created
flexibility in his advanced dancers and an ability to pick up new steps quickly.
Rosemary Browne mentioned the difficulty and excitement of starting with a new school.
Carrie Haney competed for Tom Bracken when his school was new:
I stayed with Bracken when
he first took over Maoileidigh, because I was thinking that I wanted to compete
more, and that I wanted to see his style. That was a really fun experience
because there was such a change in terminology, compared to Doireann. He would
say treble, and she would say rally, and, oh, it was
so different! I caught on to his steps well, and actually helped some of the
other girls, who were more advanced than me, catch on to his steps. I was able
to pick up by watching easier, and the terminology barrier didn’t affect me so much as other people. It was really cute, because they
would come up to me and say, ‘Carrie, translate!’.
They would get so frustrated. Eventually, we got past that, and he started
teaching us that
12-hand, and that was really fun and brought us together. He started teaching
us some 8-hands that we had never done before.
Marc and Karl Callaghan were Tom’s first Arizonan qualifiers for the Worlds, as well as his first Arizonans to win the Oireachtas. Brandy Johnson remembers that they became very good dancers extremely quickly. This pattern would later be repeated in some of Tom’s other dancers.
[The Callaghans]
were in and out [of
Julian Gladysiewski talked about seeing Lord of the Dance on PBS, and wanting to start Irish dancing. Obviously he wasn’t alone. Riverdance, Lord of the Dance, and their exposure were probably the single biggest factors in the growth of global Irish dancing.
I saw Lord of the Dance on Channel eight, one night, and I asked my mom
what kind of dance it was and she said ‘Irish’. I said I wanted to do it, and
she looked at me like I was an alien. It was interesting. It looked like it
would be fun, but I knew it would be hard work, but it looked like it would be
something that would be a lot of fun. Plus, it would keep me active because I
really didn’t enjoy regular sports like football and baseball. [I had never
done any other kind of dance and dance had never interested me before].
Elizabeth Moore also commented on the changes that Riverdance has made for dancers:
So now people, with Riverdance coming out, they come to feiseanna thinking, ‘oh, my kid could be famous now,
because they can be in Riverdance’. Before Lord of the Dance, and Riverdance,
it was more that you danced because you wanted to. I mean, there was no future
payoff, except for going to Worlds or going to Nationals. Now it’s ‘you can be
in Lord of the Dance or Spirit of the Dance or Riverdance, or any of the other
dance, dance, dance’.
Asa Markel talks about the changes he has perceived since Riverdance, including the continuation of linking of British Isles cultures with Irish cultures, and the depoliticization of Irish dancing culture [which probably also relates to a rule made by the North American Feis Commission, prohibiting political tables at feiseanna:
There has been such a
massive explosion right now [of Celtic culture] because of Riverdance and all
that. [Scottish and Irish people] seem to get along. I remember that I went to
one of my first big full concerts. It was Mick Maloney and some other pretty famous guys. They said, ‘We
are going to
tell some jokes.’ I
think we were in Centennial Hall or something, it was packed out. They were
like, ‘Are there any Scottish people in the room?’ Like half of the place
raised their arms, and they said, ‘Well, we are going to tell these jokes anyway.’
And that is just kind of the way it is, at least with the older people. I think
the media definitely portrays this sort of Leprechauns and stuff on the one
hand, and kilts on the other… I think that Scottish people are much more frugal
and tight-lipped, and I think that people seem to sort of play that up. The
full concert, you will probably find both crowds there. Pat [Hall] used to
teach, well, she didn’t teach but she judged both styles of dancing actually. There was a girl who
came before me and she did both styles of dancing, which they say is sort of
dangerous because Scottish dancing is more [like] ballet, so your knees are
turned out more, so it is kind of a problem. But, apparently she did okay, so apparently it is possible.
You go to Celtic festivals, everywhere, and it is always both Scottish and
Irish people. There is nothing really exciting about being Welsh, I guess.
People don’t really get too into it. No one would really have an ethnic
festival about being English, really, unless you were in the north of
Before Riverdance, I suppose dancing was a lot more purist. I suppose
that was because it was mostly big families, really big Catholic families. And there was even a guy in the corner that
would sell the [Irish Declaration of Independence, 1919] that Pearse read out
on the steps of the post office. And they don’t really have that stuff anymore
because I don’t think that anybody really cares, because maybe half of the
people there really consider themselves Irish.
I remember in Flagstaff, three years ago probably,
there was a Celtic festival going on up there and all these dancers were up and
this old couple was walking down the street and the guy was talking about ever since
Riverdance you can’t get away from these damn Riverdancers, but [before
Riverdance] people really had no idea what was going on. I remember on St. Pat’s you would
go to some people’s houses, like really rich people in the Foothills, and they
would have people from
the Seven Piper’s Society and they would demand that the Irish dancers dance
with the bagpipers and stuff and thought that would be fitting. I thought that
was ok but the girls complained bitterly because pipers are not very good at
keeping time. But it was alright. I thought it was cool, but I was the most
Scottish of anyone so I guess I didn’t mind so much, but...
Fran Rogan remembered a story from a particular Tucson Feis that was of relevance to the Riverdance topic:
I think it was probably our second feis that we had this little girl
from... this little red-haired girl from
Leisl Shaughnessy von dem Bussche remarked about how much Irish dancing has changed
in
I think now watching the dancing that it is a lot more
showy, I think it is more Riverdance and Lord of the Dance. There are
things that I have never seen. I had been out of Irish dancing forever, and
just went to the McElligott Feis not too long ago, just to
kind of see what was going on, and Michael Smith was judging... It was a whole
new ball game. I didn’t recognize half of what they were doing... Back when I
did it, fancy was when you did rocks, and kind of the scissor type moves, and
that was about what we did, but these kids at the feis were doing these kind of
jump splits in the air where they were doing all this crazy stuff.. We never
did any of that.
Donna Gladysiewski talked about her experience when Julian was starting Irish dancing:
We used to stand outside [Dara’s classes] as parents because we could see through the
two way glass, all these moms and dads standing , saying, ‘oh, look, she’s so cute, look she’s
dong such a good job, look that one’s doing such a nice job’, and Meghan Day,
everyone adored Meghan Day, we would always say, ‘Now isn’t she adorable, she’s
just like this little spring’, because she really, really was beautiful, and
then they would say, ‘Aww, look at that little boy,
he’s trying so hard!’. And I would be like, ‘Ooh, that one’s mine...’ He was so
pitiful, he was terrible. His first class he wore little high
top sneakers, too.
Brandy Johnson talked about performing in the
The very
I always felt like we were really impressive... I remember people
always thought we were the best.
I think Adele’s [Adele Prior’s skirt came untied] one time and then, after that, she was so paranoid about her skirt coming off. I remember being in a six hand with her one time, or an eight hand, and this was a couple of weeks after her skirt had fallen off, I was all, ‘Adele, your skirt!’. And it was fine and everything. I was just tricking her, and she freaked out! It was so funny. Mine never did, thank God.
Julian Gladysiewski talked about a particular performance when things just didn’t seem to go right. Eventually, performances became more and more professional and elite:
During class that day, Tom
had the music all set so you would just have to put it in the tape recorder
press play. So we get up there and they had the lights off. And they started to
play the music but, because they had to mess with it, it was not at the right
spot. So we go up there and the lights go up, the music started at the right
spot, but just as the eighth bar came around they stopped it. So, we all had to
stop and they turned the lights off, so we are all standing… and then they did
it again, the same thing happened, and they turned the lights off, and every
time they
turned the lights on and off it was getting funnier. So every time the music
started there’s
Elizabeth [the author of this book] giggling away in the dark. So after about 7
or 8 tries they took us off, and then we waited another hour until the very
end. And we got a CD this time, and of course, it was the worst CD to use. I’m
not saying the music was bad, it was just that, on it
before the music started, there was this big huge intro of [recorded] cheering.
So here we are up on stage, the lights are dark and there is cheering...
Finally the music started and we did the dance and that was that.
Brandy Johnson talked about Tom Bracken’s matchmaking skills and sense of humor:
Tom was always trying to get Marc [Callaghan] and I
to hook up. That was so weird for me. We didn’t like each other really, but Tom
just thought we would be the cutest couple... The same thing
with Brendan [Prior]. Tom was always trying to be little mister
matchmaker with me.
Chris Locke talked about the priority Tom makes of working with dancers that are putting the hours in and improving themselves, and the “danger” therein:
I would say that Tom’s style of teaching varies with how much the student takes it seriously. If the student really isn’t learning or practicing he doesn’t he doesn’t put as much work into them. Lack of effort may be sort of frustrating to him but he doesn’t take it personally as long as they don’t blame it on him. But if you are learning something then the real danger with Tom is that he always thinks up a new variation with you. And he is more likely to come up with, to be more creative with, each person if they are really working. As an adult, I didn’t want to not practice but I wasn’t always ready for that new step. I always thought the best competition result was one where I would dance respectably but not necessarily move up to a higher level – adults are the only dancers I know who don’t always want to move up in competition level. So that was a danger of actually working but the personal attention is really nice.
Heather McElligott Sparks has also made a name for herself in
Do you know Heather McElligott, the teacher? She
said to me, because you see I have danced all over the place,
Heather McElligott Sparks talked about her extremely quick development as a dancer, and the reasons why she began teaching:
[My age] made me more determined. At the time I started, I was in the
‘13 and over’ [competition].… When you have to dance
with really young kids, you don’t like being [beaten] by really young kids!
Also, from when I [had shown] horses, I had very strict training [habits] and
so practicing for a couple [of] hours every day was no issue for me. So, I went
right to that, and just started practicing hard, every day, because I’m
competitive. I’m not where... If I don’t win, it never really bothered me one
way or the other; but that’s why I was able to progress through fairly quickly.
I guess my years and years of practice, of just being a hard worker, kind of
paid off in the dancing. [It took me only] one year [to get into
championships].
Doireann had suggested I do the summer program at a school. I kind of
got a feel of just doing it on my own and yet kept teaching with her and
working with her own students. It was probably right around 1994 when I
retired, so to speak. I also just kind of went from one to the other. It all
just melded together. There was a slowing down of my competitiveness and an
increasing of my teaching.
I guess it was because Doireann had me helping with
her [classes] so much. I [had] never really thought of being a teacher until
she actually suggested it and said, ‘You know, you really should pursue this,
you know… you’d be good!’ Whatever she said, made me feel good [about my
abilities], so I said, ‘Okay.’ It was kind of just one of those things that I
kind of just pursued. I had pursued the competitive end of it, but due to the
fact that my knee was [injured]... It was such that I knew that I couldn’t
continue practicing hard, like I needed to. [However], I still loved the
dancing so much that a different avenue, I felt, would be nice. [Until]
Doireann [suggested] it, it would never have crossed
my mind that I could even teach. If she hadn’t brought it up and kind of pushed
the point [I might never had done it]. Then, she helped me study for it, I
passed the exam, and the rest is history!
In our school, [nobody was studying at the same time]. I think Suzanne
Houghtelin had, [perhaps], thought about it, and, maybe, Judy [Thom] had, but
I’m the only one who actually took it. At the time, as far as
Heather McElligott Sparks talked about the continuity between those earlier classes and her new school:
As a matter of fact, Ann Franevsky was part of that summer program. She
and her mom, and a number of the other dancers stayed with me. I started a
class in Cave Creek, and they stayed.
Elizabeth Moore talked about starting in the
I went to a feis, which at the time I thought was an Irish fish festival, someone kept saying it was an Irish feis festival.
Every time I heard it, I thought it was an Irish fish festival. I thought I was
going to see some fish. Then I saw people dancing, and I thought they were all
dancing for fish.
Someone said [Heather] was starting up a school, or
had just started a school, and that she was very very
nice. So I went over and started talking to her and she explained some things
about dance. That’s how I met her.
Eamon [Lanz]
had started the week before me. Ann [Franevsky] was there. Hannah and Aisling [Force] were there. They quit a while ago. Of the
people that first started, Ann and I are the only ones left. Of
that first crowd. Eamon quit to focus on school, and he was a guy, and we kept saying he was one of
the girls. That made him unhappy, so we chased him away. Bad us.
Our first class was in a living room. A hardwood
floor living room. We didn’t do hardshoe back
then, just soft shoe. It was so much more friendly.
Back then, we danced and then we had a little social hour for the next half
hour. Now it is ‘we go to class, we dance, we leave’.
Then we were in a shoe store, where they sold workman’s shoes. So we had to move the racks every day we went
to class. It was very laid back.
When Heather first started, she was just coming out of being around
Doireann a lot, and so her teaching style was very new and very old school. I
think now that she has had dancers in Oireachtas and dancers in Nationals, she
is much more her own teacher and focused much more on detail and stuff like
that. She knows so much more now then she did back then.
Mary Doyle Lanz
remembered the class Heather had when the
So Eamon started dancing in the fall of 1994
with Heather. She had some kids out in Cave Creek, and she had some kids out
here. And, it was Eamon, and Mary Placito,
Ellen’s daughter [former McCormack dancer], and, eventually Kate Carr, and
Elizabeth Moore, and Erin Lawrence. I think were the original group who danced
at the Placitos’ house. And of course more kids came
and went, and there were probably a couple of other girls who were there that
have since [left dancing].
It reminded me of when I was a little girl in Mary McCormack’s house.
They danced in the back. Heather put the music on... And I used to just sit
there and watch, and it was fun to watch them. And every time the music came
on, my feet got itchy, and I thought ‘I want to dance’. Then they moved it to
someplace bigger, and she got more students, and after about two years, I said,
ok, that’s it, I’m dancing... So I still dance one night a week with her.
Elizabeth Moore talked about the manner in which Heather teaches her classes, and she joked about the relationship that advanced dancers develop with their teachers:
There is a half an hour of
warm-ups. Floor stretches, for about 15 minutes, and then lots of
endurance/technique exercises, like we’ll do switch jumps for [enough time to]
get our heart pumping. We alternate soft shoe and hard shoe days every week.
The champions usually don’t do the light jig and the single jig, obviously. We
do them about 4 or 5 times, and then we change dances. Once a
week we have a championship class and that is just any champion that wants to
work on something special.
As a general rule, our
school is very good at our treble jigs. That was Heather’s best dance. We have
our good dances that we focus more on, because Heather is so good at them. In
terms of teaching, she is very good at
working with the little kids, but when it gets into people that she has known
forever, it is hard for her to control us because we are so rambunctious.
[Heather’s style] is much, much more detail-oriented [now]. She has
grown into it. She’s much more into the details and into being a teacher. Back
when she first started, she was being a teacher, but she was also your friend.
She wanted it to be such a friendly school, and now it is a friendly school,
and now she has so many students that she has to keep a lot of control... She
is very open to new ideas that you have for yourself, because she understands
that you know your body type and how you can do stuff.
Carrie Haney
eventually joined the
Heather is great because she
has a wonderful relationship with her dancers. She takes a lot of time out just
to talk with them and see how they are doing. She cares about them as people
more than as dancers. It is very much a family type atmosphere. We have an
annual Halloween party, out at her house.
At the same time, she can be
really strict, which is fantastic. But, most of all, she wants them to have
fun, and have great self-esteem, because of what they are doing. Appreciate the
dance and the culture... Heather is very laid back, and is always joking around, always has
a smile on her face. At the same time, when some of my students, who were at least 19, 20,
up to 25 years old, would come over to McElligott, they would be afraid of
Heather. I would be like, ‘She’s not scary!’... She would come to me and go,
‘Why don’t they come to me, why do they come to you?’.
I was like, ‘They’re scared of you Heather, I don’t know why!’.
She’s strict when she is telling them what to do with their dance style, but,
otherwise, she is very approachable.
Elizabeth Moore spoke about the things that kids in her school do outside of dancing class:
When we were practicing our eight hands for the Oireachtas, we would
get together and have these slumber parties, and just totally go wild. Then we
would leave the house, which was probably a bad idea when eight of us got
together and we were starting to paint the town red. We would just be goofy.
The
McElligott Harry Potter club. We used to, every month, but now, not so much, ever
since the movie came out. A bunch of us that read Harry Potter would get
together at someone’s house, and read the books or play the games. We used to,
every month, but not so much since the movie cam out. It was just a chance for
us to get together and be goofy, and we didn’t really do much Harry Potter
stuff. It was a mix. Me and Ann [Franevsky] and Kate [Carr] ,
and then little Courtney [Svoboda] and Britney and Caitlin. It was just such a
broad selection of ages. No parents ever came. That movie came out the weekend
of Oireachtas.
Elizabeth Moore talked about Heather McElligott Sparks’ classroom demeanor:
[Heather] can be sweet. When she is not teaching, she is so sweet. But
when she gets on her teacher’s hat, she is, especially lately, very discipline
oriented and, getting to do what you need to do and making sure you do it,
really trying to get us all focused. She is really focused herself. So much fun
to be around when she is telling us ‘More dancing, more dancing’ [and we say],
‘We don’t want to do anymore!’.
Heather McElligott Sparks talked about the objectives she keeps in mind when she choreographs:
[When choreographing, I
focus on] audience appeal. Music is very important to me because, I think, for
the audience, the competition style music can be
pretty redundant and boring. It’s great for us because we don’t even hear the
music anymore; we just follow that beat and it guides us and our minds are
going a million different directions. So, honestly, for the dancer... they
could dance to anything and make it look good, but for show pieces you have to
think of the audience. I try to perceive it form the audience’s point of view
and try to make it entertaining.
Ann Franevsky qualified for and danced in the World Championships. Elizabeth Moore chatted about her.
Ann gets so much out of what little she has! NO! No! No! I don’t mean
that she has little talent or little skills, she is TINY, she is tiny, she is,
like, wee. She is so powerful and so dedicated to doing everything right and
proper, and practices twelve times a day. It’s what she wants to do and she
goes and does it.
Elizabeth Moore also commented on some of Heather’s other prominent dancers:
The entire Bayley family has such awesome natural turnout, and they of
course have those skinny little legs that are such perfect Open championship
legs. They practice all the time, and they are so into it, and their mom sells
shoes, and so they always have shoes. They are just really naturally talented.
[Tonya Shoda]
choreographed my set... She teaches a beginners class on Fridays.
Carrie Haney mentioned some of the same dancers:
Ann Franevsky is teaching, as well as Tonya Shoda,
and Katie Martin, but Heather is always there for those classes. It is never
just the kids. She is always on the grounds. She is always there somewhere. She
can always be called upon.
Margaret Hyland Cunningham talked about the way she has seen Heather McElligott Sparks’ school develop since its inception:
Heather is doing very well; [especially since] she brought in a girl
from
Chris Locke talked about helping Heather McElligott Sparks design her costumes:
Heather knew what components she wanted for her dress. Heather had
picked out the dress pattern, her fabric, the lining, the design, and the colors
of the embroidery thread she wanted. What I did was I took her colors and I
copied her design and I just played with coloring it in on different places
with colored pencils and then she thought that was a good idea. We tried to
find something to outline it with. I know she would have rejected my color
placement if it didn’t fit what she wanted. Because I embroider a lot, I knew a
lot more about different threads than she did, so we found a gold thread to outline
it. Then I made
what I thought she wanted. Heather is not a seamstress so I just worked with
her on that. At that time, she had really six or so main dancers at that point
in time, so for about four of them I made the whole dress and on one, I think
on Ann Franevsky’s her mother did the embroidery and
I sewed the dress, and then on Elizabeth Moore’s, I did the embroidery and she
sewed the dress. It was similar in design to the Maoileidigh dress, so I had
some experience, but it was really trial and error, trying to figure out how
exactly to make a skirt stay in line. We had one real emergency.. actually the first time one of
the girls wore the dress was at the
I was never totally happy
with the dresses. There was a lot about making the dresses that I didn’t learn
for awhile and I’m still learning. Part of what I learned was the need to go
out of my geographic area for materials. I eventually learned that I could
order stiffer lining from
Mary Doyle Lanz, who is the mother of former McElligott Sparks Preliminary champion dancer Eamon Lanz, talked about the expense of the costumes:
I made him a kilt when he first started and he wore it twice, and he
outgrew it. And of course there are no kilt patterns out there, you can’t go to
the local fabric store and get that. People don’t sell salvaged edged wool, that is appropriate for making kilts, either. That’s
really hard to find. So after that I said ‘That’s it, when you’re done growing,
I’ll make you another one’. So I have made him another one, but I also just
ordered him one, and it was $500 dollars. The first one I found, they wanted
$600, and I said ‘You’ve got to be nuts, he’s 15 years
old’. That’s a lot of money.
Elizabeth Moore commented on the changes that dancing dresses have undergone in the past few years, as well as the practice of wearing spiky curlers:
[The first costumes] were so
much more plain, back when we first started. I mean, a
lot of school costumes were very plain. We had two panels that were in no way
near, they always overlapped. You would have one panel, and then the edge would
be on the other side of the other panel, and it would just hang.,
and we never really got them very stiff. Everybody embroidered their own, so
there was no consistency in the embroidery style, and so everybody’s ended up
turning out different, but now we have specific embroiderers, and we have
updated with two panels and changed the sleeves, and just updated everything...
I updated mine only because I had to for Oireachtas, and if we could would change
it back, but [leave
it] stiff, [I would]... But you know, you have to fit what judges will like,
and you have to fit what teachers will like.
I love flying with spikes.
[That is the] funnest thing in the world. We went to
Chris Locke compared the newer practice of wearing wigs to wearing curlers:
I find wigs to be a little
weird, but I don’t find wigs to be any weirder than wearing sausage rolls for
the night before, well, the day before. If you were really serious, then you
would go to school on Friday with your hair up and you would keep it up for two
days, to get those curls. That was one of your [
‘If you are going to
Kelly Sweeney talked about the advent of wigs:
Wigs were just starting to get popular, and a lot of kids in my school
in
Carrie Haney talked about Heather’s husband, Eric Sparks, and her family:
She has a beautiful family. Her husband [Eric] is very supportive of
the school. He came in once, and he did this half hour talk on stage presence.
It was great; it was so much fun to see him involved with the school in that
aspect. He was like, ‘When you go out there on stage, you need to be proud! You
need to have your head straight! You’re not looking at your feet, you’re not
looking at the person beside you, you’re not looking at the sky!’. He would have us all dance, and make sure we were looking
confident, and straight ahead. It was a great talk.
She is more focused on her family, which is good. She has told me she
has run into all these female dance teachers and adjudicators, and they are all
divorced. She is like, ‘That’s not going to happen to me. I’m not going to get
so wrapped up in my school that my family life suffers’... That’s why she
doesn’t have as many dance classes as Tom, because she really values being a
mom.
Elizabeth Moore also talked about Heather McElligott Sparks’ family:
[Heather’s family] was so sweet. Her parents just moved to
Kelly Sweeney talked about the main local teacher with the McTeggart School, Sharon Judd, TMRF, who teaches classes except on those days when Maureen Hall comes in to teach:
Sharon Judd [was running the
classes when I started (around 1995?)]. I have only been with her. Pat Hall had
already been gone. [Maureen was still coming in once a month].
I am pretty sure that
everywhere [
Sharon Judd spoke about her dance background, and the way in which she began to teach classes for the McTeggart school:
I took a lot of the modern
[dance] classes and I auditioned into a lot of choreography finals that undergrads and grads had to do. At ASU, I was in a
Chinese dance company, there was a woman
there from
[Pat] runs [her classes] pretty much the way Maureen does. A lot of the
classes, especially when they come in, are all ages and all levels, and the
kids sit down, and they come up in groups, and they all warm up together, and
she will do something with one group, and then they are off working on that,
and then she will work with the next group, and then call them back for
something else and look at what they have been working on, and then go on to
different things. So they are very busy, when they come in.
For Maureen, it is very
important to her that the steps be on time and that
they be strong, so those are the kinds of things that she emphasizes. She many
times will have people do a simpler step because they can’t get the timing. It
just makes her crazy. She’ll say to the little kids, ‘I’m a judge, you know,
and we can’t have things off time!’ It is her thing as a judge. Whenever you
get the feis results, you will see one judge that will pick one thing, and you
can tell that’s the one thing that makes them crazy. Some of them, it’s the
toes out, so you will see ‘Toes out, toes out, get your toes out!’, picking on everybody’s toes. Another judge will say, ‘Get
those heels up to the ceiling!’. Maureen, I’m sure if you
got [her results] you would see,
‘Timing, timing, get on time!’.
Pat Hall still comes in for workshops, once in a while, for us here.
Either Pat or Maureen comes in once a month, and then we gather everybody up. I
don’t know how it goes in the normal weekly class. I don’t know if either of
them is teaching a normal weekly class [now]. Both of them pretty much go in to
classes that are rehearsed by other people: TMRFs and
other people working on their teacher’s and stuff.
I don’t know that it has changed so much [since I started]. I know that
Pat had built it up and had quite a few students here, and they had faded out
by the time she quit coming altogether, I think a lot because they weren’t
having a lot of regular practices. And you always have some who come and go,
and some that stay with it, and go all the way up to championship. But, you
know, I don’t think it has changed that much since Maureen started the school.
They’re fun, those Sweeneys. They are fun. I think this is the first
generation of them that has taken dance. What is there, half a dozen of them or
so? And they know everybody else, too. All the old St. Mary’s
families. Maureen Mullins, and the Cunninghams,
and all those people who used to go to St. Mary’s downtown,
and still a lot of them are here. The Sweeneys are
one of them, everywhere you go, ‘is that so and so, and so and so’s daughter’. It’s like being in a small town in the
Kelly [Sweeney] is the greatest help and inspiration for the other
kids, and she just keeps working. I think she has been the highest level dancer
[in the school] for some time. And still she is in class two or three times a
week, and she will help anybody, anytime. She is just very self-motivated.
Sharon Judd also spoke about the way in which she runs her classes:
All of the kids [help to teach the
classes], especially because they are in class together, both the advanced and
the beginner classes. We pair them
up with the new ones to work on threes, and that’s just a part of being in that
kind of class, is that the more experienced ones help
the new guys.
Towards the feis we will rehearse everything in both classes. Between
the [feiseanna], we will overlap the beginner and
advanced classes, and we will alternate hardshoe and
light shoe on different weeks.
We don’t have a separate performing group in McTeggart. I think that if
the kids are well practiced, they can be fit into choreography and that they
should be given the opportunity...
We don’t have a lot of rules about what people wear, or that kind of
thing... They’re just expected to practice, have respect for each other, and
come in, they can’t be running around... Unless they
cross that line, there’s really not that kind of restriction. I think
[self-discipline is] something they really need to learn.
Patricia Prior also talked about the discipline that Irish dance imparts to dancers:
Discipline is not taught in the lifestyle today, whereas it is taught
in Irish dance. It is very much taught in Irish dance. You can see the
discipline..
Kelly Sweeney talked about performances in the last few years:
We perform a lot. We do festivals in
Little Beth and Ken were
both kind of funny when they first started dancing. Beth was tiny. She was
three and a half. We were rehearsing for the feis. Maureen was in town, it was
the rehearsal morning before the feis, so she was saying, ‘Come on girls, get your shoes on, because we have everything to do today before
the feis. I want to see everything!’. And little Beth got up on stage
and pointed her little toe, and she said, ‘I’m ready, do you want to see my
reel?’. And so Maureen said, ‘Well, sure’. She put on
the music, everyone else was still getting their shoes on, and Beth did her
little reel. And Mrs. Hall said to me, ‘Is she registered in the feis?’. And I said, ‘Well, no, Maureen’. It wouldn’t occur to me
to put a three year old in a feis. And she said, ‘Well, she knows her reel.
She’s perfectly welcome to do it if she wants to do it’. And so Beth did her
first feis, it was a Phoenix Feis, and she did her little reel and her two hand. And she’s been doing [feiseanna]
ever since.
Kelly Sweeney talked about Maureen Hall’s serious style of teaching:
It is definitely different [when Mrs. Hall is there]. She is really tough and she kind of just
tells you how it is. I mean, she tries to be nice, but a lot of younger kids
kind of cry because they are scared and they don’t know what is going on. But
you know when things like that happen, that she tries to say, ‘Well, I am not
yelling at you, I am just trying to tell you what to fix’. So I think that
people are a little more tense when she comes in to
town, but it ends up working out for the best, because they either get their
steps improved, or they learn new steps, or things like that. It always ends up
being better.
Lately, Mrs. Hall has been especially telling all the older kids, when
she comes back from
Sharon Judd talked about the workshops that the McTeggarts participate in during the summer:
She has the McCullahaney sisters come over from
We teach class in the
summer. We take off the week of Fourth of July, and we take off the week of the
You are [at the workshop] for a week, and you stay in a hotel. If the
kids are alone, we can pair them up with families up there. It does [help to
make the school more cohesive], and doing figures does as well. Then they
aren’t always competing against each other, when they compete as a team, they
are competing with each other. And it is fun for them to go to out of state [feiseanna] and see other McTeggarts.
You have a lot of input, and
the kids who go to the workshop can use those steps, too. We don’t re-teach
those steps in the classes, so if they are in the workshop they use those
steps, and if they aren’t... And steps evolve, but there is a basic pattern of
McTeggart steps that build nicely one to another from Beginner 1 all the way up
through Championship, but those steps evolve many times. If somebody can’t do
one ending, we will change the ending for them and make the step their own. So
some of the steps are very similar but not the same, that
the kids are doing in
Kelly Sweeney elaborated:
Excluding this summer, for
the past three summers I have gone to
[The workshops] are really
tough. I have to learn to walk again after them. There are couple
of sisters who are friends of Mrs. Hall, that come in from
Elizabeth Moore talked about what she liked most about the feis experience, and the way in which she thinks that the dance community has changed:
[Feiseanna] were just the funnest things I had ever done. Then I would wait with
bated breath for the ceílí.
Now, I think the younger kids are starting to separate
the different schools. Obviously we are still down with the whole ‘doesn’t
matter what school you are in’. Kids now think that there is something wrong
with being in the other school, and being friends. That is just so taboo now.
It is like coming home when you go to a feis. You get to see all of
your extended cousins or friends or relatives.
It just seems weird. Hanging out. Laura [Donohue,
from the
Chris Locke talked about the
decline of feis ceílís in the
[At the end of the feis day]
if you have made it through all of the politics and not had anyone yell at you
then it is time to go home and have a glass of wine, as opposed to coming and
[doing ceílí].
The bigger feiseanna are a lot more
chaotic. No matter how hard you try to prepare, there are always glitches. With
300 or so families, most people take it as it comes. But with the larger group,
the same percent of complainers is a bigger number. The ceílís were best when
the whole community was there. It’s better to have more competitors and draw
dancers from other schools but the ceílís are hard to pull off. I think the
Phoenix Feis still has a ceílí.
Sharon Judd spoke about her perception of whether competition between teachers is very strong:
Diane Calderone
was telling me that she read a book once on the history of Irish dance where
they were talking about teachers getting into fistfights at [feiseanna]... I don’t think we’re that bad! At least I’ve
never seen that at any feis I’ve ever been to. I really think that it is kind
of an individual thing. I think there has always been that. And it is uniquely
competitive. It’s not something you find between elementary schools, or little
league conferences. You don’t find that kind of ‘our school, your school’ so much.
Mary McCormack continued to teach until 1998. Elizabeth Suit, one of her adult dancers, remembered the classes that the community of adult women attended:
I started at the
Walking in they seemed very informal. It was only after looking back on
them and realizing actually how much structure there was, because you would
come in and do all the warm-ups together. She had a
very specific set of warm-ups everybody would do that were a combination of
ballet warm-ups and, you know, eights in a circle and that kind of thing. And
she had a warm-up step that was a cut two three, cut two three, cut two three
four five six seven, point hop back, point hop back, cut and stamp, point hop
back, So everyone would do that. And I remember being astonished... She would
occasionally work directly with somebody, but mostly it was everybody helping
everybody else. If you needed to learn a specific step, you went outside, or
you found someplace and you worked on it. And Mary had many more steps than the
teachers do now. There were like nine jig steps, the killer jig. So you learned
all the steps, and you would perform all the steps, you would never perform
just two steps... It was really different from a structured dance class, but
they were very intense. We would meet at seven and sometimes would be finished
as early as nine o’ clock and sometimes we would go ‘til ten or ten thirty or
eleven, if we had a performance or something else coming up. It was a really
special time. I miss that. I didn’t realize what a gift that was until she stopped doing that. That
was a really terrific thing, and especially for someone like me who had no
dance background and no history, and she was able to help
me with all of that stuff, which was fun.
Unfortunately, in April of 2002, Mary McCormack passed away.