Dancing Around the Turn of
the Millennium
Kirsten Hahn talked about her experiences in the east coast and here:
My first class with Tom was
the Callaghan boys’ last class with Tom before they went to
[Feiseanna]
there are huge! [Feiseanna] there usually have a cap
for entries at 1000, but they always go over, and you go to [feiseanna] where there are 1500 people. They are always one
day [feiseanna], they are never full weekends like
out here, and usually they will have 8 or 9 stages, and they just try to cram
everybody into one day, which is usually fairly unsuccessful because the
timetable is always off. People are always dancing later than they are supposed
to, and sometimes you don’t get out of there until
Here, because there are only three schools, there is
a lot of interaction with each other, and we all know each other a lot better
because, you know, any time anyone needs Irish dancers, there are only three
choices. We all are exposed a lot more, on TV, or we hear about each other in
parades. So we have a lot more opportunity to see people from other schools,
and get to know people from other schools. In
Kirsten Hahn talked
about the differences between Tom Bracken’s style and that of her old teacher
in
[Tom’s classes are]
definitely different from Deirdre Shea’s. Deirdre’s
classes were definitely a lot more laid back. Tom’s classes are definitely a
lot stricter run. Tom knows what he wants, and he knows what we are capable of,
and he pretty much demands that we give him everything we can, and show him
really what we are capable of. When you are not meeting that standard, he’ll
let you know. It’s not so much whether you’re good or bad, or if your feet are
turned in, or if your knees are out. It is more that you are doing your best,
and when you are not doing your best, and when you are dancing sloppily, if you
are being lazy and not dancing up to your potential, that’s when he gets...
frustrated, because he knows that you are better than what you are showing. I
think he also thinks of it as a lack of respect, to not show him what we can
do.
He’s hilarious! He is so
funny. While we have a very professional relationship, he is definitely... you
know... He is sooo funny. And it is funny because no matter where I go or
who I meet in the Irish dancing world, anyone who I tell that Tom is my
teacher, they always just kind of laugh and say, ‘He is such a great guy, and he
is so funny’. Everybody really enjoys his sense of humor. At [feiseanna] and at any kind of gathering of teachers and
adjudicators, he is always telling stories and jokes.
Donna Gladysiewski remembered a story from the first time that her son, Julian, won the Oireachtas and qualified for the World Championships.
We had come out of the room
that Julian was dancing in, because there were several competitions ahead of
us, and, having the other girls dancing in different rooms, we had gone to see
them, going back to the room that Julian had danced in to check the numbers.
Obviously, they had made some sort of an announcement that the competition was
moved, and never bothered to put up a sign saying the competition was moved, or
where it was moved to. So we kept coming back, checking the room, the numbers
were going down [and it seemed that he had] an hour left ‘til his competition,
unknowing that at this time they had begun his competition. So Julian was up in
his room, and Tom came swinging around the corner, looking like death warmed
over, and he said to me ‘Where is Julian!’, trying to restrain his hands from
my throat. And I, being taken aback, could not give a coherent answer. And he
told me that the competition had started, and that Julian was in danger of
being disqualified, so Sam, standing next to him, Sam Diggins,
I said to him, ‘Sam, get Julian!’. And Sam ran off as
fast as he could. It happened to be checkout time at the Hiatt, which meant
there were no elevators to be had, and we were on the seventh floor.
Unfortunately, Sam took off so fast that he didn’t hear where he was to make
Julian go, so I had to stand between the elevators and the escalators, to see
which one they would come down, and send them to the appropriate room, which
was through the lobby, down the hall, past the pool, and into a tent. And I am
waiting and waiting and waiting, getting more impatient. Finally, I see them
coming down the escalator, and, in the middle of the beautiful Hiatt lobby, I am screaming, ‘Go
to the pool! Go to the pool! It’s in the pool!’ All of these lovely people are
standing around thinking that some madwoman has lost her mind, and these two
young men sprint off, through the lobby, down the hall, past the pool, and go
in to the tent that was set up down there. I managed to make it just towards
the end, as I saw Julian go down the center aisle, around the piano and the
musicians, as the other boy was coming off, the last dancer. I saw him step
into his place and them start the music. Tom was
standing next to me, still looking about as grey as he could. And Julian danced
that set dance with about five dollars worth of change in his pockets, which
you could hear occasionally tinkling, but he had no time to warm up, no time to
think about it, he just ran in, ran around the stage, got onto the stage and
danced. And he won the Oireachtas.
Julian Gladysiewski also remembered having trouble bringing home his trophy, as a result of the heightened post-September 11th (2001) security.
[We had a lot of difficulty
taking home the trophies after September 11th]. We had to take the
top off and put it into the box, and of course it wouldn’t fit in the box, so
we kind of closed the box and then taped it all around.... when we got home it
took us a half hour to put it back together.
Kirsten Hahn, who also has qualified for the
Worlds several times, remembered Tom Bracken’s support during the Oireachtas
competitions, including the 2002 Oireachtas, which was held in
That’s another story, when I
was at the Oireachtas a few years ago, and I was totally stressed out because I
didn’t think I got a recall, I
danced horribly, and I had ever seen this side of him before. Now I know it is
there. He took me outside and sat me down and talked to me for about an hour
and a half, he gave me this major pep talk about how I shouldn’t be concerned
with getting a recall, or dancing only to get a recall or to go to Worlds, that
I should be dancing because it is what I love to do. And it is what I love to
do, and I really do enjoy competing more than anything, and I just had to get
it into my mind that it really didn’t matter how I ended up doing in the feis
because competing in the feis [itself] was what I liked most about it, about
Irish dancing. He just gave me a lot of support and told me how much everyone
in the school cared about me and supported me. I felt so much better. Tom
doesn’t show that side very often, but when we really need it, he is definitely
there... [But it wasn’t a big deal in the end because] I ended up getting a
recall and qualifying for the Worlds anyway.
Even though Kelly Sweeney is also an Open championship dancer, she also talks about being nervous at the big competitions:
Oireachtas was pretty big in
itself. My first year, I was shaking so bad, I didn’t
know if I could go on stage to do my steps because I was so nervous. I didn’t
get a recall my first year, but every year after that I got a recall. Now, I
kind of expect to recall, but then once I have to do my set, it could go
anywhere from there, and I get really nervous.
Heather McElligott Sparks reflected on the increase in the skill of the dancers in the Oireachtas:
[The Oireachtas now is much]
bigger [than it was when I competed]. I think the competition in it is [getting
tougher every year]. [This is] just because in all competitions, as you get
into higher levels, the competition is always [stiff], but, because of the
larger numbers, its even more difficult to get to that
level. I think that the dancers now are even more serious, and work even
harder, and I’m not taking away from anybody on our level [in the past]. We all
worked hard, too, but there are so many dancers that you have to be even more
extraordinarily good
to get even noticed. I think that there’s a lot more fine
tuning done. I
think the dancers have to push harder. I think the choreography has probably,
as with all things that continue and progress and grow, [gotten] harder and
more difficult and more challenging. If were still doing the same choreography
we were doing back then, we would all be bored stiff. I think as with most good
competitive sports and arts, it progresses and gets more difficult.
Julian Gladysiewski spoke about his first trip to the World Championships (2002), to which he returned in 2003:
[Worlds] was less stressful,
believe it or not, I found it slightly less stressful. At Oireachtas when I
came off from doing my first dance, my whole entire body was shaking, but when
I came off from Worlds after my first dance, I was so nervous but I was much
calmer. It was really busy. it wasn’t so busy that
when you would get up people walking around you couldn’t walk around, but for
the most part there were a whole lot of people in the auditorium. The stage was
hard as a rock. Because of the lighting, you could just barely see the judges,
but you could see the stage, and there would just be black in front of you. it looked like a regular size stage when you were sitting
down, and when you are up there, but when I started dancing I realized that it
was a whole lot bigger. I realized that I had to change the [pattern] of my
dance. When we first got there, no one knew where anybody was, but after
about the first day
when we found everybody. We all pretty much got together and we would go out to
dinner after someone danced and we would celebrate.
What originally happened was
we were backstage waiting when everybody was dancing, and this one boy, before
he went out, he was really supposed to dance with someone else, but his nose
started to bleed just before he went out and they had him dance later, so they
put him with somebody else, and he went back and they tried to get his nose to
stop bleeding. Of course, it did not stop bleeding, so they had to call the
paramedics, and the paramedics couldn’t stop it bleeding either. It got so bad
that they weren’t going to let him dance, so after the last person went it was just
me and that other boy
back there, because I was waiting to dance and they didn’t want to send me out
alone, they wanted to see if his nose would stop bleeding. They couldn’t, so
they held me back there for about ten minutes, and then they said ‘Go out’, so
I went out there. Just as I went out there the musicians left to, later I
learned, have a cigarette. So I stood out there, everyone was looking at me, I
was out there with a big smile on my face and then, as the time went by, it was
about four minutes, I stood up there all alone, and after about 15 seconds, my
smile started to fade, because I was starting to feel stupid, smiling away. So
finally, the musicians came back and gave me a cold look, [like] ‘Why are you
here? What are you doing here?’, and of course they eventually figured out that
I was here to dance, and they played the music for me and I danced. And then I
danced and I went off, and I went to my seat, and
about another ten minutes later that other boy came out and danced. It
kind of shut down my charisma. My energy level went way down. As I was
standing back there I was practicing, but of course when you’re out there on
stage with everybody looking at you, you can’t very well practice.
Julian Gladysiewski also remembered his reaction to dancing with the Chieftains:
Dancing with the Chieftains was scary because we had to learn those five treble reel steps and then present them later that night. I thought it was kind of neat because well when we danced, I didn’t know how actually big they were, because I thought they were this really good Irish band that was playing, but I didn’t know that they had won any of the awards or anything until afterward. It was like, ‘Wow’.
Around the turn of the millennium, a large number of new classes were started. Brandy Johnson taught for Tom Bracken and then on her own.
For most of high school, I taught my own classes [for Tom], and then now I teach, I took over Dara’s classes. And now it is not even like I am tied to any school, I just contract out, which is kind of weird, not being Bracken or Maoileidigh.
What I think is different
about these kids is a lot of them are dancers, other types of dancers, like
they do ballet and tap and jazz, and then they wanted something extra. A few
just come for Irish, but not as many. It helps that they have somewhat of a
dance background, but they are also not as dedicated or gung-ho. This is just a
fun class for them to do.
Patricia Prior
remembered the difficulties that people had maintaining a class in
[Dara] was asked to [teach
a class for Tom Bracken in
The Irish Foundation just started in northern
Sharon Judd talked
about teaching class in
When the Irish Foundation
started the
A lot of them are in church
halls and a lot of them are in studios. Up in
Asa Markel had already moved into the area:
When I was up in Flag’ I helped Sharon Judd teach, and she’s with McTeggart, it’s just that I was the most experienced dancer there, so all the little girls would ask me questions about stuff. If there was anything to be done on the side it was me that did it, like coaching or whatever. I guess that’s natural, I think the term Sharon used, that maybe gets used a lot in Phoenix, was just ‘senior dancer’ or whatever, just these people that just help younger people, not really a big deal.
Sarah Houghtelin
has also started her own classes under the name the White Mountain Academy of
Irish Dance and has passed the TCRG exam very recently. She has been teaching
in the
Sharon Judd spoke
about the new classes in
Gwynette is working on her
teacher’s down in
Carrie Haney talked about the impetus behind her the beginning of her class at ASU:
When I was away at college, I started an
Irish dance group there, because Riverdance was so popular... It was an all
women’s college, but we were able to get some men to come over from the
colleges around the way, because it was
It was hard for me because I
was teaching all beginners, so I never really advanced at all through college
in competition, but I came home over the summers and danced with Heather. That
was a lot of fun. I showed her some of the figure dances I was learning in
I was ending my last year, and Heather called me up.
She knew I was going to be coming home in a couple of months. She was like,
‘Just throw this around in your head. How about you take over my figures
classes, because I don’t have any, and I try to work them in during solos’. I
thought it over, and I said that I did have time for that. I guess it was
before that, back in January, that I emailed ASU, and I said, ‘I’m an Irish
dance teacher, and I will be living in
The reason I thought I had
enough experience to do that was because I had been very involved in teaching
clog dancing... When I was seventeen, I started Irish dancing [again], but I
was still clogging. I was getting my certification to teach as a certified
clogging instructor. Usually, you work your way up as a clogging instructor.
You teach local workshops, which I had been doing, then you started teaching a
little more regionally, then you teach nationally.
Well, Riverdance had hit at this time and as soon as they found out that I knew
Irish step dance, and I could translate it to clogging terminology, they asked
me to teach at their national convention. They paid my way, and it was amazing.
Because I taught at the national convention right off the bat, my part time job
during college was flying to different states and teaching workshops on how to
teach cloggers how to do Irish dance. [It was] ‘Riverdance with Carrie Haney’. It was just being in the right
place at the right time, and being able to translate for a clogger.
Carrie talked more about some of the specifics of her class:
I haven’t advertised at all... Maybe if I start
losing classes because of the numbers, then I will start doing that, because
the Riverdance hype has just started to fall away. There are
still a good amount. That’s the great thing about the Irish culture. So
many people are Irish , or love
I was very intimidated in
the beginning, because I think I started teaching there when I was 24, and I
remember one guy in my class was finishing his doctorate, and I was like, ‘I’m
grading you?’. I’m finally resolved to the fact that I
am a good teacher. I know I am because people have asked me back. I can teach
reasonably well. I have done a good job and gotten complements. I am going with
the focus that these aren’t people that want to compete, these are people that
want to appreciate the culture.
I added in the history of
Irish dance, because I had researched that already for my senior honors project
at college... I get a lot of good feedback on the lectures. They want to learn
more about the history and the music.
I invited musicians from the
community such as Doug Rutherford [and] Kevin King.
A lot of the course is
demonstration quizzes, but it is very simple demonstration, like just having
their foot on the ground at the right time, and their weight on it, at the
right time. If their toes aren’t turned out, they’re not crossed, they’re not
pointed, all of those are extra credit. I give tons of
extra credit in my class... That way they are relaxed, but they are trying for
the extra credit... For the ceílí dances, they don’t have to have the footwork right
at all, they just need to get to the right spot, and not get in anyone else’s
way. That’s pretty much the obligation for passing. They have to know the
correct terminology and the order of the dance... It’s even more fun when they
mess up.. At a ceílí, in a relaxed environment, you just laugh and
roll with it.
The first and second class, we would have parties on the weekends. We would go over to people’s apartments [and watch] Lord of the Dance for part of their assignments. We would bring food. Now, I’m getting a little more separated in age from the students who are taking the classes.
We started a club up second
semester, with just alumni from the group. We don’t really advertise to people
who have never taken the class. We threw some costumes together, and started
trying to do little shows together when possible... As soon as someone asks us
to do a show, I’ll send out an email, ‘Does anyone want to do a show? Ok, we’ll
practice tomorrow!’. So it is very laid back... For
the level two class, we try to work on one
choreography piece the whole semester, and try to audition that for a dance
department production, and use it for shows.
It was really fun, last year (2001), when the three of us did the Colleen Pageant, we all got in the top five. (Meg Hill won first).
Sharon Judd talked about the beginnings of the Arizona State Championship Feis:
[We decided to start the
Arizona State Championship Feis] to have our own feis, and to have another one
in between the early summer and when school starts. We wanted to do a feis in
Kelly Sweeney also commented on the Arizona State Championship Feis:
All the other states have
had McTeggart [feiseanna] for a while. Mrs. Hall just
decided it was time to have one in
We have had a lot of help
from the
During this time, some dancers (especially from, but not representing,
the
I am in Gaelic Thunder. Gaelic Thunder got started because a group got together to do Ren Faire. Then Ann wanted to consolidate it and make it more professional for Faire. She brought all this choreography, and we would go every Sunday to practice. There are so many personalities and so many strange Faire personalities. [Not everybody] meshes together [very] well. But we all dance well together, that’s, I think, the most important part. And they are all so new. Ann and I have been dancing, them together, they have been dancing less time than Ann or I. Collectively, they have been dancing for like a year, each, and then, Ann and I, seven years and 8 [or 9] years. So it is a lot of inexperienced dancing. They are a fun groups to be around though. There are 12 dancers, 5 musicians.
Carrie Haney talked about Gaelic Thunder:
I love the Wednesday nights
over at Bandersnatch and at Rula
Bula, those have gotten to be so much fun, and I
think that has been helped by the ASU dancers going out there. Now Bandersnatch is taken over by Gaelic Thunder, on Wednesday
nights. A lot of them from the renaissance festival are going out there. They
are not mainly ASU, but there are about four ASU dancers with them.
Kevin Horton is also a new addition to the area. He continues to dance for the famous Tully-O’Hare school while he is working on his undergraduate degree at ASU. He has placed extremely well at the World Championships several times and is an excellent dancer. It is yet to be seen whether he will stay in the area to live or teach, and what affiliations he will make.