Chapter Five

Ron Plummer and Doireann Maoileidigh:

The Middle 1980s and Onward in Phoenix

Two teachers emerged in Phoenix in the mid-to-late 1980s who were of undeniable quality. Neither lived in the area, but each established stable classes for a number of years, raising the dancing aspirations for the students that they taught. Ron Plummer, ADCRG, only taught for a few years, but Doireann Maoileidigh, ADCRG, was able to establish a school in Phoenix that lasted for slightly less than a decade.

Ron Plummer, ADCRG, spoke about the time in which he was teaching in Phoenix.

There was a need for Irish dancing in the area, and there was another teacher in the area, I think it was Pat Hall... There was a Catholic school there that wanted Irish dancing as an after-school program. I moved in to start that, and I had a separate class as well in Phoenix. It was on the same day. I think it was a Monday, after school, and then I had my regular class in the evening.

What I did at that time was every two weeks I taught maybe six to eight days, depending on the load that had to be taken care of. I had my own classes in southern California, in Escondido, San Diego, and Redlands. I flew to Phoenix, Arizona, and from there I flew to Seattle, Washington, and from there I flew to Chicago and did a workshop there. Then I had a lad from my class in Escondido who moved back to college to Philadelphia, so I stopped off in Philadelphia to train him as he was getting ready for the World Championships. So I did that as well as having my own classes here, in Toronto.

[In my classes, I] obviously [had] warm-ups and stretches about 15 or 20 minutes, and then started into teaching steps.

The children who were able to pick it up a little bit faster than others, which happens everywhere and in every kind of sport, would progress that little bit faster. Not that anybody was being held back, but it was easier to group the children into a sort of an advancement, rather than holding them back, because of some kids not being able to catch on to what was being taught. As a matter of fact, the class in the Catholic school was extremely good. The potential there was just absolutely phenomenal…the talent was wonderful. That’s a long time ago, I wouldn’t even remember their names at this point in time, I’m still going through a heck of a lot of kids at this point in time. I can hardly remember their names, but I do remember that the standard and the quality of dancing at that Catholic school was just absolutely wonderful. The talent that was there was just wonderful to work with.

One of the parents would have picked me up at the airport, and taken me to the school. From there another parent would have taken me to my other class in the evening, and from there someone would have driven me back to the airport to fly to Seattle, Washington.

[In the evening],it was a different set of children, a different set of parents. The kids in the Catholic school came out when they finished their schooling for the day they were lined up outside by the sisters and just taken into the class. They stayed there until such time as the class was over. In the evening class, it was spread out more. I had the beginners in the first period, advanced beginners in the second period, and Novice and Prizewinner kids thereafter.

When asked about the number of students he had in Phoenix, Ron Plummer said:

I would say anywhere up to thirty, maybe forty in the evening class, after school, and possibly twenty-five to thirty in the other class. It may have been a bit more at one point in time, and it may have been a bit less at another point in time, but I would say about that. It obviously would have had to pay for me [to be able] to go in there.

Mr. Plummer talked about his extensive dancing background and the success of his school:

[As for] Myself, I won the All Ireland championship seven times, the Ulster championship, which is Northern Ireland, about nine times, and I won all of the majors. In regards to students I have trained, I think I have eight World Championships, and one All Ireland Champion, who is my son. At this point in time [my son] is holding both the All Ireland and the World, plus the Great Britains, the British Nationals, and he just won the North American Nationals this past weekend.

[My dancing style] probably hasn’t changed since I started teaching. I’m from the north of Ireland originally, and my style would be Northern Irish style and still is... Probably more smooth, with a lot of footwork.

Anne Daugherty commented on Ron Plummer’s dancing style:

[Ron and Nora’s] light jigs were much the same, where instead of doing a jump or a cut or an out, they did a jump and a kick out, much like Mary McCormack did. So, it was a little bit more traditional in the style. When Ryan [Anne’s son] went to the McTeggart [School – after Ron Plummer], he had to learn the point up hop back 234. That was a difference. Ron’s reel had a lot of leg lifts, so he said that several people would say that his reel and his jig would look a lot alike. He said, ‘But, you know, the people that do all the cuts, their jigs and reels look a lot alike. Their jigs look like reels! My reels just look like jigs!’.

Charles Flint talked about the differences between his style and that of the boy who danced for Ron Plummer:

The only other boy that was my age was a Plummer. They had different leaps and a different style of how they would cut. I do remember that we had quite a difference. Overall, it was fairly the same, but the choreography was different.

Sharon Judd repeated a story told to her by a former Plummer dancer.

Meghan Murphy (née Svenonius-Lydon)... she told me once, ‘You know, I used to take Ron Plummer’s class in that very same hall’, and she said, ’The thing I remember about it is him always having to call me out from under the tables’. Because they have the tables set up in rows for lunch, and the little kids scatter under the tables, so you have to call them to come on back for their light jig... They still do that. It is like a clubhouse, [to] get under the tables.

Mr. Plummer remarked about the anecdote:

I think that [the hiding] was in the evening class. There were a number of boys especially, who would get a little bit boisterous. [This happened more] if the parents weren’t around, were outside, went out for a coffee, or whatever. Well, that’s kids being kids. Controlling it was not exactly difficult, but yeah, it probably did happen, kids hiding. That’s kids being kids. But that didn’t happen in the Catholic school, in the afternoon class. It was more controlled by some of the sisters. Making sure they didn’t come out when they weren’t supposed to come out, it was very controlled. I didn’t have to control very much of that, they did it. Believe me they did it... And very well, too!

Ron Plummer talked about the lack of competition in Arizona, and about the differences between Arizona and other locations:

[There was] not very much [access to competition] actually. The Phoenix competition would have been the major at that point in time for those kids. They were mostly beginner, advanced beginner, going into Novice. Seeing as I was only there for a couple of years, they wouldn’t have been up in the championship standard at that point in time, but I would have believed that they would have gone that far. Even though I would probably not remember them now, they were only little babies at the time. [It is nice to hear these things now…that they did go into championships].

[The feiseanna were] not much different from anywhere else actually, except that it was hot. Hot outdoors. It’s probably the same format everywhere, and still not much different than it was then, except that a lot of the competitions end up being held indoors because of the heat. Most of the competitions held around [Toronto] are in the summertime because it is easier for travel. Wintertime here is an awkward time for travel because of the snow and ice. In California, Arizona, and even Seattle, Washington, didn’t have as much of the bad weather in the wintertime, so they could have their competitions mostly year-round. Whereas here [in Canada], the summer season starts right around May and continues probably ‘til October. After that (October), they start to peter out because of the weather. [Incidentally, in Ireland] they usually do it opposite. Most of their competitions start maybe in August and go through to the beginning of the next summer. The teachers there, because school, closes down for the summer, and very little competitions go on in the summertime over there.

Anne Daugherty recalled Ron Plummer’ s sense of humor:

The feis, the first year that Ryan and Tommy danced for Ron [was funny]. Ryan had been told, ‘Never turn your back on the judge’. Well, his reel step went straight forward, turn you around, straight backwards. That’s turning your back on the judge! The poor kid... he gets up there, he goes straight forward, turns around, and he stops. He kind of shrugged his shoulders, walked back, turned back around, and started again. Straight forward, turns around, and he is going [back... lifts arms in frustration, sighs]. Walks back to the back of the stage, turns back around, and for the third time dances forward turns back around, and he finally [makes more exasperated gestures with hands]. Patricia Moriarty was the musician for that year, and she stood up, when that particular group was all done, turned around, looked at Ron, and said, ‘What’s this [shaking hands]?! Are you teaching Italian?’. Ron goes, ‘Yeah, I guess’.

Ron Plummer was a hoot. He was a hoot. He never yelled at the kids, ever, and we were right there. We were right there in the same room because it was the big auditorium at St. Simon and Jude. He couldn’t really get rid of the parents. He’d shoo us off into the other end, but he couldn’t really get rid of us. We would go off to the other end and we would sit, and we would talk. He would have the kids all lined up, especially when they were learning a new step, or practicing for a feis. He would line them all up and the whole line had to do the step together, and they had to do it right, and they had to do it until they all did it right. He would stop them in the middle of it, and he would go, ‘No, it’s that one’s fault, okay, everybody, okay, stop! Wait! Do it again!’. And they would do it again, and when they would finally do it right, he would go, ‘Thank you, Lord!’. It was so cute... He always looked so sincere when he did that, and the kids were going, ‘Oh, he was praying? Oh, wow’. Of course, it didn’t help, or perhaps it did help, I don’t know, that they were dancing in the church... He was just a nice man. He had a good rapport with the kids. It just seemed like he did a good job. I was really kind of sad to see him go, because Ryan was [attached to him, good with him]... Ryan started off with Nora Pearse, and then when she left, she gave her school to Ron Plummer, and he danced with Ron Plummer [an then he] went to McTeggart.

Mr. Plummer described his costumes:

They were white dresses with hand embroidery, and red satin shawl. It was the same costume I had in California at the time.

Margaret McNulty remembered the bright white Plummer costumes:

You had to be really careful [to not mess up Ron Plummer’s dresses].

Mr. Plummer also spoke about the likelihood that dancers from his different classes would not necessarily have met each other:

They probably would have met in competition if they did travel. I would say the kids from Phoenix didn’t do a lot of traveling at that particular time. More so the kids from California would have come to the Phoenix Feis, and in that instance they would have gotten together and not known each other but known each other by costume.

Janet Corcoran talked about some of the frustrations that people had with the lack of a permanent teacher who lived in the area:

[With] Ron Plummer, it was almost like he was always in a hurry. He would hurry into town, get the dance over, and hurry to get his plane that night. I think he relied on the kids’ practice. Of course, all of them relied on the kids’ practice. They always say you have to practice a half hour a day. Well, that’s impossible!

Fiona McNulty was an assistant teacher for Ron Plummer.

Fiona- [Ron Plummer] was a little more strict I think.

Margaret- But you wound up teaching for him, didn’t you, on the days when he couldn’t come in.

Fiona- Yeah, because he was coming in from California... He started coming in every other week. and the weeks that he didn’t come in, I would teach for him. He had close to 30 kids... Kids wanted to run around.

Margaret- His temperament varied from week to week.

Fiona- He was pretty decent. He wasn’t, like, yelling all the time or anything like that. He was strict, and he expected us to know our stuff.

Margaret- He was always threatening to tie your hands together in the back if you didn’t keep your arms straight!

Fiona- Yeah, he would say things like that, but I don’t think it was in a nasty way.

Margaret- No, he was never nasty. He was sarcastic. But he was always nice, wasn’t he?

Eventually, Ron Plummer handed over his classes.

I was in there for a couple of years, and I gave the class over to another teacher from the Los Angeles area, Doireann Maoileidigh.

Years later, Mr. Plummer happened to meet some of his old students in a feis on the east coast.

As a matter of fact I met them [the McNultys] about five years ago, I believe in Washington, at a feis where I was judging. They just happened to be visiting there at the time. [They] didn’t realize the feis was on, or they would have competed, but they did hear about it and dropped in, and, funny enough, I was judging, so that was quite a surprise, to see them after such a long time.

When Nora Pearse left, as previously stated, she encouraged many students to go take lessons with a new teacher on the west coast, Doireann Maoileidigh, ADCRG. Peg Cunningham remembered:

She got word that Doireann was coming here, to town, and she didn’t know Doireann, in the way that she worded it in the letter. When we got back from vacation, we got a letter. Nora was already gone. And in the letter she said that she had heard that this Maoileidigh school was very good, that the teacher was very good, to give it a try. She suggested that we go to class with each school, and decide for ourselves, what we wanted to do.

Doireann Hoy née Maoileidigh taught in the Phoenix area throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s. Out of her school came new institutions, including the Feis in the Desert. She also produced a number of championship dancers, including Sarah McNulty, who had danced with other teachers but eventually qualified for the Worlds with Doireann. Doireann said:

I came out [to North America] in 1985 all by myself. I started teaching in Los Angeles, and after about four years, Suzanne Houghtelin was moving to Phoenix, and her dilemma was, she didn’t have a dance teacher for Sarah to continue with. At the same time, Nora Pearse was leaving Phoenix, and it just so happened that I was moving in about the same time. It was a good coincidence. She moved to Pennsylvania, I believe, and I took over most of her kids.

I started up in Winnipeg, and I did three months there, but after the second day I told them that I couldn’t handle that place and I was out of there.

Heather Stewart recalled Doireann’s first day teaching in Phoenix:

It was funny…it was at St Bridget’s church in Mesa, and we were all like ‘Yeah, yeah, a teacher from Ireland’, you know? We all sat in a bunch, Mary Cunningham and all those people, and we were all nervous, because Doireann had stepped in the church. She said, ‘Ok, now, we’re having tryouts today! I’m going to have you do your reel, and [the other dances], and if you try out, and it works out, you can stay, if not, you can go home’, and we were like, ‘Oh my gosh!’. So we went up there, and Mary and I thought, ‘We know how to dance, we’ll be fine’, and we got up there, and we danced, and she was just like, ‘Oh, wonderful, wonderful!’. So it wasn’t a hard transition at all. It was cool. It was exciting to have a teacher from Ireland. I asked her years later, why she did it, and she just said ‘I was so nervous, I was just thinking of something to do!’.

Peg Cunningham remembered the first class as one of the rare but special occasions in which she was able to see Doireann seriously dance:

The kids made her dance, because the kids never saw her before. The kids said to her, because they had always seen Nora dance. Nora always danced in performances, she was always part of it, and they wanted to see her dance. Doireann was very shy. She reluctantly danced for everybody, and of course, her dancing was exquisite.

Peg Cunningham (who is not related to the Cunninghams in this quote), also remembered the first location, and its significance:

The church that Father [John] Cunningham has out in Mesa– that’s where she gave the dance lessons first.

Doireann recalled the transition that the kids made, and the ways that she adapted her teaching for the transferring students:

I think they adapted very well [after coming from Nora’s classes]. They had been trained very well, so they didn’t find it hard at all. The styles were very similar. I suppose they had been dancing for a few years. I think they were so willing to learn that they took the corrections and worked with the corrections. I didn’t find that Nora did anything peculiar.

Initially, I did solos. I focused on the hardshoe [for the kids who had been with Nora], because that was the part that needed the most reining in.

Doireann Maoileidigh Hoy spoke of her training and extensive achievements as a dancer:

My dad had a big school in Ireland [Inis Ealga was a longstanding and prestigious school in Dublin]. We [she and her sisters] all started when we were about 3 or 4, and then when we were about 8, we would go down to the class to help. That wasn’t just a matter of him putting us in the car and driving, it was a matter of 8 year olds crossing a very busy street, standing for hours for a bus, riding a bus for an hour into the city center, getting off the bus in the city center, and then walking for about 15 minutes through downtown Dublin to the dance class. It was big deal. We did that from the time we were 8, and then in 1985, I took off. My twin sister was already in Texas.

We did the first World Championships, and we have been doing World Championships ever since. We were on the winning teams for the first 10 or 11 years. Life was Irish dancing. If we wanted to eat dinner, we did Irish dancing. So we have grown up with it. [I] did solo, figure, ceílí, and dance drama [in the Worlds].

Peg Cunningham compared the styles of the schools:

I know Doireann’s steps were more mixed with ballet, and Doireann used to say that they were more ladylike, in some ways, where Nora’s were strictly traditional, from back east. The McTeggarts were very traditional, too. Doireann’s steps were different. You could see it was a different style. Suzanne Houghtelin would speak for her and said it was a more ladylike style.

After about a year you could see the difference. When my girls were competing in California they were just moving up very fast. I could see that Doireann was a very good teacher. So was Nora, but Nora really wasn’t interested in competitions. That really wasn’t what she wanted to do. They did pretty good with Nora, too, for what they were doing, but she wasn’t an accredited teacher. She did not have that license.

Initially, she got the bulk of her students from the Pearse school. She started to draw students because she was a very good teacher. People would see the kids out dancing. The costumes were pretty, too. Kids liked them. They were pretty. I would say she had the largest school here. At one time it used to be McTeggart had the largest school, and then Pat kinda gave it all up after a while.

Peg Cunningham also talked about the very positive reception that this style found:

She mixed it. She did everything. She did solos, and they really worked hard when it was time for a competition. She would put her heart and soul into it, and really expect the best by them. Her figure dancing was pretty good. The children competed against good schools and did very well with it. They got to use it a lot, because they were always out performing– not just nursing homes, but other places. Country clubs and whatnot. She built up a nice reputation; People always wanted her school back.

Carrie Haney remembered one thing about Doireann Hoy that had always amazed her:

The one thing that amazed me about [Doireann] was that she was solid muscle!

Doireann spoke of the difficulties of being a ‘traveling dancing master,’ but also the reasons why she continued to do the work for so long:

It was very difficult financially, because I had to buy airline tickets months in advance. When I started going, they were 19 dollars each way, which was a great deal, but then, after a couple of years, they went up to around 120 dollars, one way, each week.

It was very difficult because I was so tired. Every Friday, it took me all day to get there, and then I would get back in my car at two in the morning, and get home, and get up the next day to do more classes. But the kids were always worth it. Every single child, and every single adult, in Phoenix was just wonderful. That’s why I did it for seven years.

Doireann also talked about her efforts to include the Phoenix students in a more unified school:

I made a point to [integrate the teams] because I wanted you to get to know all the kids in California. I do know now that there have been lifelong friendships made because of it. I also wanted you [Phoenix students] to feel that you were a part of the school. I never wanted you to feel that you were just the Phoenix section, because you were as important, if not more important than all of the kids in the Los Angeles school.

We did the exact same material, the exact same steps [in all locations].

Brandy Johnson, a Maoileidigh dancer, remembered dancing with other children from the school:

In California, the Martin family. My two hand partner for the first several years was Patrick Martin.

Peg Cunningham talked about the connections her daughters made with students from other branches of the school, and beyond:

It seemed we had a core. We were almost like a cult. It was so much fun to go to travel all together and to go to the [feiseanna] in California. There was a group of us that would all go. We knew these other people in California that we were friends with. We stayed in some of their houses. It just was a special thing. In fact, Mary [Cunningham] used to correspond with kids in California. She had pen pals in California. The kids got to know these other kids in other schools there. And not just the Maoileidigh school; she corresponded with a kid in the Kennelly school, and then one of the kids in the Maoileidigh school.

Doireann remembered that she always tried to make sure the children had a good time in class:

They always had a good time at the class, because I made sure they enjoyed what they were doing. I have come across a couple of kids who I did find were forced, and I have worked and worked with them, and I have had a couple who have left, but didn’t know if they wanted to leave or not, because they were having such a good time, and learning so much, and having fun doing it. Yet, their little stubborn natures were saying, ‘well, I’m going to show my dad or my mom that they’re wrong’.... I’ve found that too.

Brandy Johnson talked about the structure of Doireann’ s classes:

[Doireann’s classes were] pretty structured. Every week we did the same set of exercises and warm-ups. Then we would go through our dances and then maybe learn a new step at the end. I remember them being very similar each week. She had a [set] plan, which I think changed a lot when Tom came in. I remember her laughing a lot, she had a good sense of humor about everything. She was very rarely in a bad mood. Sometimes she was, but it was just very rare. She would just fly in and fly out, the same night, after dance class. That was so weird for me, that she would do that for us.

I thought she was really well rounded. I don’t think there was one area that she liked to focus on [more than others]. I think she was pretty good at all the kinds, like hard shoe and soft shoe and figures and choreography. I thought she was a really well rounded teacher. I thought she was really hands on. She danced with us, to show us a step. She always had her hard shoes or soft shoes on with us.

Chris Locke talked about Doireann Hoy’s teaching style:

I remember Doireann being serious but encouraging. She didn’t get angry very often, but she tended to be the most directive with students who she thought had the most potential, if they weren’t paying attention in class. She was fairly strict in class. When we first started it was a really odd combination of adult and advanced classes so we were in the same class as dancers like Sarah McNulty who went to Worlds. The two that she got most impatient with occasionally were Lauren Oriciulo and Anne Marie McNulty because they were younger for the class and their attention-span was appropriate for their age. They weren’t always paying attention but they were such good dancers that they needed to be in the advanced class. I occasionally felt a little sorry for them but I don’t think they minded. The combined class was particularly odd when I look back on it. [However], Doireann never made the beginner adults feel that we were doing poorly despite the fact that we were pretty awful.

I remember Doireann as being very quiet but as having a very dry sense of humor. I sometimes picked her up from the airport or took her back at the end of the night. I had the pleasure of being able to talk with her a little more and learn more about her. As for her sense of humor, one thing she said about coming to Los Angeles was that she got sort of started around to go to different places and she got to Los Angeles and all her clothes dried easily and so she decided to stay there…This obviously not the whole story but it was certainly true. She also recalled how her pronunciation or the letter ‘r’ as ‘or’ sometimes caused confusion. She said that she wondered for a time why they would name a store “Toys ‘or’ Us”.

Eventually, there were times when it was just an adult class. I think the adult class kind of eventually got to be a later class. I think there weren’t very many adults when we started. There never were a lot of adults, but there was at least a larger group for a while. She always remembered and commented on whether you had practiced or not. She would also let you know what your faults were in a diplomatic way. For example, at one point she told me that I was a great dancer if I could ever get in time with the music. I couldn’t really hear it in the soft shoes, so that remark made me go home and practice my soft shoe dances in my hard shoes to hear the sounds.

Inevitably, there were problems with having a school so far away from home. Heather Stewart remembered the difficulty Doireann had getting her students to practice as much as she would have liked:

In Phoenix, we only had her once a week. We didn’t have the drilling, constantly. We couldn’t understand why the California kids were better than us. We didn’t understand the practicing. Doireann would come in and say, ‘You have to practice, I can’t do this for you’. We would go into our garages at night [and practice], but we didn’t understand the [need for] drilling.

Doireann talked about these problems in greater detail:

I just felt that the Phoenix kids, because I didn’t live there, were inclined to use the fact that I didn’t live there as an excuse not to practice. [They thought], ‘Well, she’s not here, so we can’t practice, or, she’s not here, so it doesn’t apply to us’. Here, even if I did live in Huntington Beach and the kids were up in San Pedro, the fact that we were in the same area... It never crossed their minds to think that way at all.

Because I was only in once a week, because that was the most I could get in [the kids didn’t progress as quickly]. I always wished I could get in more. That’s why I eventually got another teacher (Tom Bracken) in. I got the best teacher I knew, available, who happened to be emigrating, which was so good at the time. He was able to do as many classes as people were able to get to. That was my wish, that the kids had as good a teacher [as possible] come in and take over.

There were some kids who despite the fact that they only saw me once a week, still improved [dramatically]. They were wonderful. With Phoenix being so far away, again, logistics has a lot to do with it. I know most of the parents tried to get their kids to as many [feiseanna] as they could. But I know, having said that, that that a lot of my parents here in Los Angeles travel an awful lot to San Francisco, and Tucson, and Phoenix, and San Diego, to get their kids to [feiseanna], so it is a lot to do with the effort the parents put out, too. It wasn’t that there was a lack of [feiseanna] [on the west coast]. There were plenty of [feiseanna]. It was just that [some of] the parents weren’t ready to drive their kids all over [the western United States]. Most of them wanted to be involved, but not that involved.

Patricia Prior talked about the practicing that her daughter Dara did:

When it was coming up to [feiseanna] [they would get together]. Dara, Heather McElligott, Heather Stewart, and Sarah McNulty got together a few times before a feis, but not often enough, not enough to be constant. Sarah lived over in North Phoenix, so if they wanted to practice, and if everyone was available, it took us an hour to get there. That was a long drive for the kids to get together just to do a few practices before a feis.

Probably because of the fact that Doireann usually only saw her dancers one day a week, they progressed more slowly than later, when there were consistent classes in the area. Sally and Laura Donohue also talked about this:

Sally- This was [Laura’s] first feis in Tucson, and she got an itty-bitty trophy for second place. We were all night in Tucson, overnight, motel, full bit, and all she danced was the reel. Thirty seconds and it was over with. We had no clue what was going on. This was still 1989.

Laura- So almost a full year, and I still hadn’t learned a light jig. Doireann was a [relatively] slow teacher[in the number of new dances presented at the same time].

Sally- Well, she was. That’s why I was amazed at how fast Tom [Bracken] was pumping out dances to people.

Peg Cunningham remembered an amusing occasion when one of Doireann’s siblings came and helped teach the class:

I remember when she got married, her brother Owen came and taught the classes, and the girls were all in love with him. He was this good looking young man, and the teenagers were all gaga over him. One girl kept looking down, and he said, ‘Are you looking at the ‘doost’, are you looking at the ‘doost’?’

Chris Locke remembered when another Maoileidigh sibling came on a consistent basis to help the adults before the Oireachtas:

Eimer worked with the adult group that went to the Oireachtas when it came to Phoenix. She was really strict for that period of time…She could have had a whip in her hand and needed one to get the 8 of us to do the dance as perfectly as we could manage. We understood that this was good but we knew we needed to be awake for those sessions. For the Oireachtas, we probably practiced about three times a week for at least a couple of hours. We would line up in rows and we would practice 1-2-3s until we were all doing it the same, and we would practice having turns with a partner, to all do it the same. We probably practiced for a good three months, twice a week. Eimer would come in about once a week, and it was very, very structured. We practiced all the movements individually and then the whole thing together and all the timing.

Other schools that we knew would be competing had adults who always danced and [feiseanna] and you knew they practiced. We were pretty “hit and miss” and sometimes downright embarrassing. But, Suzanne Houghtelin rounded up a group because being in the Oireachtas was one of her personal goals. Luckily, for everyone, we placed quite well.

Heather McElligott née Sparks also helped Doireann teach, especially near the end of the school’s time in Arizona. Chris Locke remembered:

Sometimes Heather would teach the class. I think that sometimes she taught it when Doireann wasn’t there or when Doireann was working with another group. Every teacher was different at pointing out and focusing on different things. What I remember about Heather is that she was very good at focusing on having your toes out and pointed down. Since it was not her school, she was not teaching her own step to us, but she was really good at looking at the form of your feet and different things.

Sally Donohue remembered a sweet feis story from this period:

MacAloon… Michael. He was so cute. Do you remember the time that he was dancing and he had a little clip on type tie, and he was dancing away, he looked back, and something had happened, he was still trying to dance, but his tie was gone. He was trying not to step on it, he was looking around, as to where it was, but he was dancing away. The judge was cracking up, the whole audience was rolling in the aisles, and the tie had disappeared. It was nowhere. He was sure he was going to dance over it and kill himself, but it had disappeared. So everybody’s laughing, and he finally stopped. It had gone down in his jacket. Only to Michael MacAloon could something like that happen.

Brandy Johnson talked about what the feis experience was like for her:

I was really competitive all the way through, until my last years of dancing, and then I cut back a bit. I remember going to every single competition, dancing in every single dance we could possibly dance in. With Doireann we did a lot of figures, which I enjoy. That has always been my favorite. I remember my mom and my grandma always being there, sitting in the front row. I remember getting really, really nervous. I would always get a stomach ache right before I danced. I remember doing my hair. That was always the worst part for me. I hated that. I think mainly it was me getting really nervous, but I liked them.

Our parents would chase us and freak out about our hair and our dresses being dirty.

I remember going and looking at the trophies before [the slip jig specials]. Oh, I really wanted that trophy.

Chris Locke talked about the expense of Irish dancing:

I think that the dresses have become a lot more expensive, but I think that the whole process was always expensive for anyone who actually participated enough to advance in competition. I think it actually cost more, earlier, to be successful because most of the dancers from Arizona who advance in dancing spent an awful lot of time going to California. Because there were an awful lot of times where there were not enough dancers and the competition wasn’t that great in Arizona. It was a lifestyle. I’m not sure that, except for the dresses, the rest is any more expensive than it used to be as a proportion of total income.

Certainly Arizona had less people going to really high levels, and I know that individuals maybe sought support from the community. I remember that Sarah McNulty sold Tupperware to raise money to go to Worlds. She was surprised, I think, when we just gave her some money rather than buying the Tupperware. I always figured that she actually made more if I just gave her some money, and I didn’t need anymore Tupperware but we wanted to support her as a symbol of ‘our’ school.

Sally and Laura Donohue had a conversation about the influence of dancers who came from other places (in particular, the east coast), and the differences in skill level:

Sally- Lauren (Orcioulo) moved here from New Jersey, and started with Doireann.

Laura- And she already knew all the fancy trebles, and the twists.

Sally- She really kind of blew their minds when she first came.

Laura- None of us had done anything remotely like that. We might have had like one twist, but it didn’t look like a twist. She was going all over the place, rocking. Everything looked nice.

Although Doireann did have rules about costumes, sometimes the expectations that the Phoenix dancers had for themselves seemed a little bit looser. This was probably reinforced by the fact that all of the dresses and most of the accessories were homemade. Sally Donohue talked about this, and also about her lack of knowledge of Irish dancing customs as a new “feis mom.”:

[One girl had a dress where] the birds were embroidered facing towards each other, which seemed sensible enough, but they weren’t supposed to be facing towards each other. She wore it [in competitions and shows].

There weren’t specific rules. I didn’t even know that we were supposed to put in curls in, and in those first few pictures she didn’t have curls, I didn’t know anything about curls. Then when they said curls, I put them in, but I put them the way I liked them. She sometimes had them and sometimes she didn’t, but, when she did, sometimes we had little hair barrettes all over the place, and everything. It was a while before they settled on specific rules.

At one point, select Phoenix Maoileidighs even danced on “Murder She Wrote”, a popular TV show with California dancers from the Maoileidigh School. Their little group was called the “Ballynoe Tripsters.”

Near the end of the 1980s, Sharon Judd and some other experienced adult dancers decided to form an educational group which taught the basic ideas behind Irish step dancing to school children.

I had taught workshops in schools - I think that was 1989, 1990, something like that. I had auditioned the Phoenix Irish Step Dancers onto the Arts Commission Roster. When we did that [the group included] Judy [Thom] and I, my brother Patrick, and Suzanne Houghtelin. We did that because I was on the Arts Commission Roster with other dance companies that I was with, so I got a copy of all the artists that were on the state roster, and there were no Irish dancers in it. It’s not something a dance school is going to do, because you have to be available during the week, during the day to go out and do residencies with the school district. So we all checked with Doireann and Mary, and we all got together and auditioned. You have re-audition every few years, and we are still roster artists.

The thing is the schools or the communities file the grants through the Commission, so only so many grants are approved. It is all contingent on that. We do several things a year, but they aren’t all full fledged residencies... Other times we just go out and do back to back assemblies/lecture demos, and then sometimes you do a community residency, where you go up into a community and you are traveling around to different schools, where sometimes you do performances, and sometimes you do lecture-demos, and sometimes you do a workshop. Those usually culminate with a community performance at the end.

In the early 1990s, it was decided that Phoenix needed another feis. Peg Cunningham recounted:

We started going to California, to all these [feiseanna], and we began to think, we should have another feis here, in Phoenix. It kind of started that way. We felt like one wasn’t enough in Phoenix. We should have another one. Eireen Mackoway [who had two girls in the Maoileidigh school] did a lot of the organizing. Later, after her (she moved away; she got it started), Stephanie (Svenonius) Murphy and Karen Masterson, really did everything. They were wonderful at keeping it together, really holding it in there. Pat Prior was one of the original people that were in it [as well as] Margaret McNulty.

We had a garage sale [for seed money], that’s one of the things we did. Margaret came up with that idea, and we had it at Stephanie’s house. We all donated all kinds of stuff, and it was very successful; it did raise a fair amount of money, to help start it.

Patricia Prior recalled:

The three of them got together and decided to do a beginner feis. I remember that I was not in favor of it, because [I thought] it would have taken away from the Phoenix Feis. The Phoenix Feis was just getting going at the time. But then, after a while of seeing and meeting everyone, I realized that we needed the competition of two [feiseanna]. Then the Tucson Feis was being started at the time. But then the kids would have three [feiseanna] in the state to compete. The families that couldn’t afford to go to California would have a chance at competition. That was it. Basically the first two years, it was a beginner special, it was not a regular feis. It took two years to get the dates through [the North American Feis Commission]. We all got involved. The first one that was registered was 1991. The first beginner one was 1989.

Sally Donohue remembered the main mothers who ran the feis.

Eileen MacAloon kind of ran it for a few years, and then Stephanie Murphy. [Eileen] MacAloon [eventually] moved to Texas.

Peg Cunningham recalled that, in the beginning, there were some problems keeping the feis going:

One year it was so bad, Doireann cancelled it like [the] week before the feis. She cancelled it just days before, because there was such a low amount of entrants. It was the only time it was ever cancelled. It was the only time any feis in Arizona, that I ever heard of, was cancelled.

However, despite its troubles, Doireann commented on the strength of the Irish community in Phoenix:

Definitely, there’s a very good Irish society out there. The whole Irish population out there seemed to be very close. They all knew each other, and they’d meet for picnics, and I was forever hearing about the Phoenix picnics, and always wanted to go to one of the Phoenix picnics, but never had time.

Patricia Prior also remembered the picnics.

The Irish foundation would have [the picnics], and they have been having them for years and years. They were April and mid-October.

Chris Locke talked about the kinds of changes that she saw the feis world go through:

I think that they have gotten a lot less community oriented [in Phoenix]. I think that the Phoenix Feis, for example, used to actually be a time when a lot of the Irish community groups would get together just to be together. Of course, I think there is a lot less beer drunk at the [feiseanna] than there used to be, because there was always a beer stand, which may be good or bad. There is a lot more attention paid to the state of the stage or the floor for example. Perhaps that has something to do with the danger level of the steps. It seems a lot easier to slip now. Also, a feis committee didn’t necessarily think about liability a few years ago. When I think about the floors, like the stage up high at the Phoenix Feis, it could have been pretty dangerous. There were also fewer rules about using things that would help make individual dancers a lot less slippery. You could put some things on the floor and now there are more specific rules. One of the big changes is that all of the awards used to be given in groups, and I think that actually awards were given more freely. Now I think that most [feiseanna] award pretty heavily the very, very beginning students but not so much the older. When everyone used to be called up, it seemed like more people got something. One of the big down sides [of a small feis] was that there weren’t always enough students to advance. My experience is limited to west coast [feiseanna], but I even remember going to the Gold Coast Feis, which is a fairly large one, and there would only be two or three competitors [in some competitions]. People seemed to always calculate scores right but there wasn’t as much pressure to be professional – partly because computer knowledge has increased a lot. For a long time basically two people ran the Feis in the Desert, Stephanie Svenonius and Karen Masterson. They basically were the Feis in the Desert. One of the things about the Feis in the Desert was that it always ran on time. It has always been an object of pride for the Feis in the Desert. They would lose their reputation if they didn’t run on time.