Back at it - returning to Oireachtas 2012 to compete as adults in ceilis

Last year’s return wasn’t enough, just had to come back for more

By

KERRY O'SHEA,

IrishCentral Staff Writer

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Irish dance big winners - Patsy McLoughlin and her Adult Ladies 8-Hand first place winners'

Photo by Kerry O'Shea

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Last year I made my return to competitive Irish dancing at the Mid-Atlantic Oireachtas for 2011. Three other friends and former dancers joined me, and we competed in the adult ladies four-hand competition, which we wound up winning.

The itch to compete, however, hadn’t subsided. This year, I found myself competing in an 8-hand adult ladies competition with seven other friends and former dancers, all from the Early-McLoughlin School of Irish Dance, based in New Jersey and New York.

This year’s Oireachtas is my 18th consecutive time attending. I wasn’t competing for a few years prior to 2011, but that’s changed now.

This year’s Mid-Atlantic Oireachtas was chaired by Jean Hagen Duffy, ADCRG; Colleen Schroeder, TCRG; and Maureen O’Grady, TCRG. The honorees were Kerry Kelly-Oster, Deirdre Shea and Christine Boland. The competition saw dancers of all ages and expertise from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York come together to compete and qualify for National and World competitions.

I said it last year, but getting to come back to the same school and same teachers where you first began is an experience like no other. Six other ladies, who were returning to dance for the first time, joined me and another girl who was on my 4-hand last year. We had all grown up dancing together, so getting to head back to class together was great fun.

Coming back into class, we realized everything and nothing had changed all at the same time. The style and caliber of dancing is far superior to anything we were used to during our time competing in our not-so-distant teenage years. The once ‘fancy’ moves like feathers and ‘bicycle’ kicks look outdated compared to the speed and agility of today’s top dancers.

At the same rate, when my team began practicing, it was back to basics. Our beloved teacher Patsy was again yelling at us to kick our butts, and of course, to keep the chatter down. We couldn’t help but laugh and, of course, abide.

Thankfully, by doing a traditional ceili dance, we wouldn’t be subjected to having to learn the new tricks of today’s solo dancers. Ceili dances are uniform across the board, save for some very minor interpretation. Execution - dancing, timing, appearance - outweighs creativity in ceili dancing.

As retired dancers who had done the Cross Reel 8-hand several times in competition before, we knew exactly what needed to be done and how it needed to be danced. Getting there, however, would take some practice.

We committed ourselves to at least an hour and a half of practice a week - a measly comparison to our Oireachtas preparations of years passed. Our achy feet and legs would have us believe otherwise, though.

Week after week we improved as a team. Getting our counts memorized, knowing exactly where to ‘cut’ into a skip-two-three or not, keeping our arms steady and even - it took work, but we muscled through.

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