One of the good things that happened was that I
"earned my spurs" and could be part of the Wild Hornpipe, a dance
that was always the climax of any of our shows. Another high point was Strings
of Fire. Traditionally, it had been danced only by the girls. The music is
from Lord of the Dance and Feet of Flames, is about four minutes
long and is fast. Our teacher designed a choreography to the music and one
year, she opened it to anyone who wanted to learn it. I jumped at the chance.
That became a bit of a sore point for Sara but we got past it. Another high
point was finally learning a treble reel. That's a reel done in hard shoes and
is very fast.
So, here
I sit at the Irish Dance world championships (Oireachtas Rince na Cruinn for
those of you who parlez Gaelic) finding myself caught up in Irish dance again.
As I think back on how a Jewish kid from New York got caught up in the world of
Irish dance, I can only make reference to a line from the Grateful Dead's song,
Truckin': "What a long strange trip it's been."
My first
taste of Irish dance (henceforth ID 'cuz it's shorter to type) came when Riverdance
first came to the U.S. I clearly remember, we were staying at the Bearskin Neck
Motor Lodge in Rockport, MA getting ready to drive to nearby Gloucester to go
on a whale watch. I had the Today Show on and they had the Riverdance
company on, dancing on the street outside the studio. They did the final number
of the first act and I remember being blown away by the precision of the
company. I had never heard of ID before but there are lots of things I've never
heard of. That was my first taste and I didn't think much about it after that...until...
...my
daughter Sara, having also discovered ID (and falling head over heels in love
with Michael Flatley) began taking lessons as an adult. (She's very, very good
and will make an excellent TCRG (officially certified ID teacher) when she
passes the exam. She's always been a good teacher as an assistant and has
taught me well, but more on that later.) Anyway, I was dragged, kicking and
screaming to my first dance recital to watch her dance. I remember that she was
part of a ceili (that means group dance) with several other adults. One dance
they all dressed up like hillbillies because it fit the music. Looking at the
adult guys dancing, I noted that they were about my age. The thought came to
me, hell, if they can do it, maybe I can. (Digression #1: That was really an
amazing thought because when it comes to most types of dancing, I have four or
five left feet. But it looked like a lot of fun.)
This was
at the time that Sara (and, sorry, dear, but it's a necessary part of my story
so suck it up and grin and bear it through this part) was engaged and we were
planning the wedding. I knew she and a bunch of the other dancers were planning
on performing at her wedding reception. Without saying anything to anyone,
including my wife Joy, I bought a how to do ID video featuring Colin Dunn. I
planned on learning a simple step and surprising Sara at the reception. Now, I
thought this was a beginner's how to do ID video. Let me tell you, that even at
the height of my ID career, I couldn't do what he was teaching in that video.
So, I assumed that ID was yet another form of dance at which I was incompetent
and abandoned the idea.
The
wedding was at the end of May and some time in April, Sara competed in a feis (pronounced
“fesh,” and is a local ID dance
competition) where they had a parent-child competition. She came home and
announced that I was going to learn how to do ID so that we could compete
together. (Digression #2: Subsequently she learned that it was only for
children UNDER a certain age, but she neglected to mention this discovery.)
Sooooo,
there I was, at her ID school during the summer, learning how to do threes and
sevens and over two-threes. What may you ask are threes and sevens and over
two-threes? They're the basic steps on which almost all ID is built. Oh, I was
a pathetic sight. Sara, our dance teacher's two youngest daughters and two of
the older teen girls, (Erika and Kim) worked with me. One of the older teens
told Sara that she didn't think I would EVER be able to do anything. One day,
Sara said to me, "Do you remember wizarding?" (Digression #3: when I
was in college, sometimes, we and my frat's little sisters, would make like
Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz and go wizarding across campus, like we were
on the Yellow Brick Road. That step they did was a three.) So after Sara
pointed out that wizarding was a three, I finally got it. Ta-da, the first
breakthrough. The sevens? Well, that would get better later...much later. The
over two-threes? There you lift your lead leg and jump the other one from the
back OVER the lead leg, hence over two-three. That one took a while, too, until
she likened it to running over a hurdle, a track event I had competed in when I
was in high school.
So armed
with this wee bit of dance skill, Sara suggested we go to adult dance class
when it started up in September. I was game. Adult dance was a very relaxed
evening of ceili dance. At that first session, I was introduced to the 4-hand
reel and the 8-hand reel. (Digression #4: 4-hand just means four people are
dancing together.) It was fun. I stumbled all over myself and only got to the
right place at times because my partner In the 8-hand, Liz, was a strong and
experienced dancer. My partner in the 4-hand, Kathy, was as new as I was. When
we were done, we all sat down and our teacher said, "Who wants to dance in
the Oireachtas?" Sara put up here hand and said to me, "Put up your
hand." I said, "Huh?" and she repeated herself. So I put up my
hand. What the heck? In for an inch, in for a mile.
Through
the fall I went to adult dance on Friday nights, got relatively comfortable
with the 4-hand reel, mildly conversant with the 8-hand reel, and got to know
my partners (same ladies as the first night). And then came the weekend before
Thanksgiving, the weekend of the New England Oireachtas.
It was at
a hotel in Stamford, only about an hour and a half drive for us. We were
meeting up with one of the other male dancers whose son was competing and who
was staying at the hotel. I changed into our costume (white shirt, red tie, blue
jacket, red sash and kilt with black knee socks), and Richard promptly took me
to the bar for a drink. He always liked walking around in the kilt chatting up
the ladies. (He was married but he liked doing it just for the fun of it.) The
hotel where it was held was too small and the halls were MOBBED. Erika and Kim
spotted me and I must have had a terrified look on my face because they both
took me aside and reassured me that everything would be all right.
I don't
remember a whole lot about the competition itself. One thing I do remember is
that the team that won was composed of a bunch of dancers who were about to
become TCRGs which meant they wouldn't be able to compete anymore. It was kind
of like being on a softball team that plays two or three times a year and
having to play the 1961 Yankees. That aside, our 8-hand placed fourth (OK there
were only four teams) but we danced well enough that the judges awarded us
fourth place medals.
I was
hooked.
When
regular classes started up again after the holidays, I was part of the all-boys
class. I started to learn the baby jig and baby reel. Like anything that I get
interested in, I threw myself into it whole hog. I prevailed on my
(at-the-time-but-not-too-much-longer) son-in-law to make a small dance floor in
the basement and dutifully, I'd go downstairs and practice. And drive Sara nuts
with questions. It got to the point where I asked so many questions that she
dreaded whenever I started asking something about dance. Suffice it to say, I
took it way too seriously. I mean, I started ID at the age of 49, never having
danced a step as a young man, let alone a child. Needless to say, Michael
Flatley had nothing to fear from me as a competitor.
That
fall, once again, adult dance, for some of us, became prep for the Oireachtas.
In 2001, our mixed (that means men and women) 4-hand consisted of Sara, Scott,
Kathy and me. We also had a mixed 8-hand team but this time Kathy was my
partner. (Digression #5: With the exception of 8-hands in the nationals in 2005
and the New England Oireachtas in 2004, Kathy has been my dance partner in
every competition in which I have danced on a ceili team.) I don't remember the
results of the 4-hand but one of the judges placed our 8-hand first...and (even
to that judge's surprise), we finished second. Sara explained that ID politics
become obvious in the large competitions. Naive little me, however, didn't
believe it. I mean, fair is fair. Right? One of the more humorous things
occurred while we were waiting for our competition to begin. The five boys who
were in the Boys age 13-14 competition were loosening up near where we were
standing. A couple of them were doing high kicks which I recognized as behavior
wherein they were attempting to intimidate the others, marking their territory,
so to speak. One of them came damn close to kicking Kathy in the face, not
once, but twice because he was not paying attention to what was going on around
him. Tis not often that I can intimidate ANYONE, let alone by simply looking at
them. But I succeeded with this kid. Petty though it was, ‘twas satisfying, indeed.
As the
next year of dance started, there was no longer an all-boys class, so I was,
for the first time, in with the younger girls. Some of them looked at me like,
"Who was this old man in their dance class?" What made me feel pretty
good, however, was that as some of the dance moms got to know me, they accepted
me as one of the dancers and realized that I wasn't dancing because I just
wanted to be around young girls.
Sara, by
this time, was one of the official assistant dance teachers and she was one of
the teachers in our class. Now, if I by the time I get home I can remember a
new step, I can practice it sufficiently to not look totally incompetent by the
next week's class. The chances of me getting home and remembering it, however,
hover between slim and none. Inevitably, I would have to pester Sara so that I
could write it down. Stupidly, I would pester her as soon as she got home and
there was additional friction. And having her write it down for me was
problematic because her dance "language" was different from mine. She
knew the right terms for things that I would give my own terms for and it would
confuse me, so more questions until I translated it and wrote it down myself.
This was
also the year I got my first pair of hard shoes. (Digression #6: When you see Riverdance
or Lord of the Dance, those dances with the stomping-like noises are
done in hard shoes.) Now, in addition to the soft shoe jig and reel I was
exposed to the hornpipe, a hard shoe dance. This was the point where I began to
discover one of my inherent physical limitations. At the age of a half-century,
I lacked sufficient flexibility in my ankles to be able to do an effective
treble. (Digression #7: A treble is where you make a noise with the front of
the shoe as you move it forward than a second noise as you quickly pull it
back.) Our dance teacher repeatedly tried to get me to do clean trebles but I
was able to do it only if I was moving my foot slowly. If I tried it at dance
speed, I got maybe 1 out of 4 and even that one wasn't that clear. To her
everlasting credit, Sara diagnosed it right from the start. Because my ankles
were too stiff for me to get high on my toes, I was unable to do trebles well.
This issue would be a long-festering sore point with our teacher until I
finally said (years later) it was just physically not possible for me to do
them any better. Another place this limitation rears its ugly head is in
turnout, the necessity of rotating the ankle so that the feet form a pronounced
vee with the heels as the meeting point of the sides. When I try to do a heel
click, I have problems rotating far enough to allow me to click the heels. It
also made over-crossing the legs difficult. And don't even get me started on
rock-rocks and rear trebles....
That year
(2002), the Oireachtas was in Stamford but at a different, much larger hotel.
We only had enough for a 4-hand and we had two other people, Richard and Linda,
with Kathy and me. I think we were the only adult mixed 4-hand entered that
year so we placed first. Now, that may sound like a bit of a gimme, but if
there's only one competitor and the judges don't believe an award should be
given, none is given. But we did receive the medal for it.
We even
felt confident enough to enter a feis. Sara was competing at a feis in Danbury
and one of the categories was adult ceili. We entered and Sara was one of the
4-hand. Her individual competition came before the ceili competition. She
started out beautifully and was doing great...until her ankle twisted and she
went down hard. Her ankle was badly sprained and we had to take her to the
hospital. As it happens, we were the only team entered in the ceili
competition. That meant we finished second out of one team.
2003 was
a mixed year for me. I was diagnosed with hyperparathyroidism. It's a condition
that causes osteoporosis and can only be addressed surgically. That August I
was operated on and was just feeling well enough to start dance classes in
September. Richard, who was a chiropractor, told me that all the dancing had
helped prevent my leg bones from becoming too brittle from the osteoporosis.
Being a half century plus one year old, I felt compelled to ask my doctor why
he had not yet ordered a colonoscopy for me. Turns out he had forgotten. So the
week after the 2003 Oireachtas, I was scheduled for it. That year, they had
moved it to Newport, RI. It was just our mixed 4-hand from our school in the
adult competition, the same one as the year before. Kathy noticed that all day
I seemed to be agitated about something. Normally SHE would get agitated before
we competed. While we were waiting, I dozed off...and woke up crying
hysterically. I was having a full-out panic attack about the colonoscopy. Sara
was there to watch us and didn't know what to do so she called Joy who, more or
less, talked me down. One large bourbon later, I was more or less, intact.
There were four teams that year and we did not dance well and finished fourth
and did not place. All in all it was a rather dismal Oireachtas. (Digression
#8: The colonoscopy went just fine. Get enough tranquilizers in me and you CAN
get an IV in my arm. By the way, 2013 is 2003 plus 10 years so I'm due again
this year.)
In this
period (mid 2000's) dancing classes tend to kind of mush together in my memory.
What I do recall about these years is that I was always in the class that was
composed of the kids who were never going to be great dancers and the kids who
might have been that good if they bothered to practice. Guess which group I
fell into....Things that I do remember consist of some really good and some
really bad things. Somewhere in this period, I had several evenings in class
where I got so frustrated that I was practically in tears (part of the taking
it WAY to seriously thing) and left class early vowing to give it all up.
Sara and I dancing a treble reel
at a fund-raiser
Usually
we would open a show with a number that consisted of three slip jig steps, five
soft shoe reel steps and three and a half treble reel steps. I had come far
enough that I was good enough to move from the soft shoe reel part to the
treble reel. (By about 2006, whenever we would do a performance, our teacher
would have me organize who was doing which step in the treble reel. That wasn't
because I was that good at it, it's that I was an adult. But that was okay.)
Another good thing was learning to dance St. Patrick's Day, one of the
traditional hard shoe set dances.
One of my
abject failures was in keeping several boys from quitting. Our dance teacher
would often sort of "assign" one of the younger boys to shadow me,
partly because I was an older male who danced. The thing that I really wanted
to get across to these boys would have been totally lost on them. They were at
that age when girls were viewed as icky. Even f I had told them, they would
never understand how good it would be when they were teens and their hormones
went into overdrive. How great would it be to be the only boy surrounded by all
these beautiful girls? Alas, they were too young to understand and a number of
them cycled in then out of the school.
In 2004,
the New England Oireachtas was in Cambridge, Mass. Our teacher decided several
things. The good thing was that the 2005 nationals were in Philadelphia and she wanted to enter an adult mixed 8-hand
team, so we put it together for the Oireachtas. The not so good thing was that
she decided that rather than do the 4-hand reel, we were going to do the
Humours of Bandon. What you may ask is the difference? Well, I'll tell you. A
jig is done at a faster tempo than a reel. In fact there was once an ID
conditioning video called Jig Don't Jog. It's aerobically challenging.
And our teacher was having no truck with our whining about Humours (which I
will always refer to as Humor's Abandoned because there's nothing funny about
having to dance it).
Because
we needed to be sure we had enough people for the 8-hand, we convinced one of
the other dance dads to learn the 8-hand as a back-up. Now, one of the gents
(Digression #9: In ceili dancing, the person who lines up on the left side in
every pair is referred to as the gent and the one on the right as the lady even
if only women are dancing the ceili. If a man is dancing, however, he MUST
dance as a gent and if there is only one man, he is by definition in the
"top" (lead) gent position.) So our newbie, Bob, was, to be kind, the
weakest of the five gents we had ready to dance. Also, in the 8-hand, our
teacher had me paired with Becky rather than Kathy, an anomaly to me, to say
the least. The 8-hand has four couples which means that two are the top
couples. The other top gent was our dance teacher's husband. He was privy to
info that none of us were. He, alone of all of us on the ceili team knew that
we were the only school entered in the adult competition. That led him to tell
Bob that he was going to dance so that Bob could earn a medal. Needless to say,
Bob was less than prepared for this news. One of the ladies whose name I will
not mention then threw a hissy fit because SHE was in the competition to win
and didn't think Bob deserved to be dancing with us. Now, she was not all that
good a dancer herself and Sara, who was also on the team, came close to
shredding her because we all loved Bob and he is one of the nicest guys around.
Our 4-hand team was Kathy and me, Becky and Linda. The other team was the other
four (except our dance teacher's husband subbed for Bob because Bob had never
danced Humors). Needless to say we came home with the gold for the 8-hand and
our team took the gold for the 4-hand.
Our 8-hand from the Nationals
That
July, we went to Philadelphia for the Nationals. We knew that we were not a
great team but we were plucky and had game. There were five adult teams
competing. Guess where we came in the standings. Bet you got it in one. So we
had no expectation of anything and most of us skipped the awards ceremony.
Strange as it is to say, although we placed fifth, we placed and were rewarded
with medals. So all of us can honestly say that we received a medal in a
national championship. That also marked Sara's last ceili competition. From
then on, Sara was the official unofficial coach of our 4-hand team.
The
humorous thing that happened at the Nationals involved photography. I decided
that Sara and I would get our picture taken in our dance costumes by the
professional photographer as a gift for my mother. He lined us up and was
making chit-chat while he set up. Noting the age difference, he asked if we
were teacher (meaning me) and student. I immediately answered in the
affirmative, pointing to Sara and saying, "Teacher," and pointing to
me and saying, "Student." He got a very perplexed look on his face
and dropped the conversation immediately.
That was
also the summer that I entered my first adult solo competition. I entered the
North Haven Feis in the adult light jig category. Unlike the large
competitions, men and women dance against each other in the same event. There
were nine or ten competitors and I was the only man. By this time, my light jig
was very precise and I did the two simplest steps. (Digression #10: One of our
dance teacher's maxims was to dance a simple step well is better than dancing a
complex step not so well.) When the competition was over, Sara told me that I
had won. I didn't believe it, though. At least I didn't believe it until the
results were posted. She said she knew I had won because I was the only one who
actually stayed on time. I had been concerned because my kicks don't even come
to waist height. That's another one of those body and age limitations. I have
learned the hard way that if I try to kick too high I will pull my hamstring.
Also that
summer, our dance teacher took parts of that year's recital and expanded them
into a full-scale dance show, to be presented in September. Coincidentally, Joy
was having surgery at the beginning of September. The show was her first outing
after the surgery. Okay, the majority of the audience was composed of the same
people who normally composed the audience for the recitals. And no one was
going to mistake us for the touring company of Lord of the Dance. But
having said that, it was a lot of fun to do and all of us could say that we had
been part of a full stage production with live music.
I think
it was also this year when our teacher decided that she wanted to encourage the
younger dancers to learn Strings of Fire. One Saturday she had all of us
who knew the choreography and all of those who wanted to learn it come for a
special class session. She put the six of us who had done it in performances in
our normal places and then assigned one of the younger kids to each of us. The
girl who won the booby prize (me) was one of the younger girls I kind of knew
and was one of Sara's students in the basics who Sara felt would become a very
good dancer. Well, when everyone lined up, little Kelly (and she was tiny at
that age) looked at me with a look that shrieked, "Why do I have to dance
with the old guy?" We got through it all right. And Kelly? She progressed
quickly to become one of the really, really good dancers and she and I became
close friends.
By this
time, I was coming around to the conclusion that no matter how hard I tried, no
matter how much I practiced, I had maxed out in terms of becoming a better
dancer. There was just no more there, there. So I accepted that limitation, did
as many performances as I could, and continued to dance in a couple of
feisanna. I continued winning the light jig competitions for adults and almost
felt guilty because it seemed too easy.
Our
4-hand had settled down by 2006 into the team that would stay together until
after the 2009 New England Oireachtas, Kathy and me, Carolyn and Linda. With
this group, one of the things I found humorous was that at the towering height
of 5' 6" I was the tall one. In both 2005 and 2006, the Oireachtas was
back in Stamford. We worked hard and were getting very good as a team, partly
because Sara was coaching us. We were also able to dance at Kathy's sister's
house on our own time to practice. Those two years we won first place (yeah,
okay we were the only team entered in the adult mixed 4-hand, but damn it, we
were good and we deserved it).
In 2007, the
Oireachtas was, once again, in Stamford. That year we had competition from
another mixed 4-hand. Rather than have both teams dance on the stage at the
same time, we went in sequence. We danced, then they danced. After watching
them, we were extremely jazzed because our teacher had picked up a couple of
clear errors in their performance. And sure enough, when the results were
announced...we were second. I will tell you, it was a rather glum 4-hand that
went up to receive our silver medals. Sara shook her head and just said,
"politics". By this time, our teacher had adopted the attitude that
if we wanted to enter, we could, but we needed to practice on our own. So Sara
became our one and only coach.
When 2008
rolled around, the four of us decided, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool
me twice, shame on me," and we decided to save our money and pass on the
New England Oireachtas for the first time. I will say, when November came
around, the four of us looked at each other and we kept asking ourselves if we
had made a mistake. We really missed it.
After
talking it over, (the four of us and Sara) we decided that we would take the
entire year of 2009 and practice all year and get killer good. Sara worked us
hard and picked apart every little flaw she could spot. We became precise,
coordinated as never before and much better than we had ever been. Brimming
with confidence and a bit of cockiness, we traveled to Providence, RI and
entered that year's Oireachtas. The same team we had danced against two years
earlier was there and once again we went first. Our teacher spotted one flaw in
our performance, one that we were all aware of. So, nervously we watched the
other team. And sure enough, they committed two errors, so obvious that even my
wife spotted them. So we felt pretty damn good. And sure enough, at the awards
ceremony, we were rewarded for all our hard work...with the silver. And that
was it for us.
The 4-hand from our last year
competing, me, Kathy, Carolyn and Linda.
After
that, I continued going to class but my heart was no longer in it. I was
feeling very much like the old man. The kids in the class seemed to be getting
younger. I felt more and more out of place. I was going through the same steps
year after year. And rather than staying at one level, I was beginning to
regress because the aches and pains in my knees and feet were becoming more
pronounced. So I made the painful (no pun intended) decision to stop. Trust me.
I won't be missed.
At about
the same time, Sara left the school due to her moving to the other end of the
state. She kept up on her dancing, however. Last summer she went down to New
York City for a dance workshop. There, she met a woman who is extremely
experienced in ID who asked her why she was not studying for her TCRG. This
started her thinking and she has decided to go for it. As a result, she needs
dancers for her to gain experience in teaching the ceili dances. Now I feel
like Michael Corleone in Godfather III. "Every time I think I'm
out, someone pulls me back in!" Whenever she puts together a group for
practice I'm there.
And if
the truth be told, watching the competitions at the worlds here in Boston, I
can honestly say that I miss it. Just don't tell Sara, or when she gets her
TCRG, she'll have me back into it.
