Many thanks to Richard Tew of RinceRadio for this wonderful interview with our own Glenna Joyce. Glenna is passionate about Irish dance and all the opportunities that Irish dance has to offer adults. Take a listen!
This episode has been republished to our blog by permission of Richard Tew.
This blog post is republished with permission of Sarah Kate Morgan, the Director of Traditional Arts Education at Hindman Settlement School in Knott Co., Kentucky.
by Justin Brown, Hindman Settlement School
originally published on April 2, 2024 on the Hindman Settlement School website
Over 360 Knott County students took an imaginary adventure to Ireland this past week when award winning Irish dancer, Allison Duvall, danced through their schools! Duvall has been dancing for 27 years and shares the joy of Irish dance through her Lexington, KY studio, the McTeggart School of Irish Dance. With financial support from the Berea College Appalachian Fund’s Folk Arts & Culture Initiative, Hindman Settlement School coordinated visits to Carr Creek, Hindman, and Emmalena Elementary Schools as part of our ongoing artist-in-residence programs.
Duvall teaching at Hindman Elementary School
Irish dance is a close cousin to several forms of Appalachian dance, which is unsurprising considering the Irish heritage many Eastern Kentuckians share. As the Scots-Irish settled the Blue Ridge and Eastern Kentucky mountains, they brought with them the music and dance of their homeland.
Set dancing is the Irish cousin to Appalachian square dancing. This is a form of social dance, most often practiced in rural farming communities and seen at a musical community gathering called a “Ceili” (pronounced kay-lee). Irish set dances are done in sets of 4-8 people and closely resemble a square dance or a “Kentucky big set,” which are still common throughout our region.
Sean-nós dancing is a solo, percussive dance style, similar to the flatfooting and clogging still practiced widely in Appalachia. Sean-nós dancing is a little different than the iconic Riverdance we all know and love. The stiff arms, high energy kicks, and jumping is a newer style simply called “Irish dance.” Sean-nós is an older, lower impact style where the dancer has more freedom to move their arms fluidly and improvise steps in response to the music, much like Appalachian flatfooting.
These two Irish dance styles, Sean-nós and Set dancing, blended with Cherokee, African-American, and other European dance traditions to form a brand new American and Appalachian style of dancing, square dancing and flatfoot dancing.
The echo of Irish dance can be heard in Appalachia to this day, including right here in Knott and surrounding counties. You can see Appalachian flatfooting and clogging, a cousin to the Sean-nós percussive Irish dancing:
On main street in downtown Hindman on bluegrass night during the Gingerbread Festival;
every Friday night at the Campbell’s Branch/Line Fork Community Center in Blackey;
the second Saturday of every month at the Carcassonne Community Center in Letcher County (the longest running square dance in the state of Kentucky!); and
right here in Hindman every month at the Settlement School’s square dance, featuring traditional Appalachian square dancing and Kentucky big-set dancing.
Our thanks go out to Allison Duvall, the McTeggart School of Irish Dance, Berea College Appalachian Fund, for supporting the Settlement School’s effort to provide students a unique and immersive experience in dance, rooted in tradition and still practiced today!
by Catherine Rasner
Irish dance has been a cherished tradition in my family for 10 years now. It echoes the rhythm of my heritage, weaving a tapestry of shared joy and cultural pride my dad passed onto my family. For him, Irish dance wasn’t merely a performance by his granddaughters; it was a mesmerizing display of grace and tradition, a connection to his roots that would unfold in front of us, stirring memories and his great sense of pride in our Irish heritage. McTeggart was close to his heart.
Catherine’s youngest daughter taking her first dance class in 2018
McTeggart Irish Dance school has served as a tight-knit community through my life’s ups and down especially when going through my father’s illness and passing. It’s not just about refining dance skills but fostering enduring friendships too. It’s been a shared journey where mutual support and camaraderie created this little village, amplifying cultural richness of the dance experience and teaching my girls’ life lessons, building friendships and establishing “second moms” cheering them along with each win or disappointment that comes along.
Catherine’s eldest daughter after a win at a feis (pronounced “fesh”, an Irish Dance competition) with teacher Allison
I’m so thankful for time with this beautiful community of friends that have become like family!
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We’d love to have you join our dance school! Learn about our Children’s Program, Adult Programs, and sign up for free trial classes.
by Nathan Bentley
As someone with no dance background (I tell beginners the closest I came to dance growing up was defensive drills in basketball) who took up Irish dance at the ripe old age of 35, allow me to recommend trying the thing you think is interesting or looks fun or whatever…because you never know. You might surprise yourself.
McTeggart adults in class
Maybe you really dig traditional Irish music. Or you saw one of the growing number of Irish dance stage shows and that style spoke to you. Or you just want to take a more active step in learning about the culture surrounding the art. You’ll soon find that the music and the steps play into each other to the point where, in some cases, it’s almost a ‘chicken or the egg’ arrangement. And that they tie into, and are informed by, nearly any other aspect of Irish arts one can think of.
Nathan and Erin in performance
Maybe you want to trick yourself into exercising without having to slog your way to the gym. Irish dancing will do it for you, and I promise that no matter what exercises or activities you’re pursuing now, you will discover you don’t use as many muscles as you think you do. All the while you’ll manage to work on your balance, learn about mobility and different types of strength, and counteract all the sitting (and staring at screens, etc., etc.) that I dare say most of us do all day. If nothing else, consider it an investment in yourself.
Our first adult ceili team practicing in 2013
Maybe you like the idea of joining a competitive team once the days of doing such a thing are assumed to be long passed. You can work with other like-minded folks in the quest to become a sharp, well-oiled, meticulous ceili team. Once you manage that, you’ll get the added benefit of gaining new perspectives on patience, failure, competence, and confidence. After all, just because you’re all working towards the same goal doesn’t mean you’re all of the same mindset and personality in all the other areas outside that. You’ll (hopefully) discover how much more worth there is to curiosity and awareness of oneself than judgement – because there are few things more subjective than the adjudicating of an Irish dance performance. Umpires don’t give you an extra strike because they think you have a goofy batting stance, and referees don’t take away points if you don’t have a textbook jumpshot. Irish dance judges sure do, though, and that’s why you soon learn you can’t control anything beyond your own dancing. Did you do your best? Are you better than you were this time last month? Great, that’s all that matters.
Fun before performing with the Evansville Philharmonic
Then again, maybe it’s none of this. That’s fine, too. You can invest as much or as little as you want. You can do it for its own sake. And as we often remind ourselves, beyond the pageantry and the singlemindedness of competition and perhaps the frustration of attempting new things as an adult, at the end of the day this is supposed to be folk dancing with friends. It’s supposed to be fun.
Spoiler alert – it is.
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We’d love to have you join our adult programs! Sign up for free trial classes.
A ceili (group social dance) at McCarthy’s Irish Bar, Lexington