St. Patrick's Day provides big stage for Irish Dance performers
LAKEWOOD, Colo. — On St. Patrick’s Day, everyone tends to feel a bit Irish.
Or at least that’s how Louise Connolly, director and owner of Connolly Irish Dance, describes the holiday.
Connolly — who is Irish every day of the year — grew up in Ireland and fell in love with Irish dance when she was 8 years old. For a little more than a decade, she has taught Irish dance out of her own studio in Lakewood.
“I just wanted to continue to do Irish dance,” Connolly said. “To do that I figured I just needed to start my own dance studio and show America or the local kids where I was living, try and give them a little bit of the culture and the background of Ireland.”
St. Patrick’s Day is an opportunity for Connolly and the roughly 50 students at the studio to showcase the dance form that they rehearse and compete in year-round.
Each year, the studio’s dancers perform at bars, restaurants, assisted living homes and other community centers to celebrate the holiday.
This year is no different.
“For me to be able to give the kids the ability to go out on St Patrick's Day and show off their talents, whether or not they're Irish or to have any Irish heritage or not, they feel like they're part of it,” Connolly said. “The Irish culture for me is just so important that it's a lot of fun to be able to bring it to the kids of our area."
Irish dance is characterized by quick and precise footwork with no upper body movement. Dancers are expected to be rigid from the waist up, not moving their arms or hands.
“Our lower half of our body is working extremely hard and our upper body has to be super strong to not move at all when we're doing that,” Connolly said.
There are several theories as to why Irish dancers keep their arms straight by their sides. Connolly has taught Irish dance for more than 20 years and has been dancing even longer, and even she isn’t exactly sure why stiff arms are the custom.
One theory suggests that the style grew out of necessity when people had limited room to dance and not moving their arms helped save space.
“Some people have said that they would take doors off the hinges and lay them down and you dance in the doorway and maybe that's why they don't move their arms,” Connolly said. “I'm not 100% sure what the truth is about all of that, but that's what we've been told.”
Irish dancers often wear hard shoes to make distinct tapping sounds with each movement. Dancers also line up and dance in unison, so each stomp, clack and click is amplified.
The costumes worn during Irish dance competitions are also very distinctive. Large curly wigs, heavily adorned dresses and spray tanned legs are staples of competition attire. Connolly said this “Shirley Temple” attire likely evolved from people attending dances wearing their Sunday best.
“The get togethers would be happening on a Sunday after Mass,” Connolly said. “On a Sunday, everybody would get their best clothes on and curled their hair and go to Mass and then meet up at a neighbor's house or family's house and have a dance.”
In the late 90s, Connolly joined the cast of Michael Flatley’s Lord of the Dance. While on tour in North America, she met her now-husband, who is from Colorado. Her husband’s military career meant their family moved around a bit before settling back in Colorado.
Photo: Carly Rose, Rocky Mountain PBS
Bridget Monroe, one of Connolly’s oldest students, joined the studio right around its inception 11 years ago. Now a sophomore at Colorado Schools of Mines, she began Irish dance when she was 6 years old and has been dancing competitively for the past 11 years.
Monroe said her mom put her in Irish dance to help her connect with her Irish-Scottish heritage. As a fifth-generation Coloradan, Monroe’s Irish-Scottish roots go back a few generations.
She said being involved with the dance does make her feel more connected to that part of her family history. Though it’s the community she’s found with the other dancers that keeps her coming back to it, even after going to college.
“All the girls are my best friends,” Monroe said. “I love the sport and the people.”
The students at Connolly’s studio range from 4 years old to 20 years old. This includes two of Connolly’s own daughters. The younger of the two, 10-year-old Mckenna, started dancing when she was 3 years old.
Mckenna said she practices in the studio three days a week, and practices at home on the other days. She said dancing is a joy, and she enjoys making friends through the sport.
Monroe and Mckenna are among the seven students from Connolly’s studio who qualified for this year’s Irish Dance World Championships. The competition is set for the last week of March in Glasglow, Scotland.
When she was around Mckenna’s age, Connolly won back-to-back World Championships.
Photo: Carly Rose, Rocky Mountain PBS
Growing up in a small village near Dundalk, Ireland, Connolly remembers celebrating St. Patrick’s Day with lots of parades and candy — not unlike the festivities here.
“It was one main street, and we would have parades and there'd be floats and people's tractors pulling their trailers and people tossing out candy,” Connolly said. “We loved it. It was the only day of Lent that we were allowed to break our Lent and have candy.”
Now, Connolly spends her St. Patrick’s Day coordinating and leading a jam-packed performance schedule. It’s a chaotic day, but she looks forward to it each year.
Connolly’s daughter Mckenna ranks St. Patrick’s Day among her top three favorite holidays, mainly because of the performances she and her fellow dancers put on for the community each year.
“We always love doing it because it's really fun showing our skills to everyone,” Mckenna said. “We really enjoy making people happy.”
Carly Rose is the journalism intern at Rocky Mountain PBS. Carlyrose@rmpbs.org.