The hard shoes hitting the wooden floor sound like a herd of wild horses stampeding, until the music starts and four young dancers begin clicking, tapping and swishing their shoes in complicated patterns set to cheerful Irish music.
Teacher Erin Cooney quietly recites the names she’s created for each movement to prompt the girls whenever they appear uncertain. “Brush hop toe drop” or “over jump step hop step back” sound like poetry as Cooney rapidly rattles off the complex movements to the beat of the music. “If you’re hyper, it’s a way to use it,” says dancer Erin McCaffrey, 10, who has taken Irish dance classes from Cooney for two years. McCaffrey wanted to learn Irish dance after watching a recital because she loved the “cool foot movements,” and now she likes to practice them all the time—even under her desk at school.
McCaffrey isn’t the only dance student who has been drawn to Irish dance’s fancy footwork. Cooney began teaching Irish dance at Escalate Dance and Theatre Studio in 2007, working with five students the first year. Only two students performed in the annual recital that year, but their dance sparked plenty of interest. Over the past few years, the program has ignited into several classes with 55 dancers learning about Irish dance, music and culture. “She’s really good,” McCaffrey says of Cooney’s teaching style. “She knows all of it, and she’s done it. She gives us really good tips.”
Irish dance for children has grown in popularity in Minnesota as several schools dedicated to the art have been established in the past decade, says Kate Flanagan, a professor at St. Mary’s University in Winona and the author of “Steps in Time: A History of Irish Dance in Chicago.” Flanagan, who has taught Irish dance in Winona for 38 years, says that interest in Irish dancing boomed in the late 1990s when “Riverdance” and “Lord of the Dance” became international sensations.
While most Americans were first introduced to Irish dance when “Riverdance” became popular in 1995, followed a year later by the release of “Lord of the Dance”, Cooney, 29, had already been dancing for years. She got her start when she was 12 years old, after taking ballet, tap and jazz classes. “It seemed to be a good fit for me because I loved Irish music,” Cooney says, adding that she loved performing for her family on St. Patrick’s Day. “It was part of my Irish heritage.”
Cooney majored in Communications at the College of St. Benedict, but she never stopped dancing. She taught classes and danced with a local Irish band. After college she continued to teach dance classes in St. Cloud and then moved back to Le Center, her hometown, where she started her own dance program.
In August of 2004, she began the process to get certified as a teacher through Cumann Rince Náisiúnta (CRN), a traditional dance organization based in Ireland. “Our Teacher Training Program is the toughest in the world, but it is necessary in order to preserve the old traditional dances,” says Carmel P. Doherty, the executive of CRN and Cooney’s teacher. “Plus it also trains our teachers with contemporary work in order to keep in touch with the modern world of dance.”
After five years of training, Cooney became one of four Irish dancers in the country to be certified by CRN. “It’s a really strong organization in Ireland and they’re starting to reach out to the U.S.,” Cooney says. “I think that a lot of people are going to take to it because it’s more traditional; it’s going back to the roots.”
There are several organizations in Ireland that certify dance teachers, and many teachers in the United States are certified by the Irish Dancing Commission, Flanagan says. Cooney’s training with CRN included long hours of practice, traveling to workshops around the country several times a year and two visits to Ireland for exams covering dances and music. “We are very proud of our standard of teachers in CRN, so once someone like Erin gets qualified, we know that they are equipped to deal with every dancer, whether they’re a new beginner or an established champion,” Doherty says.
In order to remember the dances between class sessions, Cooney was diligent about video taping classes. She also wrote all the movements out, essentially creating choreography notes that can be read like music. Now she uses them in classes, and it’s not uncommon to see her students dancing with a sheet of paper as they learn a new routine. “They read it like music, and they can figure it out,” Cooney says.
Cooney’s dedication to authenticity was one of the reasons Ann Marie Omeish, director and owner of Escalate Dance and Theatre Studio, hired her. “I think it’s really important to learn all of the basics and really how to do everything properly, but then you can kind of go outside of it,” Omeish says.
Cooney approached Omeish about working at the school when Cooney moved to Plymouth to be closer to her fiancé, and Omeish—who already offers ballet, tap, jazz, hip-hop, musical theater and acting classes—was happy to add another dance style to the repertoire. “We do so many different things, I thought it would be fun to teach Irish dancing as well,” Omeish says. “I had no idea how popular it was going to get.”
Cooney teaches several classes with students ages 5 and up, including traditional Irish solo dances in softshoe and hardshoe and traditional Ceili dances (social dances that are performed in groups).
In January, a group of girls from the dance studio traveled to Santa Fe, New Mexico for an Irish dance competition, and Omeish and Cooney are thinking about creating an Irish dance musical. “I think the little kids love it because it’s so energetic, and it’s fun for me to see that they enjoy Irish music,” Cooney says. “A lot of the kids enjoy it because they know they have some Irish heritage in their background.”
While there’s room for some innovation in Irish dance, it’s also very traditional and methodical, which is very appealing to some dancers. Each movement is made the same way, and several dances have been passed down through the years – danced the same way each time.
On a chilly winter evening in Maple Grove, four young girls continue this tradition in their dance class. Whenever Cooney asks a question, all four students throw their hands into the air, eager to answer.
They spend nearly an hour running through dance steps that have them kicking their legs and shuffling their feet, all while their torso remains still and their arms hang at their sides with their hands closed in a loose fist. It looks tiring, but the girls don’t slow down as they switch from their softshoes, which are a bit like ballet slippers, to hardshoes, which make a satisfying clacking sound similar to tap shoes. “I like the movements. I like the dresses,” says Lillian Conforti, 10, who is in her third year of Irish dance. “You can look back and see that you’ve learned so much.”
By the end of class, four rosy-cheeked girls look tired, but energized, and one patient teacher looks completely satisfied. “[Irish dance] really provided me with everything I’ve ever wanted in a career,” Cooney says. “I have colleagues all around the U.S. and in Ireland… It’s allowed me to travel and be challenged. I’ve met a lot of really talented people, musicians and dancers.”
