Feeling the Electricity in Nashville

Near the end of the Tony-Award-winning Broadway musical, Billy Elliott, Billy auditions for the Royal Ballet School.  As he and his father are about to leave the final interview, one of the judges asks Billy what it feels like when he dances.  At first, he responds, “I dunno!”  Then he pauses, thinks, and begins the song, “Electricity”, in which he sings, and shows in an amazingly intense dance sequence, that when he dances, he is “flying, flying like a bird, like electricity.  Electricity sparks inside of me, and I’m free. I’m free.”
Every night of the North American Irish Dance Championships in Nashville, Tennessee, in July, when I welcomed the audience to the award ceremonies, I repeated this synopsis of these magical moments from Billy Elliott.  I followed it up with a comment from me that, during the day’s competitions, I had experienced that electricity as I watched the dancers competing in each of the five ballrooms.  I had seen it.  I had sensed it.  I had truly felt it.
Admittedly, my experience of the electricity was not the directly personal one of someone actually dancing himself.  I suppose you could say that it was a somewhat indirect experience.  However, it was there just the same.  I am not the slightest bit surprised that, every time I see really good dancers performing on stage, I experience that sense of electricity.  As a teacher, a judge, or simply a member of the audience, I thrill to the energy, the pulse, and the power of dancing.  It was especially powerful when I watched my own children, Angela and Brendan, dance on stage or in competition, or more recently at their weddings.  The electricity produced by Irish dancing is a major source of my own energy and who I am as a person.
This is, I suppose, why I agree to do things like chair the North American Championships in Irish Dancing, which is a massive and stressful undertaking.  It is important to me that such events provide dancers, teachers, and families with a proper showcase in which to demonstrate the electricity that is inherent in Irish dancing.  And, I am pleased to report (with only a touch of bias) that this year we did just that.
Let me start by making very clear that no one person really “runs” a major event like this.  I was most fortunate to have a support group of very special members of the Southern Region of the USA.  They included the following talented and exceptionally hard-working individuals: Mary McGinty Sweeney, ADCRG; Margaret Moebus, TCRG; Michelle Kennedy, TCRG; Erin Duffy, TCRG; Sandra Connick, TCRG; and Sean Culkin, TCRG, regional director.  Our group of seven planned and delivered a first-rate North American Championships of which we all can be (and are) very proud.  There were hundreds of tasks, issues, and details to be handled, and together we were able to address all of them.  Added to my group of seven, there were quite a few members of the Southern Region who volunteered to be responsible for jobs big and small. Without them, we could not have accomplished everything as well as we did.
Initially, we were all anxious that we would not have the number of entries really necessary to run a major event like this.  Fortunately, we were wrong!  We were blessed to have dancers from all over North America, as well as from many other locations around the world.  We were treated to exceptional performances in solo and team competitions.  The electricity that all of these dancers brought to our five stages was apparent every day in every competition.  They and their teachers deserve our thanks and praise for enriching our lives and for providing us with thrilling memories.
We also had the encouragement and support, as well as the help, of fellow teachers from across the world.  They managed stages, announced results, assisted with tabulation, and carried out loads of other tasks too numerous to mention.  The fact that so many colleagues did their part during the North American Irish Dance Championships is proof of the special bond that Irish dancing has created world wide.  Ours is, indeed, a special kind of family.
The Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Resort is a very special, and very suitable, location for an event such as the North American Irish Dance Championships, and this year it proved once again just how “right” it is.  The entire staff of the hotel was great to work with.  The same must be said of Experient, the event planning organization with whom we planned and delivered this year’s North American Irish Dancing Championships.  They are first rate. Aida Campbell, and especially Katie Sturznickel, our person event planner and liaison, were remarkable in their attention to detail.  They made it possible for us to concentrate on the most important thing, the dancing.
As I moved from room to room each day of the championships, I enjoyed myself immensely.  That may sound strange, since there were the inevitable glitches and issues to be addressed, and I was exceptionally tired at the end of each day.  But, I guess, Billy Elliot is right, and each day I absolutely felt the electricity spark inside of me.  That electricity was so powerful and so invigorating that I found myself standing in a competition room beaming, as I watched dancers I did not know at all delighting the audience and me alike.  Their electricity came across to me every time, and as a result, I was off to the next room or the next question with more energy and more readiness to go forward than I would have thought possible.
It struck me, during my remarks before the awards one night in Nashville, that I have been involved in Irish dancing for exactly 50 years.  What a remarkable fifty years it has been!  Who knew when I started classes at age ten, with my one and only teacher, Mary Costello Madden, TCRG, in Boston, where it would all lead?  It has been a most rewarding journey, and I am pleased every day that I am able to do what I so enjoy and what provides me with the electricity needed to keep at it!  Thanks to Mary for starting me so very well on this amazing journey and for encouraging my creative side by trusting me to create solo and team choreography for our school when I was only a teenager, and to all of my colleagues world-wide and to the many dancers it has been my privilege to know for these many years, thanks for the electricity to keep me going.
To all of the dancers who competed at the North American Irish Dance Championships, we are grateful for the electricity that you generated in your many performances in Nashville.  It is you, after all, for whom all of this happens.  More importantly, it is all of you who communicate the electricity to all of us not on the stage and give us the energy and the power to make things the best we can for you and for our beloved art form.

[If you are able to get to a performance of Billy Elliott, don’t miss the opportunity.  Its message about the power of the arts in our lives is immensely important for everyone, especially those of us involved in dance.  It is a “must see”.  And, if you get the chance to see “our own” Trent Kowalik or David Bologna (both dancers from the Inishfree School of Irish Dance) in the show, the electricity will positively “spark” all night (and for a long time afterwards)!]