Du Page County Illinois Branch of Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann

2006 Comhaltas Weekend in Chicago, April 20-23, 2006

I  was born in Upperchurch, County Tipperary.  My first contact with set dancing was in my own home, where the Ballycommon set and occasionally the Castle set were danced. I learned to play the accordion from my father Jack, who played locally at house dances for much of his life. Music has been one of the joys of my life since then.

Over the years until around 1980, my main contact with set dancing was as a musician playing for sets. I sometimes played for competition dancers, set, céilí and solo step dancers during this time.

One night in the early 1980s, I was playing for dancers at a set competition and I asked to replace an injured dancer in a local set as they were a man short and they knew that I could dance and we had three musicians playing. We won the competition and I was invited to stay in the set and this lead me to a meeting with dancing teacher Jack Slattery, from Cappawhite, Co Tipperary.

Through Jack I became in the set revival scene and soon I was teaching a local class where I lived in Dublin. I found that I enjoyed teaching the sets almost as much as dancing them and my classes went well. We had lots of fun!

I was invited to teach other classes in nearby places as time went on.

Sometime later I met and became friendly with Connie Ryan, who was the major set dancing teacher at this time and as I attended Connie’s classes and workshops, I began to travel more and at some stage I was asked to teach workshops - weekend classes in other areas myself.

Gradually life became busier and this trend continues.

In 1995, my book, TOSS THE FEATHERS - IRISH SET DANCING, was published by Mercier Press and has been well received by the set dancing community.

In 2000 my second collection of dances,  THE FLOWING TIDE - MORE IRISH SET DANCES was published and again, was well received. I am still collecting sets and in the past few years I have added quite a lot of them to my collection. I hope to have a third volume available sometime in the near future.

Another exciting venture has been my association with the production of Set Dancing on instructional video. I was involved with Connie Ryan’s Slievenamon Dancers, in three separate series of recordings and more recently I was invited to demonstrate some sets in a new series produced by musician Matt Cunningham. This production will be available, perhaps before the end of the summer.

At the moment some friends and I are producing another series of DVD on both Set Dancing and Two Hand or Couple Dances, which are presently enjoying a revival here in Ireland also. We hope to have some of these recordings available before the end on 2005.

Set dancing now plays a major part in my life.

During the past 20 years I have travelled, taught and danced sets in every part of Ireland. My dance schedule includes week long classes at two of the major traditional summer schools every July, the South Sligo Summer School in Tubbercurry and the Joe Mooney Summer School in Drumshanbo, where I have been teaching for 15 years now.

I have also travelled and taught extensively in England and mainland Europe, as well as in Canada  and America, where I have had the opportunity to teach at some of the major festivals, including the North American Comhaltas Convention and the Milwaukee Irishfest.

Last summer, I have had the wonderful experience of visiting my dancing friends in Japan, where I enjoyed teaching classes in Tokyo and Osaka.

My travels during the past year have also included a visit to Moscow, where I was delighted to meet some lovely dancers and to see such interest in Irish music, dance and also an amazing interest in the Irish language.

My most recent trip overseas was during August 2005, when I had the pleasure of visiting the set dancing communities in Australia and New Zealand for a month long tour. This was a wonderful experience, meeting delightful new friends and enjoying music and dancing with them.

I feel that as much as I enjoy teaching and dancing the set dances, the best part of all is meeting new dancing friends from and finding that all of us have so much in common. Knowing that I have friends in so many places and keeping in touch with them has enriched my life.

Outside of dancing, I work as a primary school teacher here in Ireland. For many years I taught in Clondalkin, Dublin and for the past four years I have been living and teaching in Westport, county Mayo.

My son John lives in Limerick and my daughter Deirdre and her husband John  now live in county Offaly.

I am delighted that Deirdre is a registered Step Dancing teacher with the Irish Dancing Commission, as is her mother, my ex-wife Ann, who lives in county Wexford.