Casey Manzella
Reporter
When senior Emma Gruber was young, she took ballet and ice skating lessons, but neither of these seemed to interest her. One day when she was in elementary school, she attended the Lord of the Dance, a professional Irish dance performance, and immediately fell in love. “I loved watching the high kicks and jumps!” she said. “It was so amazing, I just wanted to do what they were doing.”
Junior Olivia De Palo also began with ballet, but quickly discovered she was too energetic for the slow ballet poses. Seeing her abundance of energy, her mother signed her up for Irish dance when she was five. Olivia has been dancing ever since.
Sophomore Sarah Hardy began dancing for different reasons than Emma and Olivia. Sarah’s older sister, senior Julia Hardy, had already begun dancing and Sarah was eager to try. “I started Irish dancing when I was five because I had seen my sister dance and I wanted to be just like her,” she said. “I’ve stuck with it for a long time though because I love how unique it is.”
Emma, Olivia, Sarah and Julia have all been dancing together since they were little and have grown close after spending so many hours in the studio. “I love all of the friends I’ve made at dance,” Sarah said. “They are truly like my sisters.”
Sarah helps Emma with last minute hair fixes.
Practice can be as frequent as four times a week, each lasting about two and a half hours. Each practice begins with a cardio warm-up to get the girls’ muscles ready to dance. To prevent injury and increase flexibility, the girls then spend the next 20 minutes stretching. Once they are warm the girls begin a run through of their full routines. “After running through our dance with music we do it again without the music just drilling individual parts that could look sharper or more uniform,” Sarah said. “We often play around with the choreography until we find what looks best.”
While the girls continue to work on their dances over the next few weeks they feel confident about the upcoming competition. Emma, Sarah, Olivia and Julia have all competed at World Championships before. Emma has competed in the solo competition eight times and all of the girls competed as a team at the 2009 World Championships in Philadelphia where their Ceili placed fourth.
Emma has qualified for the World Championships eight times in the past.
The girls have been drilling their dances for the upcoming competition since August and their hard work has definitely paid off. Emma, Olivia, Sarah and Julia will all be competing in the Figure Choreography, a dance with 16 girls, at the Irish Dance World Championships in Boston. In addition, Emma, Sarah and Julia will be competing in the Ceili, also known as the Eight-Hand. The World Championships will host teams from the US, Ireland, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand from March 24-31 in Boston.
While the Ceili includes traditional Irish dance choreography where the torso remains still, the Figure is much more unique. One of the reasons it is so unique is because it incorporates so many girls. In addition Figure dances also typically tell a story. The girls will be performing a dance that tells the story of a group of hard working Irish women who work to build a railroad in order to feed their family. “Since the figure is such a unique dance we spend a long time trying to find the best choreography,” Sarah said.
Sarah before and after putting on her makeup, wig and traditional dress.
In order to tell the story, the girls must break from traditional choreography and use their arms. “We recently re-choreographed our Figure and spent a long time creating a new dance that would be World’s quality,” Sarah said.
Having done so well in the past the girls are hoping to do just as well this year. The top three teams in each area of competition receive a globe shaped trophy and the girls hope to take one of them home. According to Sarah, “Taking home the globe would mean that all of our Friday nights and Saturday mornings at the studio will have paid off.”
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wRAf3IvHFo
