The important work we're doing

People see The Seattle Irish Dancers and are often instantly hooked. Irish dance is rhythmic, upbeat, and FUN. It looks accessible, people tend to feel like it's something they could do, or at least it looks like something they wish they could do. I can't even count the number of people who have come up to me after a show and said "I wish I could do what you're doing, you look like you're having so much fun!" I'm not denying the truth of this. Irish dancing is fun. It's not the ballet (though I would argue it's as hard, if not harder than ballet). It resonates with audiences because its accessible. No one wants to watch ballet dancers (or even contemporary dancers) perform with they relax and have a pint. Irish dancing is truly suitable for all audiences, and it's a great time, every time.

With all this fun involved, I sometimes forget the importance of what the Seattle Irish Dancers are doing (or hope to be doing, now and in the future). Not only are we doing something we absolutely love (who can deny that the world needs more people doing what they love?) but we are real life promoters of the importance of art in our lives. We are cultural ambassadors. We are literally keeping an art form alive every time we dance. Sometimes I think about this and get extremely overwhelmed. Then I think about the fact that I teach dance as well, and at some point hope to take my TCRG (the exam to be a qualified Irish Dance teacher). Every time I teach a dancer how to do a skip 2,3, I'm passing on a traditional movement. Yikes!

Traditional dance is especially important in American culture. American's (as a general rule) don't really know how to dance. I think we used to know (people came to America from all over the world, the rest of the world knows how to dance just because, yada yada) but we've lost it somewhere along the way. People are amazed at dancers; professional dancers have been raised up and hailed as phenomenons. I'm not saying professional dancing is not impressive, I'm just saying it's so impressive because so many of us have no concept of using our bodies to move in an expressive way. We are at a point in our culture where someone has to teach us to move. We feel that we have to go to a studio and pay money to learn how to do something that our bodies naturally want to do anyway. Don't get me wrong--no normal person's body automatically wants to do ballet. The same goes for Irish dancing, and jazz and modern etc. But a certain amount of body awareness is certainly engrained in us, we've just hidden it away under layers of embarrassment.

Because of this, I feel that the pressure's on. I feel like as the only performance based Irish Dance company in Seattle right now, we have some big shoes to fill. So far, we've been up to the challenge, but I never want to forget the real reasons we're doing this, we can't let the fun get in the way.