Stepping into an old tradition

LI's Irish dancers are getting respect from the Emrald Isle


 BY JIM MERRITT

March 6, 2005

To the tune of a rollicking Irish jig, Kathleen McGowan is tapping, twirling and leaping her way across the Westbury High School stage, her back straight, arms anchored at her sides.

Other girls may be enjoying this Sunday at the mall, but McGowan, 14, of Massapequa Park, has her heart set on one of the trophies at this recent feis (pronounced fesh), or Irish step-dancing competition, being sponsored by veteran dance teacher Donny Golden.

Dressed in a shiny silk and sequin costume, her brown hair bouncing with her curly wig, McGowan arrived with a group of classmates from the Inishfree School of Irish Dance, which offers classes in Port Jefferson, Massapequa and other Long Island locations. Their competition: some 1,100 youngsters from all over Long Island and as far away as Boston.

McGowan, an Irish step dancer since age 4, said she's so dedicated to her art that she hasn't time for friends.

"It's the only thing I do," McGowan said. "I just dance." That day she came in 19th out of 42; in July she finished 18th in the North America championships for her age group in Philadelphia, qualifying her - along with about 60 other Long Islanders - to compete in the world championships to be held March 20-27 in Ennis, Ireland, considered the Olympics of step dancing.

Sustained popularity

About a decade after the opening of Riverdance, the Celtic-based music and dance show that catapulted step dancing into the mainstream, Long Islanders continue to challenge their feet with pounding rhythms. They also regularly bring home prizes from national and even Irish competitions.

"In the early 1990s it didn't matter how good you were, it was a fight to be recognized over there [in Ireland]," said Mary Lou Schade of The Schade Academy of Irish Dance in Levittown. Nowadays, she said, "our students are more accepted because they are beginning to win more and be recognized as good Irish dancers."

Lisa Petri, the treasurer of the Irish Dance Teachers Association of North America, agrees. "There are Long Island Irish dancers who have reached the competitive standard to legitimately challenge for top places and titles at the highest level of Irish dance competition internationally," Petri said. "In the last 10 or 15 years the standard of dancing on Long Island has improved, and we're being rewarded for that."

Step dancing has morphed from a purely Irish pastime to one that attracts 1,500 to 2,000 youngsters on Long Island - not all of them from Irish backgrounds - who attend the 15 or so local step-dancing schools. Step dancing is a national phenomenon, attracting about 4,000 competitors to the North American championships each year. Along with Chicago and Boston, New York is considered a center of step dancing, and Long Island is one of the most active and successful areas in the country, Petri said.

"It's part of the kid lifestyle, like soccer and playing video games," said Fedelmia Davis, director of the mid-Atlantic step-dancing region of the Irish Dance Teachers Association of North America, which includes Long Island. Davis is also vice president of the Irish dancing commission in Dublin.

"Where before Irish dancing was just for the Irish, people are taking it up as they would ballet, tap or jazz," said Golden of the Golden School of Irish Dancing, which offers classes in Brooklyn and at the Irish American Center in Mineola.

Students often become interested when they watch their friends practice their fancy, frenetic footwork. One childhood convert: Carissa Lucatuorto of Stony Brook.

"I took tap, jazz and ballet, and then my best friend showed me Irish step dancing," Lucatuorto said. "I just liked the way she only moved her feet very fast and not the whole body."

Six years after that first glimpse, Lucatuorto, now 16, gets A's and B's as an 11th-grader at Ward Melville High School in Stony Brook, holds down a part-time job as a supermarket clerk, and volunteers four or five days each week as a student teacher at the Mulvihill-Lynch School of Irish Dance, which occupies a Centereach storefront.

Ethnic diversity

Lucatuorto is sticking with Irish step dancing at an age when others drift away to hang out with high school friends or focus more on their studies, said Mulvihill-Lynch's artistic director, Debbie Lynch-Webber.

Of Italian, German and Bohemian background, Lucatuorto is also an example of step dancing's increasing ethnic diversity on Long Island.

"Our school runs the gamut," said Schade in Levittown, where students of Chinese and Italian ancestry have stepped alongside Irish-Americans.

On a recent Wednesday evening, step dance moms Junko Rummell of Bellmore and Kyoko Zepeda of East Meadow sat speaking Japanese in a corner of the Berest Dance Center in Port Washington.

The Japanese-American moms were biding time while their daughters, Judy, 14, and June Rummell, 11, and Natalie Zepeda, 14, worked up a sweat executing high kicks with instructor Karen Petri.

"Up! Up!" coached Petri, co-owner and teacher with her sister, Lisa, of the East Northport-based Petri School of Irish Dancing, which also offers classes in Port Washington, New Hyde Park and Rockville Centre.

A few years back, the Rummell and Zepeda girls switched from gymnastics to step dance. "They love the Irish music and they're always bouncing around the house," Kyoko Zepeda said.

Not just for girls

All that bouncing has served them well. Natalie is going to the world championships, her mother said.

Paul Scott, 12, of Port Washington, has set the bar even higher. He wants one day to perform with Riverdance. One of six athletic brothers at home but the only one to take step dancing, Scott bought into dancing, big time, three years ago.

"You see him sitting in church and he's dancing; in the supermarket, he's dancing," said his mother, Susan Scott.

Paul, who won a second place for boys his age at the Westbury feis, has stayed with it even though he's outnumbered, one of only six boys among 119 girls at the Petri school.

"It makes me different," he said.

Monica Devine, 7, 100 percent Irish-American and a second-grader at R.J. Lockhart Elementary School in Massapequa, is more typical. She recently switched from ballet and tap to step dancing, following the footsteps of four cousins, said her mom, Kelly Devine.

Apparently a natural, Monica took second place at a competition in Stony Brook last year. "I would like her to see how far she can go," her mother said.

Fierce competition

All that competing can be expensive, especially for the girls. Handmade costumes imported from Ireland, which girls wear to the feis, cost $1,600 to $1,800 new. (Boys generally wear long black pants.) Then there are the three-quarter length imported wigs ($125), tiara-like crowns ($15) and footwear (hard shoes cost about $120; soft shoes for girls cost $40 and $75 for boys). Weekly beginner lessons cost about $45 or $50 per month.

With each school designing its own costumes and headbands and offering distinct choreography, there's plenty of intense inter-school rivalry.

Erin Lavin, 11, of Wantagh, and Kayla Fallon, also 11, of Coram, were happy to have come in first and second, respectively, in a competition for girls younger than 12 at the Westbury feis. They, like kids in other age groups, were judged on their timing, posture, foot work and overall appearance in both hard and soft shoe performances.

"I'm happy because now she gets to compete at a higher level," Kayla said, pleased the big prize was going to a fellow Inishfree student.

"We're all really competitive," agrees Carissa Lucatuorto. She won't discuss dance with a high school friend who attends another Irish dancing school. "When we are not dancing, we're best friends, but when we're dancing, we don't talk because we want to beat each other," she said.

It's a healthy rivalry, however, Lynch-Webber said. "I think the kids enjoy the competitive nature, the pride when their school does well," she said. She notes that despite the competition among schools, many of the teachers "grew up together and are good friends."

Still, Island schools - about 10 of which send students to international competitions - are more than happy to champion their winners.

At the All Ireland Irish Dancing Championships held Feb. 7-12 in Belfast, Petri school students won a fourth place among girls younger than 11 and second place among girls younger than 12.

Ryan McCarthy, 18, of Uniondale, a Hofstra music major affiliated with Schade, won an All Ireland first place gold medal and a perpetual trophy.

Placing internationally is considered high achievement.

"When you get to the level that you are even competing in the championships, you are a champion. If you are lucky enough and have a great competitive day ... that is a huge honor," Petri said. "Even a kid who's placing 19th, that is a dream of every Irish dancer all over the world."

"They respect us," McCarthy said of the Irish. Even if, he adds, "there's still that little bit of [belief] that the pure Irish are better Irish dancers."

Jim Merritt is a freelance writer.

Fast facts about fancy footwork

Where did it begin?

Irish dancing has been traced back more than 2,000 years, to the arrival of the Celts, who danced in religious rituals. The modern form of Irish step dancing was spread in the mid-18th century by dance masters who wandered from village to village teaching peasants and competing at fairs. Competition  was standardized in 1929 with the establishment of the Dublin-based Irish Dancing Commission (An Coimisiun le Rinci Gaelacha), which preserves and promotes Irish dancing.

Why the wigs?

Wigs save dancers from hours of hairdo preparation - and an uncomfortable night’s sleep protecting the creation - while providing the traditional curly look worn in a feis.

Why are the arms anchored at the dancer’s sides?

The most credible theory, according to www.irelandsdance.com, is that 18th century dance masters brought an unruly dance to heel by forcing students to perform with their arms in a fixed position. Another theory: the defiance of Irish dancers, who refused to raise their arms during a performance for Queen Elizabeth I, a fan of Irish jigs but also a suppressor of Irish culture in its homeland.