Look Of The Irish Popular Stage Shows Pump Up Interest In Irish Step Dancing

Like a cheery drill instructor, Janet Wilder calls out the dance moves to her waiting and near-breathless students.

“Chest up. Body erect. Stay waaay high on the balls of the feet,” she intones from the front of the dance studio.

Then “Step, step, step, HOP. Step, step, step, HOP.”

The students bound across the room in something akin to synchronization. Some glance at their feet as though willing wayward toes into obedience.

Lips move, too, mouthing the clipped orders.

“Jump - two, three. Jump - two, three.”

“Arms down at the sides, chin up,” Wilder reminds them midstep. And they dutifully give it their best. “All right, good.”

Although they are having a jolly good time, these students - who range from young women to a great-grandmother - look fatigued.

And who can blame them? The dancers who inspired them to take this class - the ones from the wildly popular stage shows “Riverdance” and “Lord of the Dance” - make it seem so fluid, so beautiful, so easy.

But this is not easy. This is Irish step dancing and it’s like combining the physical dynamics of aerobics with the mental complexity of chess.

It is also the hottest, the hippest dance style - the Macarena of 1997.

“Riverdance” and “Lord of the Dance” and their star attraction - 38-year-old phenom and newly crowned sex symbol Michael Flatley - have brought Irish step dancing out of the community centers and onto stage front and center.

“It has become all the rage,” says Wilder, who recently began teaching Irish step dancing at The Academy of Dance, her studio in the Spokane Valley.

She started teaching the folk footwork after watching her young ballet students’ growing fascination with the televised Irish dance revues.

Earlier this month, she offered a three-day course for beginners and intermediates. The response was so good she scheduled another three-day session this week and will teach a regular class in the fall.

For Irish dance teachers across the country, Flatley and his crew have been like leprechauns doling out pots of gold.

“It’s been really good for business,” says Edward Touzin, owner of the Emerald School of Irish Step Dance in Dallas, Texas, where the number of students has doubled this year.

The same goes for the Maher School of Irish Dancing in Portland and the Comerford School of Irish Dancing in Seattle.

Since Christmas, Deirdre Abeid has had to turn away 35 students from her Haran School of Irish Dancing near Kettle Falls.

“Most people outside of the Irish communities had no idea this existed until ‘Riverdance,’ ” Abeid says. Now, “people are dying to learn this dancing style.”

Irish step dancing may be the latest craze, but “new” it is not.

Dating to the 16th century - some say even the 14th century or earlier - this dance is characterized by intricate footwork, a torso held ramrod-straight, arms hung loosely to the sides and legs moving in a crossed-over pattern.

Passed along and practiced in Irish communities for centuries, the dance remained primarily a cultural novelty more suited for community dance exhibitions than popular consumption.

That is until “Riverdance” came along in 1994.

Based on the traditional moves but not married to them, “Riverdance” huffed a jazzy flamboyance into the ancient art form and enthralled modern viewers.

Flatley, a sprite of a man with a tendency toward virile bravado, stood at the center of the show until he split ways with the producers and went on to form his own revue, “Lord of the Dance,” last year.

Both have played to sold-out audiences around the world, and public television recently broadcast the performances to an even wider audience.

“With ‘Riverdance,’ they’ve taken a traditional dance, but they haven’t made a relic of it,” Abeid says. “They’ve let it respond to what’s happening.”

And the people have absolutely eaten it up.

“I just loved it,” says Sheila Pulver, a 38-year-old certified public accountant from Post Falls. “You can almost feel the music flow down to your soul, and all the movements seem to really fit with the music.”

“I’m going to order the videotape so I can watch it over and over,” says JaDean Thomas, a 62-year-old great-grandmother from Spokane who saw “Riverdance” on PBS.

And, they concede, aside from the music and the beautiful dancing, there’s always Michael Flatley.

“I wouldn’t kick him out of bed for eating crackers,” quips Sue McGovney, a Spokane interior designer.

After seeing “Riverdance” on television, all three women, who have done some Scottish country dancing, decided to enroll in an Irish step dance class. Earlier this month, they took Wilder’s three-day beginning course, along with 12 other women, many with no dance experience.

Wilder spent three days prancing them through the basics. She showed them how to “bang,” “cut” and “reel.” She taught them some of the speedy, taplike footwork that is a trademark of the Irish dance. And she started them on some of the interweaving choreography the lithe professional troupes sail through in “Riverdance” and “Lord of the Dance.”

“It is dance with attitude - good attitude, but attitude,” Wilder told her students during one class.

On that day, the “step, step, hop” was giving the ladies a bit of trouble. Stepping when they should have been hopping, the women broke into laughter.

“I stepped on my own foot,” one blurted out.

Wilder then demonstrated a maneuver in which she leapt forward across the room, one leg snapping up while the other leg shot out at an impossibly-straight line in front of her.

“Whoah!” came the skeptical response from the class, and, “Oh yah, sure.”

Infinitely patient, Wilder knows how to break down the steps to their most basic level. And sure enough, not five minutes later the students were executing a move that, although not of “Riverdance” caliber, was impressive in its own right.

Although it takes years of dedication to become anywhere near as proficient as the hoofers on “Lord of the Dance,” Wilder and her students say Irish step dancing is something that even a novice can enjoy.

“It is far more aerobic than I ever thought it was,” Pulver says. But “it’s a whole lot more fun than aerobics.”

“I think it’s very graceful - not that what I did was graceful,” McGovney says with a laugh, explaining that it took a long soak in a hot bath to soothe her aching muscles after the class.

Dance teachers who have been involved in Irish step for years say they are pleased to see such a beautiful tradition gaining an exposure it hasn’t enjoyed for centuries.

“It’s such a joyful expression of dance that people are just electrified by it,” Abeid says.

“It has really done a lot for Irish culture as well,” says Gabrielle Maher of the Maher School of Irish Dancing in Portland.

Most of the teachers concede step dancing could be just another in a series of passing footwork fads.

However, unlike break dancing and line dancing, step dancing was around for hundreds of years before the populace crowned it the in thing to do.

Touzin looks at it this way: “‘Riverdance’ may fade away, but I think the interest in step dancing will linger.”

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MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: Want to know more about Irish dance? By Winda Benedetti Staff writer Don’t know your reel from a slip jig? Want to dance like Michael Flatley but look more like Jim Carrey? Well, here are some Irish step dance definitions and resources to get you jigging down the path to “Riverdance.” Or you can catch the real thing. “Riverdance” is tentatively scheduled to play the Spokane Opera House next spring.

Definitions Feis: Pronounces fesh, it is an Irish dance competition. Soft shoe dances: Incorporate more leaps and twists and twirls. Done in soft, balletlike shoes. Dance names include the reel, light jig and slip jig. Hard shoe dances: Incorporate heavy foot work. Dancers wear a hard, taplike shoe. Dances include the hornpipe, trebel reel and trebel jig. Set dances: A pre-defined series of steps that are danced to a particular piece of music. These steps have been passed down through generations of Irish dancers. Examples include the Three Sea Captains, the Blackthorn Stick and the Garden of Daisies. Cut: A small leap onto the right foot (which is in back), at the same time lifting the left leg (which is in front) into the air, bending it at the knee and crossing the left foot over the right leg at knee height.

Resources Janet Wilder, director of The Academy of Dance, 14214 E. Sprague in Spokane. (509) 922-3023. Next Irish step dance session is scheduled for Monday through Wednesday from 6-7:15 p.m for beginners and from 7:15-8:30 for intermediates. Cost is $25. Classes will also begin in the late summer or early fall. A list of Irish step dance teachers from around the country can be found on the Internet at http://tigger.cc.uic.edu/ %7Eaerobin/irteach.html#w. The official “Lord of the Dance” Web site is located at www.lordofthedance.com/. The official “Riverdance” Web site is located at www.riverdance.ie/.