I was happy to read about the Irish dancing activities in Gainesville, Florida. The Inisheer Irish Dance Company sponsored "The Long Hot Summer Irish Ceili Dance and Workshops" in July - read the article in the Gainesville Sun - consisting of an Irish step-dance workshop and a subsequent ceili and set dance workshop, followed by an evening ceili dance accompanied by excellent area musicians, with guest instructor Liam Eagan of West Palm Beach leading the social dances and Piper Call leading a workshop on Sean nos ("old style") Irish step dance. [The article, by the way, does a great job of defining the various types of Irish dancing: step dancing, sean-nos dancing, set dancing and ceili dancing.]
Harrington's Beginner Class - Nora Helps Out (Reading Advocate photo)
It has long been a wish of mine to some day be a "snow-bird" but the one thing I would miss if I headed south in winter would be the Irish dancing - in season, September to May, you could dance every night of the week around Boston and several groups remain active all summer - so I'm glad to know that there are pockets of it alive and "kicking" in Florida. It's funny, though; as part of a plan to ensure that I would be able to dance no matter where in the world I go, I have started to teach set dancing to beginners so I can bring the Irish dancing with me.
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