The Intoxication of Irish Dance

Do you remember the first time you saw an Irish dance performance?

For me, it was a junior high talent show when I was 13.

A family performed made up of 5 children including 2 sets of twins -- a set of boys and a set of girls. They were perfect for Irish choreography.

I didn't remember the dance but what I did remember was wanting, with all my heart, to be able to dance like that!

Do you share this feeling with me? Were you drawn to Irish dance when you first saw it? Heard the music? Felt the rhythm of the hard shoes? Did the memory of the dance performance keep pleasantly nagging at your brain until you found out where the nearest place Irish dance was taught?

This was basically my story of how I became to be an Irish dancer.

Never have I yearned to become another kind of dancer. Irish is what I feel I was born to do.

Am I not alone?

It's one of my favorite parts of a dance performance, while looking out from the stage, and see little girls in the audience jumping around to the music.

I imagine they are little Irish dancers in the making. *sigh*

I found this video on Pinterest. She is an amazing dancer but what I really loved happens just after the 1 minute mark in the video.

Watch...

The woman videotaping says "She makes me want to do it."

I love that!

By this simple performance, a woman in the audience wants to learn how to Irish dance. And she can't be the only one.

Irish dance is so intoxicating and so catching. Whenever I tell people I Irish dance, 90% of the time the response is, besides "Is that the same thing as Riverdance?" but rather, "I love that kind of dance!"

It's exciting to be apart of something that not many people do but a lot of people know.

Please share your first-witness-of-Irish-dance story with me! I'd love to see how you felt when you first saw Irish dance.