End of term celebrations for young Irish dancers

End of term celebrations for young Irish dancers

8 July 2020

DANCERS from the locally based Irish dance school, Scoil Rince an Chroí, celebrated the end of a very different term at their socially distanced summer party last Thursday.

The dancers, hailing from all corners of the district, came together to look back on a very different term due to Covid-19. 

The school closed its doors to pupils in early March due to the virus and straightaway the teachers, Brid McKinney, Bridget Madden and Christopher Owens, moved all classes online in a bid to keep the school functioning as close to normal as possible. 

Ms Madden said: “Within a matter of days, we were conducting all our classes online. It was a big adjustment not only for us but for our dancers and parents. We made it work, we just had to.”

The dancers started their online classes by hosting a very successful virtual St Patrick’s Day performance, to make up for the missed performances scheduled in Downpatrick. 

The classes were then conducted over Zoom from Monday to Saturday, with some classes taking place twice per day. Dancers also took part in weekly fitness, Pilates and strength classes. 

Brid said that keeping of the dancers’ fitness was essential.  “With not being at class, it was important that our dancers maintained their training. We ensured our dancers kept up with what we would expect normally of them during the competitive season,” she remarked.

The school continued with its very popular tapping tots classes for those aged from 2-4 and in late April started a ten-week online adult class. 

Now into its eighth week, the class hosts over 20 dancers from all parts of the UK and Ireland weekly, with dancers ages ranging from 21-68 and some with no previous dance experience before. 

Christopher said that the classes had given the dancers a chance to keep fit and learn something knew  from within the comfort of their homes.

Also during lockdown, dancers from the school took part in an all county dance collaboration in conjunction with Unity Irish Dance called the ‘#countydowncollab’. 

Dancers were set a challenge of learning steps choreographed by Unity, along with eight other Co Down schools — later pieced together in a video that which has received over 14,000 views on social media.

The school now breaks until the end of July and returns for the summer dance camp which runs August 10-14.