St. Patrick's Month, Part 1

Weekends in March are famously accounted for as an Irish dancer. We are needed everywhere for every type of Irish celebration you can think of. With green hair to match the spirit of the season, I set out for three weekends of dancing this month with varying degrees of enjoyment.

March 8th held one performance: a parade fundraiser at a nearby pub. I was put in charge of this performance and had to:

1. Run the practice beforehand (with dancers showing up late)
2. Choose the dancers for numbers (without knowing everyone's skill levels), and
3. Choose the numbers and order of performance.

Pair all of that with having no one step up to talk between numbers, which meant that the organizer of the event continually asking if we were done every time there was a pause to change shoes and younger dancers upset for a reason I didn't know, and you get my least favorite performance of the season. I can run the practice and dance, or run the practice and talk, but running the practice, talking, and performing is not a combination that I am capable of.

March 14th included two evening performances across Maryland. The first was at a St. Patrick's Day dinner, and featured an extra dodgy dancing surface. Now, It's pretty well known that as Irish dancers, we're going to be dancing on some not so prime surfaces in March, but this one takes the cake for me. Tile. Large square foot long tiles. Luckily, we were told this beforehand, so we skipped out on most of our hard shoe show numbers, and only used hard shoes for our finale. It was still slippery though. (Side note: how is it that we must dance on bad surfaces a month before worlds?) They did feed us hot dogs after performing, so all was well.

AOH Bowie St. Patrick's Day dinner. Not pictured: dodgy tile surface.

Afterward, the same crew drove on over to a barn hosting a fundraiser and St. Patrick's Day party. We go to dance hard shoe numbers here! I also got to cap of my night with a complimentary glass of wine, so it was a great night.

Champ dancers at a St. Patrick's Day fundraiser, Arnold, MD.

March 15th was parade day! It was a very windy day! You can see just how hard the wind was blowing in the pictures below because the bangs on my pixie cut was going crazy! It was also a little cold, but things certainly warmed up as we danced down Constitution Ave! Even with the wind cutting through my jacket, I was nearly sweating by the time we reached the grandstand. I learned this year (my first ever dance-down-the-parade-route year) that I need to put different shoe laces in my shoe because they came untied not once, but twice, even though I double knotted them before the parade started. Ah, well.

After the parade, a group of older champ dancers headed over to Fado's Irish pub where we danced between a band's sets. Two other dancers and I almost didn't make it, though! The vehicle we were travelling in got a flat tire as we left the parking spot. Luckily, we had some tire changing pros on hand to save the day, and we made it to the pub in time. I finished off the weekend with a large helping of shepherd's pie, Strongbow, and great time with friends.

Coming up next week, part 2: Shamrockfest!

Goals: Drill all hornpipes together
Days till NANs: 100

St. Patrick's week adventures, part 2

Today was overall slightly less adventurous, which probably stemmed from the lack of freely flowing alcohol. However, this did not dampen my excitement and general good spirits once I woke up and started moving. But before I get into my day, who's brilliant plan was it to have Shamrockfest the night before we lose an hour due to daylight savings? I needed more sleep last night than what I got...

After a hectic morning of waking up late (ahem)... I did end up making to the Metro at exactly the time I had planned, fully wigged and dance dress and other attire in tow. This is not the first time I have Metroed into DC looking like this. I'm not going to go so far to say it's a regular occurrence, but it certainly seems to be an annual one. One of the more exciting parts of my day happened to be the Metro ride this morning. Aside from the general odd looks, I had one group of guys "slyly" take a picture of me. I say slyly because I was on to their shenanigans, andcheesed it up. I also had a family of 16 from Hawaii end up talking to me and taking a group photo with me after we got off the Metro. I have apparently reached minor celebrity status.

The rest of the morning and early afternoon was spent between decorating the car for the parade, freezing my butt off, and generally getting ready to be in the parade. Despite the cold and breezy morning, the weather warmed up nicely during our time in the parade. We got to see a great deal of it as they passed by our float on the way to the main parade route, which was nice. As for our time in the parade, it was essentially a free for all for us dancers on the float, just calling who was going to next and with whom. By far the most interesting part was performing for the grandstand on the float, which was bouncing up and down and generally unstable feeling.

We concluded the day with a little performance at Fados. Little here is not metaphorical. The pub was literally packed from a mixture of Caps fans who came after the game, and parade watchers who walked down afterwards. Needless to say, us 11 dancers didn't have much space, so I guess it's good to say we're Irish dancers and not doing crazy things with our arms.

One of the more brilliant things I did today was to bring my new jig shoes and wear them all day long, which means now they are almost broken in! The completely not brilliant part of today was my lack of sunscreen, and while my dress and tights covered most of my body, my face was exposed to the sun all morning and afternoon, which has left me with a sunburn of epic proportions. My face is still getting redder and redder as it all settles in...

And I'm going to conclude by including a nice little shout out here to the GMU basketball team, who will be playing the second round of the NCAA tournament on Friday against Villanova. Go Mason!

Goals: turnout, finish breaking in shoes

Days till worlds: 39