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