Kieran Jordan’s Irish Dance

A Class Act

By Susie Davidson

CORRESPONDENT

“Dance as if no one were watching,

Sing as if no one were listening,

And live every day as if it were your last.” – Irish saying

Kieran Jordan is, nonetheless, watching and listening amid the group of beginner and intermediate Irish dancers assembled at the YWCA for the first of a ten-week series. They’re there for varied reasons on this cold January night. “I have an interest in the cultural heritage,” said Ena Thulin, a fifth-grade teacher living in Cambridge. “I like the beauty of the music, and the exercise as well.” Jordan, she said, set an appropriate nice pace for the just-completed beginner class. “She is very forgiving, too,” she added.

The classes include both step and classic céilí dance styles as well as thorough warm-up and breathing exercises; Jordan also adds Irish dance history and other commentary. Her class appears to be a rare find for many of the participants.

“I’ve always wanted to locate an adult beginner and step class,” said Hannah Reese, a clinical research coordinator at Mass. General Hospital, who lives in Brookline. Professional dance schools, she explained, are largely geared to children.

Fritzie Mace of Medford has taken African, modern and swing classes. But as a new mom, she felt it was a great way to get back into shape. “It’s a pleasure for me to get to a dance class,’” she said. “There is something truly joyous about Irish music.”

The music itself is an uplifting mix of traditional Irish instrumentals, which include reels, jigs, slow airs and waltzes. In this evening’s classes, Jordan used recordings by Arcady, Deanta, and Nightingale. “These are three contemporary bands,” she explained. “The first two are from Ireland, and the last one is based in Vermont.The instruments include accordions, wooden flutes, fiddles, guitars, piano, tin whistles, and more.”

Jordan, a certified Irish dancing teacher and Philadelphia native, teaches dance and the history of Irish dance at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, the YWCA of Cambridge and the Blackstone River Theatre in Cumberland, Rhode Island, has danced competitively throughout the US and has led workshops and masterclasses at the Dance Complex in Cambridge, the Folk Arts Center of New England, and many New England festivals, schools, and children's dance studios.

An undergrad Irish Studies minor at Boston College, she studied traditional music and dance at University College, Cork, Ireland. Current studies in Appalachian clogging, Canadian step dance and American modern and jazz dance widen her stylistic range.

Flexibility and agility are software developer and Somerville resident and soccer player Jared Buletza’s aims as he steps into the intermediate class. “I want to learn this,” he said. “It keeps me going in the winter.” Buletza took tap and Irish dance classes two years ago.

The less daunting beginner class had two dozen participants; the intermediate is an eclectic assemblage of ten women and two men of varied shapes and sizes, most looking to be in their 30s, give or take. T-shirts, tanks and leggings are prevalent; one brave soul wears shorts. Two are dancing in their socks. “You can tell who the pros are, though,” whispered Mace. “They’ve got the fancy dance shoes on.” These appear to be black ballet-type slippers with interwoven laces.

A long warm-up, complete with head and shoulder rolling and proceeding into leg kicks and circles, begins the stepping action. “You’re not just going through the motions,” said Jordan. “You’re really putting yourself into this dance.” She nudges the group to imagine the fronts of their bodies moving forward with great energy. Students, in pairs, lead the rest in a sequence of intricate trotting with backward leg kicks.

Jordan picks two overenthused dancers out who are hopping too high, and rearranges couples according to stylistic symmetry. All, in turn, rise on their toes, leap and take two steps. Some have the highest of grace and the most fluid mobility; four strugglers redo their motions. In the next sequence, the core dance step called “sevens,” the students move, in crablike fashion, sideways, but are anything but lumbering as they push off the ground, lift and place one foot behind the other. With linked hands held high in threes, each trio performs this segment and clears the way for the next.

By now, a large window has been opened.

Sevens experts are appointed to counsel those less adept. “You’re not falling on both feet,” cautioned Pinar Zengingonul, a Turkish woman from Jamaica Plain who leads her own choreography group. Orla McKiernan, an Arlington woman who has previously taken two of Jordan’s classes, struggles to perfect her act as Maigread McEachern of Cambridge holds up the other end of the trio.

This camaraderie is not isolated; one industrious student, armed with a notebook into which she has jotted the sequences, is surrounded by students asking for her email address. It’s a tough course of action, and not one for the less-nimble footed among us, yet great support is evident.

A labyrinth of “arches” next occurs as each trio member passes under the others, with sevens augmenting the pattern. Onto this, the middle person, called the “man” as opposed to the two “ladies” at either end, designs his/her own solo, as do the ladies, in subsequent unison. One pair demonstrated a slick, shuffling maneuver; Noeline Morrissey, in Irish jig shoes, performed an inspirationally rousing tap dance. “Jig shoes have fiberglass or wood on the toe and heel,” she explained. Hers were fiberglass, which provided a superb, authentically clackety tone on the wooden floor. An accountant, Morrissey also plays accordion as well as the Irish bouzouki.

The evening ended in a flourish of all four trios repeating movements of sweeping arches and sevens, with deftly dextrous kicks, taps, shuffles and footsteps in single and dual step sequences.

“There is no one style in Irish dance,” said Jordan. “There is no written tradition.” Thus, unlike ballet, which is universally standardized, no style of Irish dance is “wrong,” she explained. “If I’m trying to fix something, it just needs to be changed for ensemble acts,” she maintained.

Jordan’s beginner class meets on Tuesdays from 5:30-6:45 p.m. and the intermediate from 6:45-8 p.m., between Jan. 14 and March 18 at the YWCA, 7 Temple St. in Central Square. Cost is $136 for 10 weeks or $13 per class on a drop-in basis. Register by calling 617-547-6789 (the Cambridge Center for Adult Education). Discounts are available YWCA members.

For more information on Kieran Jordan’s classes, call 617-825-8787.