Some two dozen first-graders through young adults in Diana Rodgers’ All About Irish dance school are not from Ireland — they’re from this area — but they can show contest judges they know all about Irish dancing.
They’ve won awards from Prague to Pennsylvania.
The next time they take the stage in colorful Irish costumes will be at the Celtic Festival in Stillwater June 21-22.
They will demonstrate Irish dancing and probably help the audience learn Ceili dancing at a dinner-theater fundraiser here Saturday evening, July 26.
Aimed at helping fund future trips to Irish dance competitions, the event will also include a catered dinner, a play and a special entertainer. It will be in the Ashley Building at Shawnee Pentecostal Holiness Church, 518 E. Seventh.
“Irish dancing is definitely a different form of dancing, not your typical American dancing,” said Rodgers, a Meeker mother of four daughters who’s been dancing herself since age 5.
“The dance is a very disciplined form,” she explained. “You keep your arms down straight. Legs need to be straight, knees are straight and feet are crossed.”
With the more choreographed dances, one will see more arm movements, but “for competition, they always keep their arms to their side, backs straight,” Rodgers said.
“It’s fun,” she continued, “very good exercise. A lot of energy in these dances.”
Irish dancing started with a group of men called dance masters in Ireland in the 1700s, she said.
They traveled from village to village and would teach the Irish dances in the villages.
“If two dance masters would appear in the same village, they would compete against each other and the one that executed the most steps would take that village,” Rodgers said.
“It was a great honor for a village to have a dance master come.” Villagers would pay for his room and board, his food and sometimes pay him for teaching, she said.
From Irish villages, the dance form was brought to the United States.
“As people transitioned from Ireland to America, it came over here,” probably in the 1800s, Rodgers said.
“Today, you see both the traditional steps and more modern,”she said.
When Michael Flatley brought his style of Irish dancing to the U.S. 10 or 15 years ago, “he kind of modernized it.”
Now, when a student enters a school, they will be taught a reel, then some jigs, she said. “Usually by the second year, they will go into their hard shoes and will learn treble jigs and the horn pipe.”
“Hard shoe” is a leather shoe with a tip on the toe and the heel, specially made in Ireland, Rodgers explained.
Tips can be lanister, a more beginner’s type tip, or concord, tips that come in a higher price range. She’s not sure what the tips are made of.
“They also learn their traditional sets, like St. Patrick’s Day, Blackbird and many more traditions,” she said.
Rodgers learned about the dance form while living in Norman, and having had dance experience since early childhood, decided to try out Irish dancing about 10 years ago,
“Picking up Irish wasn’t hard,” she said. Rodgers soon was assisting the director in teaching it in Norman.
She found Irish dance “very challenging and liked the idea of competition opportunities involved in it.”
She and her husband, Kendall Rodgers and the three daughters they had at that time, moved to this area in 2002.
Their newest daughter, a smiling brunette, was born a year and a half ago.
“They all dance,” Rodgers said. Their eldest daughter, who will be 18 later this year and takes classes at Gordon Cooper Technology Center, helps her mother teach.
“She has been dancing for seven years and competing almost that long. This last year she brought home many first-place trophies,” said Rodgers.
Rodgers started her All About Irish School of Dance in 2003, and presently teaches six Irish dance classes at the Shawnee Salvation Army gym.
She also teaches at her home in Meeker to accommodate students who work during the day.
Between 20 and 24 students ranging in age from 6 to adult are in All About Irish School of Dance. While the majority are in the 10- to 14-age range, four students are 18 or older.
Most of the students are from Shawnee, Tecumseh and Meeker.
Since 2004, All About Irish students have performed at Stillwater’s Celtic Festival; Scottish Festival,Tulsa; Oklahoma State Fair; Czech Festival, Yukon; and the Kolache Festival in Prague, although not this year because they needed a wooden stage.
Students also do a number of community service performances, such as a fundraiser in Woodland Park last summer; Salvation Army and Methodist Church events and in nursing homes.
All About Irish is the only CRN school in Oklahoma. CRN, a national organization from Ireland, stands for the Gaelic name, Cummin Rinoe Naisiunta.
Rodgers regularly attends CRN teacher workshops taught by an instructor from Ireland who travels to different parts of the U.S. Usually workshops are in cities where dance competitions are occurring, so while she is training, her students are competing.
The most recent one was last July in Harrisburg, Pa. Her students won several first-place trophies, second-and third-place medals. Also last year, they won first place in marching and second in floats at Prague’s Kolache Festival.
Beginning students wear a class dress designed by Rodgers in black, with lime green, royal blue and silver.
On mastering a certain dance competition level, they are allowed to design their own dresses and have them made just the way they want them.
“It’s an incentive to get them to practice,” Rodgers confided.
The traveling performance troupe wears dresses specially designed by Rodgers and a patron who operates an embroidery business here.
Performance dresses are in different colors of crushed velvet. Each is embroidered with a Celtic knot selected by the student wearing that costume.
Their other performance dress is royal blue and silver and also bears a Celtic knot.
The dresses’ flowing skirts fall about two inches above the knee. Bodices vary; the silver costume has a vest that is laced in front.
Students are all girls except for three boys, who wear black pants, white or black dress shirts and vests with Celtic designs on the backs.
Performance troupe boys’ shirts are silver with Celtic knots, worn with cummerbunds in royal blue and a second color of their choice.
“We’re trying to get more boys to come in,” Rodgers said.
Information about enrollment or scheduling performances may be had by calling her at (405) 279-3084.
Tickets to the July 26 dinner-theater, on sale now, are $12 each for the catered dinner, play, dancing and guest entertainer; or $5 per person, $15 per family without dinner or entertainer. Call Nancy Spears at 395-9775 for tickets by July 14.
