Irish Set Dancing & Me - Maggie Daniel
My name is Maggie Daniel and I love Irish Set Dancing, I love the energy of the music, I love the fun we have when dancing, I love the variety of moves in the dances, and I love sharing all this with other people.
I teach Irish Set Dancing at Newton Abbot and Colyford, I didn’t start those groups, I just took them over when their founders stepped down.
Club activities
I teach the club members the popular dances that they will need to know if they go to a dance weekend in Ireland, or elsewhere in the UK, as well as adding variety by teaching less common dances. My aim is to help people have fun through dancing. We want to get the dances right, but having a good time is the main thing.
Many of my best friends have been made through Irish Set Dancing, it’s a great social activity. As well as meeting on dance nights we go for meals together, to concerts, or to other social events. Members of the club often travel together to dance festivals and weekends, either in the UK, Ireland, or sometimes elsewhere in Europe.
We go twice a year to Basingstoke, to the Sets Mad weekends. They love to dance lots of different dances at their ceilis, so I try to prepare us by practicing some of the dances they might do in the weeks before the events.
They run a dance weekend and various ceilis in Bristol, so we often go to events there too. We have made many friends from elsewhere in the country, and in Europe, through set dancing.
Once or twice a year some of the dancers from the group travel to Ireland to take part in a summer school or dance weekend. These are great social events, and great dancing experiences. The dancing isn’t competitive, or a display, we are joining in with crowds of other people on the dance floor from all over Ireland, and sometimes, the world.
When someone goes to their first Irish Set Dancing weekend it is good to go as part of a group of friends. It gives you confidence to see familiar faces on the dance floor, and travelling is more fun with other people for company.
How I started Irish Set Dancing
I first discovered Irish Set Dancing in 1996. At that time I was doing English ceili dancing, and Cajun dancing, but finding many of the dances were not very interesting or challenging. We had the chance to try Irish Set Dancing at a workshop at Bromyard Folk Festival, one of several things available to try out. I enjoyed it, so tried it again the following year at Sidmouth and Dawlish Folk Festivals. I met John Earle, who was about to start a regular Irish Set Dancing group in Exeter, so I started to attend classes regularly and learn some of the moves and steps used.
After the first year of the class a group of us went to Ireland, to a summer school in Drumshambo, where we danced every day for a week. It was great! I discovered that very few of the dances were called at ceilis in Ireland. Dancers are expected to know the most common dances. I realised that to enjoy Irish Set Dancing to the full I would need to learn those popular dances, so, when I got home, I started to learn the core repertoire.
I continued to dance regularly in Exeter, and also travelled to Priddy, in Somerset, where Val Knight ran dancing weekends twice a year, with visiting teachers from Ireland to teach us new dances. My husband and I took another trip to Ireland, to Miltown Malbay, for the biggest summer school of them all, where the town is completely taken over by Irish dancing, music and traditional culture for a whole week.
After about five years the Exeter group finished, but by then groups had been started in Newton Abbot and Colyford, and after a few years I ended up running both of them! As well as this I have taught Irish Set Dancing at Sidmouth and Chippenham Folk Festivals, and weekends at Halsway Manor.