The Ireland Dispatches

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Bridie runs a tight ship. She's your old 8th grade English teacher, reincarnated as an irish set dance teacher. It's 8pm on the spot, and she's clapping a beat in the middle of the hall, a small school dance floor, brightly lit with flourescents, a small stage where the big tape player sets. "You, your shoe's untied!" she barks at me. "The other foot, step LEFT, right LEFT!" she pitches to someone else. 20 minutes practicing a half dozen different steps. I'm in deep. I manage an approximation of most of it, but here she's teaching how to do it with all the ornamentation. Then we're in sets, she assigns all of us partners, 40 students, who's top, who's side. I have a partner shorter than me, a little stockier too, and in a ceili swing my forearm props up her left breast. Neither of us pay any attention to this, we're stricken with trying to follow Bridie's calls over a scratchy PA. Towards the end of the two hours (after the cigarette break), she teaches us the step to the Caledonia Set. "I hate this set, but here's the step for it, and it's the only dance you'll ever use it." Thump-a-thump THUMP, thu-a-thum THUMP, tha-THUMP. The floor shakes with us in synchrony, at least the 1/5th of us who actually know what we're doing (which doesn't include me). You, Eric, and you, John, you two have it spot on, the rest, you don't have it. Don't worry, it'll take weeks. Don't practice at home, you'll learn it wrong."

I have moved from the kid’s wading pool to the deep ocean.

January 1999
Galway