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A stormy night. High winds and heavy rain. Roads are flooded and closed, so I may be stranded awhile.

The intensity of the storm is only mirroring the depth of my joy. I have not danced to a live band in Ireland in 15 months. It is too long. I did not know how starved my soul was for this music and this movement until I am back in it. The crowd at Vaughan’s is local, and all great dancers. I am swept along in their sets, carried by their skill and precision, and I fall into a deep bliss that I cannot hide. I smile as broadly as is possible. I dance half the time with my eyes closed, the mood and the music carries me aloft.

In Clare the first set is traditionally the Caledonian. Mary Doorty is my partner, and she proudly bears me as one of her proteges. Four years ago I danced my first set dance, with her, in this hall. Mary has aged to the point where she has retired as a B&B lady, which I didn’t think ever happened. "So many people I’ve introduced to the dance," she says. I am one of a long line. I need nearly no prompting from her as we dance in place, cross the set, house around the set with the three other couples in the square. "Have you music in you? Do you play? You have the steps perfect," she tells me.

The Plain Set next. The Connemara, perhaps my favorite. The Clare Lancers, a set I don’t know so well. My partner insists we take the first top position, a place I avoid because it means actually having to know what is going to occur next. She pulls me through it with only a couple of recoveries. This dance has one of my favorite moves. You’re in a basket with the adjacent couple, arms linked behind and spinning as one. The basket breaks and you continue the momentum of the circle in a swing with your partner. "This is the sweetest move in all of set dancing," I tell my partner. "You’re right on that one, it is indeed."

I have brought my photographs. "P.J.! Look! Here you are, you happy man," as someone holds aloft my photograph of the blissful dancer with his eyes closed. "Oh look, there’s Joe in the back, he died last year." "That’s Michael’s mouth, I’d know that anywhere." I watch as all night people hand my box around and look through the photographs. It is as fulfilling in its own way as my opening was in New York. These people are truly moved by what I have brought back to them, and it gratifies me. "P.J., is it OK if I continue to exhibit this print? It’s starting to be kind of a famous one for me." "Oh, certainly, it is right by me," he answers.

Mary had dibs on me for the last dance of the evening, the Caledonian again. I feel myself become weepy with feeling. The inimicable texture of the Four Courts band, the snare drum, box, fiddle and flute, the unique batter rhythm of a Clare step, these details compose the memory and the moment, held as one. The feelings are rising to flood. I stand in the river and let it wash through my being.

30 January 2002

Kilfenora, County Clare