From the Auntie Maries to Los Angeles
In the world of competitive Irish dancing, many who progress from beginners through to seniors, will want to continue with an involvement in dance in a professional capacity but may feel there is little scope for this apart from qualifying as a teacher and subsequently as an adjudicator, and possibly setting up a dance school of one’s own.
With the many stage shows taking their message of Irish dance around the world there is increasing scope to continue dancing, at least for a limited number of years, after leaving the competitive arena. But youth and supreme fitness are not eternal and professional avenues in the spectacular stage shows will be closed off except for a specialist few. A message I would like to convey in this article is that there is much more scope for long-term professional involvement than at first meets the eye. My own narrow view on this subject was recently widened by a chance meeting with Máire Clerkin, a truly talented dance specialist, who told me briefly of her future plans.
If I hadn’t bumped into Máire while she was adjudicating at Céim Óir feis last September I would never have learned that she was about to slip away unnoticed to take up permanent residence in the USA. Knowing a little about her vast contribution to Irish dance in Britain, I believe her departure is surely the most significant loss to contemporary Irish dancing on this side of the pond. Indeed her American sponsoring legal counsel described her as ‘a most gifted alien’. Although London-based, Máire’s dance activities since gaining her teacher’s certificate more than 20 years ago, have extended to several other parts of the world, and therefore there is reason to hope that we have not permanently lost the use of her talents, but that she can be persuaded to revisit us and contribute to future dance projects on this side of the Atlantic.
Although still a youthful dance specialist, at age 45 Máire is not upping sticks to join an American Riverdance or Lord of the Dance cast. Rather, her mission is to share her skills and expertise in Irish dance with stage, film, television and education clients in the US. Now, just weeks after settling in to her arty, bohemian base in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, she has wasted no time in setting about the training of students of all levels in technique, repertoire, performance, historical traditions and contemporary innovation in Irish dance. But more of that later, after I first describe a little of Máire’s dance history.
It was inevitable that as a member of a dancing family of five kids (three girls and two boys — but unlike Billy Elliott the boys gave up early) Máire’s first teacher should be her mother Sheila who ran her own very successful school of Irish dancing in London. To widen her experience she then spent an enjoyable two years under Ted Kavanagh’s tutelage. After her mum’s retirement Máire was taught by Michael Maguire and June Way in their joint Maguire-Way school. She gained further experience as a senior dancer in the Griffin O’Loughlin School, thereby having the benefit of training by six highly respected teachers. Amongst her competitive dancing achievements were a senior championship and the under-15 world qualifying championship in the Southern England Oireachtas. She very much wanted to continue dancing after she had finished competitive dancing but at first she felt there were few avenues for this, apart from going down the teaching road.
At college she had met many dancers in contemporary, ballet and jazz dance with ambitions to become professional dancers. She told me that ‘as an Irish dancer I felt that I should be able to become a professional too. This was before Riverdance and the other big shows, and dancers in my position had to turn our ambitions into a reality by ourselves’.
After gaining her teacher’s qualification in 1980 she ran her own dance school until 1993 but because she felt insufficiently driven for competitive dancing she gave up teaching children to pursue her great interest in dance theatre work. She continues to teach adults but transferred her regular classes to the very able Leora Barrett. After graduating with a BA (Performing Arts) in 1984, with her sister Angela and All-Ireland champion Mary Cosgrave, she set up a dance theatre comedy group called the Auntie Marys, a title they chose because all three had a Mary in their names. After a celebratory toast however, a slip of the tongue translated them into the Hairy Marys and that title stuck.
The Hairy Marys went on to write, choreograph and produce a number of successful shows including the Rose of Tralee and Stitched Up Like A Kipper, sending up aspects of culture that Máire wanted to attack such as the over-glamorisation of competitive dancing and the rivalry of parents, but never Irish dancing itself. Other theatre work was the setting up of Clerkinworks Irish Dance Theatre Co — later to become KICK — which toured in Britain and Ireland, funded by the London Arts Board and the Arts Council of England, with performances at the Royal Festival Hall and many major theatres.
Choreography was clearly one of Máire’s strengths and she went on to choreograph with various successful theatre companies including Charabanc in Belfast; with director Peter Sheridan in Dublin; and for Theatre Centre in London. She choreographed and danced in an award-winning television commercial for Harp lager, and she was a co-choreographer of Dancing on Dangerous Ground, which featured Irish dance superstars Colin Dunne and Jean Butler.
Another of her strengths is her flair for teaching. She has taught clients in Britain, Ireland, Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark. She has also instructed the founders of the Israel Dance Co in London. It is little wonder that her teaching skills were enlisted as tutor on the MA (Irish Dance) at the University of Limerick, and she has also been invited to speak at several universities and dance colleges in the US.
But she told me that her first love continues to be theatre, which reminds me that I first met Máire at Lewisham Theatre where she was directing her dance drama, Countess. In the 24 hours between dress rehearsal and curtain up on the following evening I wondered what magic spell had been woven to synergise the amateur cast of 40+ youngsters, drawn from several different local Irish dance schools, into giving such a professional and evocative dance performance of the life of the Irish heroine, Countess Constance Markievicz. During the same week of completing this production Máire completed a postgraduate diploma in broadcast journalism and soon set about making programmes about Irish dance for radio, and had written several articles for numerous publications, including The Irish Post.
A fan of traditional music, Máire would love to forge a reunification of dancing and music. ‘Most dancers’, she says ‘only ever dance to a limited number of CDs. We need to connect with musicians as they play, and not just to feis musicians who cater to our rigid tempos and styles’. In the US she has already written on the music and dancing scene in Los Angeles. ‘In America, the home of tap, dance enthusiasts are more respectful of Irish dance than in Britain where dance cognoscenti have a narrower ‘purist’ outlook, and there is less regard for Irish dancing as a serious dance form’ she says.
And what is life like in her new environment? The whirlwind of professional involvement continues unabated. Workshops; dance drama courses for adults; dance performance at the Fowler Museum, UCLA; adjudicating at feiseanna in Palm Springs and San Francisco; and a nomination for a radio prize for a piece she had written last year on George W Bush; and hopefully more radio work with KPFK radio station. But outside her work there are compensations such as her living environment. Whenever she wonders why she swapped north London for Los Angeles she only has to turn to the palm trees and blue skies for inspiration.
So, if there are any dancers or dance teachers out there who are wondering how they might continue professionally in Irish dancing, in Britain or elsewhere in the global village, I suggest that you would do well to draw inspiration from Máire Clerkin’s story. And remember, you don’t need to be a Martian to be a ‘most gifted alien’.
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