My name is Lauren Mannion and I am an Irish dancer.
Admitting to it isn’t always an easy thing to do, even though I’m proud of it. After all, it’s not the hippest of pastimes. Tell anyone that your hobby is Irish dancing, and expect them to cry, “What, like this?” while hopping about, arms pinned to their sides and legs flailing in their best Riverdance impression.
I should know—I started Irish dancing way back when I was a geeky 13-year-old. Undeterred by my utter lack of natural ability and the fact that idolising Michael Flatley did nothing to improve my already pitiful street cred, I found that I absolutely loved it. Even painstakingly practising new steps in a church hall alongside infinitely more talented five-year-olds wasn’t enough to put me off. There was just something captivating about that unique combination of the energetic and the ethereal, the mixture of intricate footwork and powerful leaps set to a background of beautiful Celtic music.
Irish dancing isn’t only about the rhythmic tapping made famous by shows like Riverdance and Lord of the Dance. The usual solo dances include reels, hornpipes and jigs, some using the well-known hard tap shoes and others danced in soft lace-up leather slippers. Then there are the countless céilí dances, done in pairs or groups and often danced at weddings and other celebrations. You don’t need to be a great dancer to be able to enjoy it, and neither do you have to be Irish. And since last summer, you don’t have to leave Catalunya to learn the moves, as it now has its very own Irish dancing school, Aires Celtes.
I’d been thinking about going back to Irish dancing for some time when I started looking online for classes last year, but I never seriously expected to find anything here in Barcelona. Preliminary searches revealed a couple of groups doing céilí dance performances, but regular classes seemed unlikely. Eventually, one day last September I came across a Facebook page for the Aires Celtes / Maria Singal Irish Dance School, newly opened and the first school in Spain to be registered with the World Irish Dance Association. Inspired by the mid-Nineties’ Riverdance phenomenon, Betlem Burcet, a music teacher from Girona, and Júlia Díez, a full-time mum of two from Barcelona, had danced together for years, often travelling abroad to train, until finally deciding to strike out alone and form their own school. Both women met my tentative enquiries about classes with overwhelming enthusiasm, and before I knew it I was digging out my dancing shoes and wondering what I was letting myself in for.
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