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NTIF 2013 Dance Performers

First, a word about compeditive Irish Step dancing. Competitive Irish dance is governed by a board in Ireland, An Coimisiún le Rinci Gaelacha, and is serious business amongst the participants.

The Fèis

The Fèis, roughly pronounced as fesh, plural Ffeisanna (Irish) or Fèisean (Scottish) is a traditional Gaelic arts and culture festival.

In Ancient Ireland communities placed great importance on local festivals, where Gaels could come together in song, dance, music, theatre and sport. The largest of these was the Aonach, the great festival at Tara, which was then the city of Ireland's Ardrí, or "High King". These feiseanna were a rich opportunity for storytellers to reach a large audience, and often warriors would recount their exploits in combat, clansmen would trace family genealogies, and bards and balladeers would lead the groups in legends, stories, and song.

In the modern Fèis there are 6 levels of competition at local Feisanna structured by age groups: Beginner, Advanced Beginner, Novice, Prizewinner, and then the champion levels of Preliminary Champion and Opens Champions. Each level has requirements of the number of 1st places that must be achieved for each dance (reel, light jig, single jig, slip jig, treble jig) in order to move up to the next level through the grades, the first 4 levels. Once those levels are mastered one moves into Preliminary Champs were a minimum of two 1st place wins must be achieved before one can move into the Opens level. The standard of competition at the Preliminaries and Opens is very high and the dancers are truly amazing to watch.

Feiseanna are held all over the world, Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, all over Europe, South Africa, the USA and Canada. The local Fèis, that takes place at the same time as NTIF, is called the Texas State Championship Fèis and is run by the McTeggart Irish Dancers of North Texas. This event was born at the NTIF and for the first few years was an integral part of the festival. It's growth over the years forced it to relocate to larger facilities at the DFW Sheraton where it attracts compeditors from many of the surrponding states as well as Texas.

In addition there is at least one major competition that dancers want to compete in - the Regional Oireachtas (the word "oireachtas" literally means "gathering" in English). The Southern Region Oireachtas took place the first week of December in Washington DC and dancers from Texas there were working to qualify to compete in the North American Nationals Competition to held in July 2011 in Nashville, and the biggest of the big - the World's Irish Dancing Competition (Oireachtas Rince na Cruinne) to be held in Dublin, Ireland in April of 2011. Less than half will qualify for Nationals and only the top few dancers in each age competition will qualify for Worlds. In the Irish dancing sport, World's is their Olympics.

Worlds were held in Glasgow in 2007, Belfast in 2008, Philadelphia in 2009 and returned to Glasgow for the 40th Anniversary in 2010. The World Oireachtas (Oireachtas Rince Na Cruinne) is typically held Easter Week.

In order to compete at a Fèis in North America, a dancer must be registered with An Coimisiun le Rince Gaelacha and its subsidiary the Irish Dance Teacher's Association of North America.

In Texas we are fortunate to have some of the best dance schools in the country, and naturally some of the best dance students. At any given North Texas Irish Festival we have World's level competitors and World Medal Holders dancing for us.

Lone Star Ceili Band

The Lone Star Ceili Band was born out of the Richardson Sessions at Cafe Brazil. It is a union of the members of two bands, Happensdance and the Irish band known as Jigsaw. More could be said about these musicians than could ever be written on this page.

The pioneering efforts of Ken and Peggy Fleming and Kevin Alewine have spearheaded most of what Dallas has seen of Irish music in the past two decades. They have played in several bands known to Irish music lovers and have helped to form many related events such as the O’Flaherty Irish Music Retreat and the Trinity Hall Sessions, thus fostering the interests of untold numbers of musicians, listeners, and dancers. This Irish powerhouse joined forces with Happensdance members, Mimi Rogers and Allison Hicks to bring the spirit of the Irish ceili to the contra dance floor.

Irish music has long been a staple for the bands that have played at the Dallas contra dances and never has it been played with such accuracy and ease and with such respect for the tradition as with the LSCBand. This band is splendid addition to our growing wealth of music.