Dancergirl is very excited about St. Patrick’s Day! It’s always a ton of fun for us, and the kids love doing all the performances.
Every year they do a tour of the local schools on or around St. Patrick’s. Because it falls on Friday this year, they’re actually dancing on the day, which means a ton of shows for the schools and local restaurants and organizations.
I think I’ve mentioned that there are two schools in this area (there’s another, but it’s more to the east and has a bit of a different focus). Unfortunately, our local paper always only writes up one — the biggest one. This is painful, because St. Pat’s is also the one day where we have the opportunity for high exposure and the chance for kids interested to have an opportunity to see our kids dance and maybe even sign up for classes themselves. It really is an important “viral opportunity” for school marketing. Both of my kids got involved as the result of school tour performances.
So here’s a tip of the hat to the Greenway Academy of Irish Dance, a school we’re proud to have been a part of for the past seven years.
Of course, our US traditions of green beer and the like are not at all Irish. As Dancergirl and Sticks both discovered on trips to Ireland, green beer is viewed as a travesty upon all respectable Guinness drinkers.
I am looking forward to doing photos and seeing the kids in the schools clapping to the reels and having a great time. The kids are performing at a local high school this year, too, which is new and I hope a great experience for them. We’ll see — it could go either way. The little kids are great though — last year dancergirl was asked for autographs and photos, because she was one of two in the glitzy dresses.
The best part for me of being involved in this was seeing how it helped Dancergirl face and overcome her fears. She started dancing right after her accident and began competing about six months later. The turnaround as time went on was amazing. She went from being fearful about nearly everything to being fearful about crossing streets to making the determination to conquer that (which she did — she can walk home from school by herself if I’d let her, but it’s the loonies that worry me, not her), and went on this year to conquer her competition stage nerves. If there were no other benefit than that, I’d be happy.
But there are many — the joys of teamwork and personal challenge, making friends from all over the country and world, traveling to fun places, staying fit and getting exercise daily, staying flexible and learning to have a confident public presence. It makes all the schlepping and expense worth it.
No green beer for me on Friday — I’m driving. But I’ll have a Starbucks and wear green. What will you be doing?
Technorati Tags: st patricks day, irish dance, greenway academy
