St. Patrick's Day Parade Director Michael Bradley with two of the Rainbow Irish Dancers, Colleen, left, and Noreen, right.
The ladies were insistent. Michael Bradley, director of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, had to get up and learn an Irish step dance with them.
“You don’t want to see that,” joked Bradley, though he followed them half willingly to the dance floor, where, in the confusion, he managed to sneak away before the music started.
“That one,” he said, nodding toward one of the women, “told me when I came in that she was the best dancer.”
“That one” was Colleen O, one of the Rainbow Irish Step Dancers and a resident, like the rest of the troupe, of Divine Providence Village in Springfield, Delaware County, an Archdiocesan cottage-style residence for women with developmental disabilities.
Bradley, along with John Dougherty Sr. and Brian Stevenson, business agent for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Union Local 98, were at Divine Providence Village on Monday night on a very special errand. For their first appearance in the Philadelphia St. Patrick’s Day Parade in March, the Rainbow Irish Step Dancers won the newly created Mary Theresa Dougherty Award, which will be given each year to an organization “dedicated to serving the needs of God’s people in the community.”
The award is named for the mother of John Dougherty Jr., business manager of Local 98 and this year’s parade grand marshal. The senior Dougherty presented the troupe with their plaque.
Kathleen Madigan, a former nutritionist at Divine Providence, is the troupe’s dance instructor. “The day of the parade was amazing,” she said. “The families were following us along the parade route, but so were people we didn’t know. When I asked some of them why they were following is they said “we just wanted to be with you and cheer you on.’ They were clapping for us all along.”
Madigan never set out to form a dance troupe at Divine Providence. The women were the standouts in a class Madigan gave every other Saturday. When she saw their determination, talent, and joy as they danced “Shoe the Donkey” and “Bridge of Athlone,” she decided to turn a social activity into something more serious.
The young women have mastered several dances and are learning several more. “They know their steps,” says Madigan. “Sometimes their heads and their feet don’t always work together, but they remember the steps. I can hear them repeating the steps out loud.”
A few of the women appear to have been born for show biz. Two are avid line dancers who go out a couple of times a week. Another is a performer with the State Street Miracles in Media, a troupe that highlights the artistry of adults with developmental disabilities.
And then there’s Colleen. Born with Down syndrome, Colleen (“I’m Irish, you know”) has the comic timing of a professional stand-up. When Bradley announced to the women that they would be attending Irish Heritage Night at the Phillies on June 19 and dancing on the field, the women broke into applause and hugged each other. “I’m going to teach the Phillies to dance,” announced Colleen, who waited for the laughs before she smiled too.
Bradley was visibly moved by the event. “It means a lot to me. I had a brother who had Down syndrome,” he said. That’s one of the reasons why, for more than 20 years, Bradley has been the basketball coach at the nearby Cardinal Krol Center at Don Guanella Village, working with the developmentally disabled young men who live there. “This is the kind of thing that makes everything I do all year worthwhile.”
