Villanova Irish dancer Rory Beglane
They came from all over, 16 college and university Irish dance teams, to compete in the first Intercollegiate Irish Dance Festival last Saturday at Villanova’s Jake Nevin Fieldhouse. It wasn’t exactly a Wildcats basketball game, but if you could have bottled up all the excitement of the dancers, parents and grandparents, university students and just plain Irish dance fans, it would have come pretty close.
Compared to the Mid-Atlantic Region Oireachtas—something like a marathon of Irish dance, drawing hundreds of dancers from throughout the region to Philadelphia over the Thanksgiving holidays—the Villanova event was relatively modest. And while the Oireachtas dancers will wear glitzy and expensive costumes, with flowing curly wigs, the dancers from Catholic University of America, the University of Dayton, Boston College and all the other schools wore outfits that probably didn’t cost their parents a month’s salary. Here and there, yes, dashes of sparkles and glitter, but otherwise subdued by comparison. No tiaras. No wigs.
The Villanova dance team was perhaps the best example of the lean and clean approach. They wore plain black slacks with black T-shirts, the team’s logo splashed across the front.
Like other Irish dance competitions, this one featured many of the traditional categories, such as four-hand dance, eight-hand dance and treble reel. But the highlight was the exhibition piece competition, in which each team showed off its unique routine, the innovative dance sets they’d typically perform during university athletic events. Some teams stuck to tried-and-true traditional. One team drew whoops and cheers when they combined Irish dance steps with C&C Music Factory’s “Everybody Dance Now.”
The team from the University of Dayton won that event, with Villanova coming in second, trailed by Boston College at number 3.
We have dozens and dozens of photos from the day. With luck, there will be another distinctly ‘Nova Irish dance competition next year. And every year thereafter.
