The Coyle girls, posing for the Mom and Pop-arrazzi.
It was a Kerri Strug moment.
Kerri Strug, you may recall, was the U.S. gymnast who wrenched her ankle badly as she landed the vault in the 1996 Olympics, collapsing in tears.
On Saturday, in competition at the 2007 Mid-Atlantic Oireachtas in Philadelphia, I watched a young dancer breeze through her routine. It wasn’t flawless, but still, it was pretty good. As the piano accompanist struck the last note, the dancer’s hard shoes slammed into the floor like a rifle shot. In that moment, her face registered not relief or triumph—relief being the far more typical response up to that point—but only shock and pain.
She limped off the stage and sobbed all the way back across the competition hall to the front row, to where her teachers were sitting.
Yes, they wear Shirley Temple wigs, flouncy lamé skirts and sparkling rhinestone tiaras, but Irish dance competition is not pretty. A lot of these girls could crack walnuts with their toes. I can think of at least one NFL quarterback who could learn a thing or two about toughness from some of those 6-foot-1, bird-legged 14-year-olds in their corkscrew curls. (My partner Denise saw one of the girls wearing a T-shirt that read, “If Irish dancing were easy, it would be called hockey.”)
The kids can’t help it: Gotta dance.
I’m not about to suggest that they are altogether lacking in external motivation. I’m certain that dominating stage parents must exist. But most of the parents I ran into seemed to be just along for the ride. The dads seemed especially burdened. Balancing half-moon-shaped dress cases, shoe bags and makeup kits, the intrepid feis sherpas scaled the steep escalators at the Marriott Midtown, where the Oireachtas is held. Moms touched up hairpieces and fastened backpieces with strips of Velcro. (The Oireachtas runs on Velcro.)
I suspect a lot of these dancers would want to compete, regardless of parental desires or inclinations. For them, Irish dance is not just an interesting hobby. It’s more of an indispensable life element, like air, water or text messaging.
Which is pretty much the conclusion you reach when one of them almost takes your nose off with a high kick, which happened (or nearly happened) to me as I was entering the Starbucks on the ground floor of the Marriott. There is practically never a moment when the competitors are not in motion. No one at the Oireachtas just walks. They skip, prance and caper just about everywhere, all the time.
On elevators and escalators, in the gift shop, or waiting in line to get into the Hard Rock across the street—they danced. Wearing gym shorts or jammie bottoms, Crocs or Hello Kitty scuffs, they danced. My guess is, more than a few of them dance in their sleep. They probably dance in line for communion.
On my way to the Marriott, I passed a girl in sweats, a winter jacket and Uggs who was making her way along Chestnut Street near Macy’s. The first giveaway that she might be an Irish dancer was the wig and tiara. But the second, more obvious, cue was that she was up on her Ugg-encased toes and boogying all the way up Chestnut Street.
Hey, gotta dance.
