Lisa Sweeney and Danny Conway trip the light fantastic.
In January, 16 people volunteered for a dance competition that would raise money for the Delaware County Gaels, the region’s largest Gaelic sports club. More than 200 young athletes–footballers and hurlers–travel all over the country and to Ireland to compete, which, as you can imagine, gets expensive.
Some of the 16 had danced before. Others suspected they might have two left feet. Some weren’t sure they had even one left foot. At least one didn’t really volunteer.
That would be Bob Albino. He was “volunteered” by his boss, whose sons play for the Delco Gaels.
“He texted me one night. ‘Hey, Bob, I signed you up for “Dancing Like a Star,’” said Albino, after a grueling couple of hours on Sunday cha-cha-ing at the studio of the Cara Irish Dancers in Drexel Hill. “After I found out what it was, I said whoa, I’m going to be the only Italian. He said, ‘You’re probably going to be the only one that’s not Irish.’”
As it turns out, he’s not. His partner is Latina. She’s Diana Garcia, an Herbalife distributor and fitness buff whom one competitor described as “born doing the cha cha.”
Albino, who works for the US Department of Defense in Philadelphia, said he was surprised—and yet not surprised—that his boss volunteered him. “He knew he could get a lot of people out here to watch me and he was right. We have 25 people coming,” laughed Albino. “They just want to razz me.”
They’ll be joining about 700 more people who paid $40 a ticket for dinner and dancing—someone else’s dancing. The “Dance Like a Star” event, hosted by CBS3’s Jim Donvan, is Friday night, February 24, at the Springfield Country Club, and it is sold out. Not one ticket left. And dancers are encouraging friends, family and even strangers to vote for them online—each vote costs $1. That pretty much assures that the kids are going to Chicago this year for the Continental Youth Athletic Games championships. More than 100 players competed in the event, held in Boston last year, and the under-14 footballers brought home a trophy. The Gaels have also traveled to Ireland for the Feilie Na nGael, a competition for boys and girls under 14, sponsored by the Gaelic Athletic Association.
The competitors, who have had professional training since the practices began in January, come from all walks of life. Kilkenny-born Enda Keegan, for example, is a musician who spends most of the week in New York where he’s a fixture in the Irish music scene. Keegan ought to have an edge. His wife is a professional dancer in Philadelphia. Has she helped him? “She could be God and it wouldn’t help me dancing,” admitted Keegan with a laugh. His saving grace, he said, is that he’s paired with Siobhan Lyons, executive director of the Irish Immigration Center of Philadelphia, who has ballet training. “She’s good and she’s helping me out,” he said.
If you frequent Cawley’s Pub in Upper Darby, you may have seen Chuck Cawley behind the bar, practicing his moves. “I’ve been cha-cha-ing everywhere,” said Cawley, who admits his dancing experience is largely limited to weddings. On Friday night, he’ll have a bus waiting at Cawley’s on West Chester Pike to transport the throngs coming to root for him and his partner, Lisa McAteer. McAteer admitted that, like Cawley, she too dances everywhere. “I think my fiancé is getting sick of the music,” she said, laughing. “I’ll be doing it when I go into the shower. He hears the banging and he knows I ran out of room!”
Karen Boyce McCollum is juggling and dancing at the same time. She’s juggling three children and a fulltime job in the communications department of a major Philadelphia pharmaceutical firm with as many as five nights of dance practice with her partner, Delco Gaels assistant coach Gabriel Brogan. “I’m doing this because my nieces and nephews play for the Delco Gaels, not because I have tons of extra time,” she admitted. “You have to know the people running this. They are all good people. They always have treats for us when we practice on Sunday. Donuts or lunch. Nothing really good for our cha-cha outfits.”
Though “Dancing With the Stars” contestants seems to lose more weight than the competitors on “The Biggest Loser,” McCollum said that despite dancing most days of the week, she hasn’t lost an ounce. “Is it because they bring us donuts every week—I’m not sure,” she joked.
All the contestants have one warning for the audience: Don’t expect Astaire and Rodgers. Don’t even expect Jerry Springer and Kym Johnson, considered by many the worst pairing ever on TV’s Dancing with the Stars.
But at least one thinks many of the competitors sell themselves short. “It’s been amazing watching the transformation since January,” said Siobhan Lyons. “If you saw everyone on the first day, we were a mess. Now, everyone can dance.”
Check out the competitors in our photo essay.
