With the Irish Set: In Set Dance Land

By Richard Edward Devlin

Four years ago, the author started out on a journey to learn Irish set dancing, at an age, he says When most men and women are pulling the stool closer to the turf fire and dreaming of life when life was young. The journey took him from Nova Scotia to Milwaukee, Killarney, Ballinasloe and many lesser-known places in between, including a wacky little burg in the Catskills where Irish dreamers had painted green shamrocks on the pavement all up and down the principal street. Along the way, Devlin says, he met the wildest assortment of Irish and Irish-American characters imaginable and chapter by chapter, Devlin brings these fascinating people and their sometimes amusing, but always endearing, ways, close to your chair and into your heart.

Like all of us who cling to our sense of an Irish heritage, Devlin says, Like a moth to a bright light, I am drawn to Irish ways. As a reader, if you share this life view, you will love this book.

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A hilarious account from deep inside the mind of a new set dancer progressing from his wifes reluctant partner to a fully obsessed set dancer who meets a host of entertaining and endearing characters along the way.
Bill Lynch; Publisher, Set Dancing News.

Swaggering, comical, and shrewd, Devlins memoir is an insiders entertaining tale of the oddities and magical allure of the Irish set dancing world..
Cynthia Neale; Author of the Irish Dresser and Norah.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496907110

Richard Edward Devlin

The author, Richard Devlin, would be the first to tell you he is the last person you would expect to write a book about Irish dancing or dancing of any sort. “It’s obvious, “ he says, “ That when St. Patrick came around the north of Ireland passing out the music and dance genes, he must have made a wrong turn when he came to Devlin’s Hill in Tyrone because dancing was simply a non-event in the lives of my family while I was growing up.” Devlin points out, however, that his exposure to the Irish and Ireland over the past few decades has been extensive. The Devlins own a small piece of his family’s ancestral lands in Tyrone, and enjoy their time in Ireland working out of a “ wee small place” nestled on a sloping sheep pasture nearby. For many years, Devlin worked for the Shannon Development Corporation and the old Irish Tourist Board representing Ireland tourism at angling shows all up and down the east coast of America. He also has an active track record in Irish genealogy including membership in the Clans of Ireland, The Irish Cultural Center of New England, the Irish Genealogic Society International, and Comhaltas Ceiltiori Eareann, the international cultural organization which promotes Irish music and dance throughout the Irish diaspora. His writing credits include two previous books and several articles in Irish Roots magazine and The Septs, the two leading publications in Irish genealogical circles. “I was a late starter in Irish social dancing,” Devlin says, “ But once I did start, like a bee to honey, more than the actual dancing itself, I was fatally attracted to the endless parade of Irish and Irish American characters I met at set dancing affairs. I found them to be a true cast of Irish eccentrics, an irresistible breath of fresh air in a world of increasing conformity and sameness.” In his new book, Devlin brings these characters into your hearts and at the same time makes an insightful social commentary about the Irish in America and the sense of being Irish in a place where the attachment to the land of our ancestors is fading and diminishing as time passes.

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© 2014, 2015 Richard Edward Devlin. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 01/23/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4969-0712-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-0711-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014914185

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Contents

Disclaimers and Acknowledgements

Preface

Chapter One The Lesson

Chapter Two A Rite of Passage at the Danvers Art Association

Chapter Three The First Gateway to the West Set Dancing Festival or Too Slow in Ballinasloe

Chapter Four Upstairs at Harrington’s Wakefield, Massachusetts

Chapter Five A Night at Cynthia’s An American House Ceili

Chapter Six The Catskills Irish Arts Week Dancing the Sets in Indianaland

Chapter Seven The Irish Fest The Miracle in Milwaukee

Chapter Eight Halifax for the Hell of It

Chapter Nine The Gathering or The Blarney in Killarney

Chapter Ten A Comhaltas Affair Making a Federal Case out of It

Epilogue

Disclaimers and Acknowledgements

Many of the characters and personalities depicted in this book as members of what I am calling the Irish Set are presented as composite figures from the hundreds of characters and personalities I have encountered in the few short years I have been set dancing. While certain segments of a description of one character or another may sound familiar, the characters described do not exist, and are creations of my imagination. Any resemblance to the living or the dead is purely coincidental.

On the other hand, I have elected to use the real names of all those people I have met who either teach or organize dances for all the rest of us. Without these dedicated individuals we would have neither an Irish Set nor Irish set dancing to write about outside of a few home ceilis, and an annual dance at our various Irish cultural centers across America. I feel obliged, however, to point out that there are several other prominent teachers and dance organizers in my part of the set dancing world, the northeastern USA, who are not mentioned here, but have played significant, often pioneering roles in the reemergence of set dancing, both in New England and in America in general. We who set dance owe all of these people, named and unnamed, a great debt of gratitude.

Most of the photos in the book belong to me, but a few have been made available through the generosity of the photographers who own them, namely Pat Murphy, Carol King, and Eileen Flynn Dugal. The cover photo, circa 1950, comes from an album of the Flynn family of Belmont, Massachusetts. The occasion was an impromptu ceili during a family gathering to celebrate the visit by a brother from Ireland. The dance was held on a family farm south of Boston, probably in Abington, on a barn door removed from the nearby barn for the occasion.

For all footnoted information on Irish surnames, always a subject of contention among the Irish, I have used three well-accepted sources: The Surnames of Ireland (sixth edition), by Edward MacLysaght, Irish Academic Press, Dublin, Ireland 1985; The Book of Scots-Irish Family Names, by Robert Bell, Blackstaff Press, Belfast, 1988; and in a few instances, The Irish Times website on Irish genealogy. For spelling and interpretation of Irish language words and terms, I relied on the Collins Pocket Irish Dictionary, HarperCollins, Glasgow, UK, 1999; and Foclor Gaelge-Bearla, Niall O’Donaill, editor, Rialtas na hÉireann, Dublin2, Ireland, 1977.

I make no claims that my sourcebook preferences are of superior quality over the many well-respected reference books available on these subjects. They are books that I have in my own personal library and that have served me well for many years. To wit, they were at hand and I used them.

Preface

This is not a book about Irish set dancing. It is a book about Irish set dancers. I call them the Irish Set.

This is not a book about Ireland. But it is about an Irish place, not unlike Tir na N-Oge, the unreachable, ethereal land forever out of sight over the far horizon of the sea to the west of Ireland. This new land is another land of myth, a land I am calling Set Dance Land.

Those who dance the sets know all about this place. All I have done is given it a name and written a poem about it. I didn’t know of the existence of this land of mystery when I started out on this adventure into the world of set dancing, but I have been to the heart of this place, and like the Irish who came to America as exiles (not immigrants), I am always thinking that my stay here in Set Dance Land is a temporary one. Like my Irish ancestors, I’m beginning to suspect I will never leave.

For better or for worse, this is also the story of one man’s journey into the world of set dancing, an adventure I began at an age when most men and women are settling in to a stool closer to the turf fire and dreaming of life when life was young. No one could be more amazed than me that I even started out to make this journey. And I had no intention of writing anything, let alone a full-length book, when I first started set dancing. I’ll go a step further. In truth, before I ever stepped out onto the floor to dance my first threes, I was adamant that I would never, ever take up set dancing at all. Or any other kind of dancing, for that matter.

No offense to guys who like dancing, but I’ve never been a dancing kind of guy. I’ve been an outdoor type all my life—a fishing and hunting guy, a skier, a golfer, a hiker, a boater, each guy-type activity successively taking up each season of the year as far back as I can remember, and leaving little to no time for taking up frilly social activities like … dancing. But once I started, like a bee to honey, more than the actual dancing itself, I was fatally attracted to the seemingly endless parade of fascinating and often unique personalities I met at set dancing affairs. Collectively, I found them to be a cast of true eccentrics, an irresistible breath of fresh air in a world of increasing conformity and sameness.

For once, I can’t blame my mother and father. Nor my more distant ancestors. All eight of my great-grandparents were Irish-born and -bred, and all dug with the right foot, if you get my drift. But I can tell you unequivocally that going back to the earliest years of my childhood, I never, ever saw my parents, my grandparents, or any of my immediate relatives out on a dance floor. Dancing was simply a non-event in their lifestyles. I’m left to conclude that when St. Patrick came around passing out the music and dance genes in the north of Ireland, he must have made a wrong turn when he came to Devlin’s Hill in Tyrone, because we definitely missed out on the distribution process.

Some Irish wit once said that almost anything you can say about the Irish is both true and false. I find that to be an appropriate description of the many people I’ve met in the inner circles of Irish set dancing. There’s something about the people who dance the Irish sets that I just can’t wrap my brain around. I like dancing (sort of) and I actually like most of the set dancers I meet, but I’m forced to conclude there must be some distorted levels of substances in their brain tissues, some over-concentration or scarcity of vaguely understood, free-floating biochemical particles, like certain neurotransmitters, that I don’t seem to share with them.

There’s an addiction process here which I sense has some of the same characteristics that afflict those poor wretches who travel the country running in amateur road races; or who jump from airplanes, trying to set free fall records for their skydiving club before opening the chute; or any of the other self-absorbed pathways in life that people succumb to with enthusiasm. Inexplicably, other people—like me—who are exposed to the same experiences are not pulled along and sucked into the vortex. On the other hand, it could simply be a matter of genetics, that certain people with an Irish ancestry have an extra chromosome on their DNA strands which causes an excessive foot-tapping and an irresistible urge to jump up and twist and twirl around the floor as soon as they hear the strains of a fiddle or a box accordion playing the familiar old melodies, the uniquely Gaelic sound of Irish traditional music.

Of course, DNA differences can’t be seen by the human eye. Similarly, the differences between set dancers and the rest of society are not always apparent on the surface. Most of the set dancers I’ve met look like ordinary people, which you can confirm for yourself by thumbing through one or another edition of Set Dancing News, the flagship magazine for those with a mad passion for dancing the sets. That particular exercise will immediately impress you that set dancing is an activity which unequivocally does not attract the beautiful people of this world. (To those thousands of you who have appeared in that elegant magazine, I’m not excluding myself from this unflattering categorization. Referring to a photo of myself which once appeared in Set Dancing News, I told my wife that at the end of my life it could be pasted on my closed coffin during the wake so that those who attended would know what I looked like as a dead person without having to endure the actual viewing of the body.)

By this point in this introduction, it must be apparent that if you are looking for some sort of a puff piece on set dancing, or a shamrock-coated paean to the romantic theme of one’s inner Irish spirit, this essay will probably disappoint you. But inescapably, this is indeed a book about the Irish in America at the start of the third millennium, and more significantly, the sense of being Irish in a place where the attachment to the land of our ancestors, a land across an ever-widening sea, is fading and diminishing as time passes.

Like most of us who cling to our sense of an Irish heritage, I cannot fully explain to myself, let alone to others like you, why I am drawn to Irish ways like a moth to a bright light. If you read this book, then I know you and I share this life view. Perhaps it is simply our fate, perhaps it is simply the way of the Irish, even of those of us who have wandered away to the ends of the earth. And perhaps some things are best left in a dimmer light, an imaginary, twilight place like Set Dance Land.

We don’t have to have an answer for everything.

In Set Dance Land

In Set Dance Land, in Set Dance Land,

The dancers flow by, to and fro,

Hip to hip and toe to toe,

With clasping hands and warm embrace,

Like northern lights, their patterns trace.

In Set Dance Land, In Set Dance Land.

In Set Dance Land, in Set Dance Land,

The wild, fierce beat of ceili band,

Pushing, then pulling us back to Ireland,

Stirs Celtic hearts with Celtic airs,

And frees us all from worldly cares.

In Set Dance Land, in Set Dance Land.

In Set Dance Land, in Set Dance Land,

The dance instructor takes the fore,

And leads her dancers round and round the floor.

Dancing to faery waves on a faery strand,

We follow our Cathleen, our Daughter of Houlihan,¹

To Set Dance Land, to Set Dance Land.

In Set Dance Land, in Set Dance Land,

There’s a faery land of heart’s desire,

Where dancers never age and dancers never tire.

And it is there by the Irish Sea,

We would dance and dance … to eternity.

In Set Dance Land, in Set Dance Land.

R. Devlin

Chapter One

The Lesson

DANCE_LESSON.jpg

Beginning at the beginning: the set dance lesson

(Photo art by R. Devlin)

The first time you see Irish set dancing, it’s hard to escape noticing the two seemingly fundamental conflicts that inevitably surface after watching for any extended period of time. For that matter, anyone who has spent much time around the Irish or Ireland soon enough begin to sense that there is an Irish yin and yang to almost any aspect of Irish life. I feel obliged to report that Irish set dancing offers no exception. At first glance, set dancing seems so easy—all those energy-filled bodies joyfully flowing in and out of graceful, spirited dance figures, seemingly without effort. The second observation, which quickly follows the first, is that it also looks rather hard—as in really, really difficult. From the crucible of personal experience, I can tell you that both are true.

Strangely enough, I’m not by nature much of a dancer, which may seem like a bit of an odd confession at the outset of a book about Irish dancing. I’m one of those pre-rock and roll troglodytes whose oldest sister walked me through a few basic fox trot steps just thirty minutes before leaving the house to attend my high school prom with a highly desirable female member of my class. The level of progress I brought to the dance floor that first night has stayed with me for a lifetime, and I am here to testify that my ballroom dancing skills haven’t progressed an iota since that memorable, panic-filled evening.

Getting back to the yin and yang of things—if you happen to be one of those prescient people who have noted that we live in a world filled with incongruities, you will not be surprised to learn that I have been married for an indecently lengthy period of time to a woman who, in her youth, was Little Miss Prancer Dancer herself. As a case in point, when she first brought me home from the old State U to meet her parents, the first sight that greeted my eyes, there on the polished surface of the Wurlitzer organ in the living room of a gracious home, was a large framed photograph of my future wife at the age of ten or eleven, dressed in her little pink tutu, and tip-tipping around on her toe shoes. She had spent almost all of her youth studying tap, ballet, and modern dance, and had turned down an offer to go off to New York with a then-famous dance group. Even now, many decades later, her e-mail address—can you believe this?—starts out with dancingdenny@ …!

What can I tell you? Apparently opposites really do attract. Then again, a lifetime of being married to one person is enough to make you believe in mysticism, isn’t it? But don’t go overboard with sympathy for Miss Dancing Denny. During our lengthy tour together on this planet, I have never failed to face up to my duties over the years at weddings, parties, and the occasional class reunion, and Miss Prancer Dancer has had many decades to adjust to my freestyle dancing skills, which a charitably impartial observer could describe as quixotic and inventive. (I now tell her I had been one of the earliest practitioners of the sean nos style of Irish dancing now currently in vogue—a dancer ahead of my time.2)

Fortunately, although set dancing is not one of them, we share many other interests, among which is a passion for Ireland and Things Irish. That has led progressively to a late-in-life involvement with the Irish, and exposure to a form of Irish dancing that over the last three decades has taken the world of Irish dancing by storm—Irish social set dancing.

My involvement with set dancing can fairly be considered more accidental than purposeful. Over the last several years, both in Ireland and here in America, I confess I have occasionally let my guard down and allowed myself to be lured onto the floor at a ceili dance—succumbed is probably a better word—allowing myself to be cast in the role of a victim of the nonstop urging of fellow dancers to get up off that portion of my anatomy I sit on, and join in the fun. Without exception, every time I have surrendered my role as a bench warmer—okay, okay, it was a bar stool—the results have always been what I assume a train wreck or a subway collision looks like from the perspective of a personal involvement. Perhaps you have more natural dancing skills and a more well-developed sense of rhythm than I, but once you have tried set dancing on an ad hoc basis, you’ll learn quickly enough that you have two choices to make: either you find a place to take lessons or you need to start exploring alternate venues for recreation such as, perhaps, bowling or mushroom hunting.

In my own case, I was motivated by two basic circumstances. One, I just plain like things Irish, especially the music. Unavoidably, what this means is that I end up at affairs where, before the night ends, the dancers are taking to the floor, and I am left as the curmudgeonly old wallflower scowling into my Guinness at the bar. And two, my wife of many years, mother of our children, and willing companion on many of my life adventures, upped the ante considerably when she recently informed me that she was definitely committed to joining the local set dancing scene. I could come along or stay at home as I saw fit, she said calmly, but if I was coming along, I had to dance—no more hiding out with the aul fellas at the bar.

Which means, she said, you have to take some lessons. She had made a lot of new friends through set dancing, and didn’t want to lose them by dragging a clumsy oaf of a husband along who was just going to bollix up the whole affair for all in attendance. There was nothing subtle about her announcement. The basic message was fish or cut bait.

The following is the story of the first lesson, and my first real exposure to those obsessed devotees of the arcane, some would say subterranean life of Irish set dancing and—just as importantly—to one of the last remaining vestiges of Irish village life—the Irish dance instructor.

Here’s how it all went.

February 19, 2010—South Chimsbury, Massachusetts

I remember it as a very dark night, a night that matched my mood … a perfect fit. Even the roadway itself was dark, unlit by street lamps, in sharp contrast to the commercial strip we had just traversed, with the parking lots and walkways of office buildings and small manufacturing plants of modernistic design brilliantly illuminated by those glaring orangey-yellow sodium lamps so in vogue today for outside commercial lighting. But the glare ended abruptly as the road narrowed to a curving two-lane affair that disappeared ahead in the darkness beyond the range of the car’s headlights. It was February, and the banked snow along the fringes of the roadway glowed brightly. Above them, that peculiar dense blackness of the mid-winter night hovered close to the earth. Somewhere ahead of us was a building which housed an Irish dance studio where the Upchukway Valley Set Dancers held their weekly lessons.³

We turned tentatively into a small drive on the right, a paved lane with no street sign and no street lighting to make the decision easier. My wife, sometimes known under the pseudonym the Irish Force Herself, was in the navigator’s seat, trying to recall with exactness the breezy directions she had been given over the phone. You know the type of directions I’m talking about here, I’m sure. Hey, you won’t have any trouble, don’t worry, you’ll find it easily. And yes, yes, we know about Google Maps and GPS. But this was our turf, our part of the country, and of course we don’t need directions when it’s our turf, do we?

We came to a left turn, again no street signs … and no lights. The office buildings in this area were older, low, one-floor affairs with flat roofs, mostly white or with dark gray walls and few windows. They all looked like the kind of place where, if you backed up to one of the front doors or a loading platform with your trunk open, you wouldn’t be surprised if some shadowy figure appeared, slid a bale of marijuana into the back of your car, then disappeared back into the building as the steel loading doors clanged shut. It wasn’t entirely a seedy, threatening-looking area, but it wasn’t exactly the kind of place where you would walk your dog late at night, either … if you get my drift.

Just ahead on the right, a building came into view with a reassuring light coming from the doorway—not an overhead light illuminating the parking area, just a shaft of white light from an inside hallway. In the darkened parking area, several cars were parked in a line along the front of the building. There was no sign on the building or the door. (Or if there was one, it was too dark to see it.) The lane ahead looked dark and desolate. It looked like our best bet to find the dance studio, so we parked and went in.

Once inside, we were still alone. The place was deserted. And completely silent. Where are all the people who belong to those cars out front? I wondered. The hallway was flooded with a hard, bright light from overhead fluorescent fixtures, as was the small reception desk area through which we had to pass. Following our instincts and trusting that what we were seeking would be found at the end of this maze of short corridors and closed doors, we moved ahead, deeper into the building. The surface of the office walls and hallways was lined with old wood paneling of a style that went back to the 1960s and seventies. The baseboard trim was equally dated—narrow maple strips painted over along the floors and around the hollow, lauan doors. (Having owned a few marginally profitable business enterprises myself in past years, I had a well-trained eye for the do-it-yourself touches I could see all around me.)

I noticed a small Irish step dancer’s performance dress, a child’s size, hanging on a wall, pure white with brilliantly colored trim features. The price tag of $700 stopped me in my tracks. Wow, I thought, seven hundred bucks, and it won’t fit her next year. And I thought hockey parents were mad! But along with the dozens of photographs of young Irish step dancers plastered all over the office walls, the dress was at least a promising sign, and I opened the last door at the end of the hallway somewhat reassured that I wouldn’t accidentally stumble upon an after hours tête-à-tête between Whitey Bulger and his FBI handlers. You think I’m kidding, don’t you, laying a little Irish spin on a bland story? Listen, we were only a few miles north of Whitey’s South Boston, and the place did have that kind of feel, believe me.⁴

Once inside that last door, the riddle of the silent offices and the missing dance class was resolved. The end point in the daisy chain of rooms and hallways was a small dance studio perhaps twenty feet wide and thirty feet deep. Like the rest of the building’s rooms, it was intensely lit up with overhead lights from which no body flaw could hide. Along the far wall were the people who belonged to the cars out front, sitting in folding chairs, some bent over, struggling to shed their street shoes and don their prim and trim little black dancing shoes. Some were looking at crib notes and sheets with the dance steps outlined on them.

What is this? I thought to myself. These people don’t look like beginners to me. This crowd looked like a bunch of ringers to me, and the only look of concern in the place—was on my face.

I hesitated in the doorway. A flight to freedom crossed my mind. The old Billerica Irish Social Club was right down the road, only a few miles. I thought, Why don’t I just drop off the Irish Force and spend a few pleasant hours drinking Murphy’s stout and watching the Celtics basketball team on the telly? Me and the local boyos. What’s wrong with that plan?

Right behind me, the Irish Force made an upper management decision—she pushed me into the room. The door closed firmly behind me. I was caught surely, like an old billy goat inside the slaughterhouse who just caught on that the game was up.

Herself was already a fervent convert to the under-the-radar world of an Irish dance scene called set dancing. And after nearly a year of intense lobbying, I had finally crumbled under the pressure. This night was to be my first lesson in set dancing and my first exposure to that most eccentric cross section of Irish America … the Irish Set. I did not know it at the time, but when I entered that small dance studio, I was making my first visit to that place called Set Dance Land.

The next several minutes went by in sort of a blurred montage of introductions, handshakes, and nods to a few people I already knew. And then, with no warning to those who wanted to flee—I believe I was the only person present in that category—we were all in a line, hands at our sides, listening to the dance teacher, who stood with her back to us, a few paces in front.

Wait, wait, I thought, not so fast. I need a little more time to get acclimated, time to get my bearings here, to chat it up a bit, I’m not ready, not ready. But like the lamb inside the packing house, who’s ever ready for things like this, eh? It was obvious this group came to dance, and the teacher came to teach, so like that sheep, I stepped forward into line with an innocent, confident stride. That’s when I noticed the mirror.

Across from us, the entire wall, from floor to ceiling, was all mirror. Jesus, God in heaven, I thought. Is that me? I always considered myself to be rather a fit-looking older gentleman—who was that person across from me? Did those lights have to be that bright? I looked left and right in the mirrored panorama at the members of the dance class, all captured in the harsh reality of this unforgiving reflector. Well, I thought to myself looking around, I’m getting my first close-up look at real members of the Irish Set, am I not? As a slice of Americana, the rest of the dancers looked like a police lineup of protestors arrested at a sit-in for a beloved parish church that was ordered closed by the archbishop. Or—take your pick—a board of directors for the local bingo club.

There were six men and nine women in attendance on that wintry night. The men—none of whom, I am pleased to report, looked anything like Whitey Bulger—did have sort of a police lineup look, staring straight ahead, unsmiling, but accepting they were there voluntarily. The women all wore what can only be described as a peculiar glow on their faces, as if anticipating beatification—an immediate ascent to saintly status—with chins held high and an expression like that you would expect to see on supplicants at a born-again prayer meeting, those expecting to actually feel the rapture at any moment. But … back to the mirror.

It was the Devil’s contrivance. The mirror took away any illusion that I cherished about remaining in that vast and ill-defined age group we call the middle age. Again, I wondered, why do we have to be facing that mirror that shows us every wrinkle, every bulge? Why doesn’t she have us facing the other way? Self-consciously, I stood up straighter, sucked in my abdomen, squared my hunched shoulders. Nothing worked. I still looked somewhat wrinkled, shrunken, and woebegone, like one of those sad-looking creatures in the black-and-white illustrations of my old high school reader version of Dante’s Inferno. (Remember those desolate figures descending into the depths?)

I glanced at the door again. Did I miss the sign over it on the way in? Abandon All Hope, Oh Ye Who Enter Here, etc. Then I noticed the shoes.

My eyes swept along the line of dancers again, this time along the bottom of the mirror. They all were wearing black dancing shoes—tight-fitting, lightweight, some equipped with a little extra cachet in the form of dance sneakers. Even Herself, my beloved life companion, was standing there smugly in her shiny, patent leather, genuine Irish set dancing shoes. (Et tu, Madame Brutus, I thought bitterly.) In the middle of this footwear lineup was a pair of clunky-looking street shoes, well-made expensive shoes for the businessman. With their wing tip uppers and thick leather soles, sturdy was the key word for these shoes. They were made to last, strong and serviceable. They were attached to my feet and weighed about three pounds … each.

But there was no time for anguishing over equipment deficiencies. The dance teacher was out in front of us, facing the mirror, and she was revving up her motor. Now we’ll practice the basic steps, she said, First as gents, so … start with the left foot and dance in place. With a five and a six and a seven and eight … and with this cadenced sequence, she began to move rhythmically.

Left-two-three, and a right-two-three, and a … She stopped.

Richard, she said to me without turning around—it was that damned mirror—Gents always lead off with the left foot, okay?

The whole dance line had stopped. In the mirror, I could see they were all looking at me with encouraging smiles. Even the Irish Force Herself, at the end of the line, gave me a wink and a nod of reassurance. Good old wife, I thought, God blessed me for sure when he sent her my way. I nodded and grinned sheepishly at her in the mirror, gave her a thumbs up.

The teacher started again—the same routine. Now left-two-three and right-two-three … left-two-three and—very good, Richard—and a one-two-three and everybody stop!

Now, said the teacher, we’ll do the Clare step, forward and back to home. And a five and six and seven and slide, slide, and back, back, one-two-three—Richard we are sliding here, not stepping—slide, slide, one-two-three—feet on the floor, get it?

More nodding from me, the sheepish grin a little more forced than before. What the hell is a Claire step? I thought, and who the hell is Claire, anyway? I looked