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DURYEA — Green bagels. Sure.
Green beer. Well, okay.
But if you really want the Irish experience, the thing to look for is step dancing.
This month is prime time for the quick stepping jigs, reels and kicks that leave the audience in awe.
Friday morning, more than half a dozen young ladies from the Emerald Isle Step Dancers did just that for students at Holy Rosary School in Duryea. The stage in the school gym that normally hosts basketball games and physical education classes was the first stop on what was the step-dance version of a concert tour around the area.
The dancers were set to perform in three schools during the day as well as at Buck Mountain in Drums Friday evening. Next on the schedule were three parades during the weekend.
“It’s lots of fun,” said Grace Berlew, an eighth-grader from West Pittston. “You get a lot of exercise, you go to a lot of really cool places and you get to meet a lot of nice people.”
Berlew has only been step-dancing for about two years, but she’s ready to go on the road for any and all performances. She’s delighted that the Emerald Isle Dancers are in shows “just about every month,” and they get opportunities to travel to dance conferences and competitions throughout the year.
Berlew and her fellow “newbie,” Francesca Panunti, a sixth-grader in the Tenth Street School in the Wyoming Area School District, practice at least twice a week in the dance studio at the Cooper’s Co-op in Pittston. That number of practices can increase to as many as four sessions, depending on how close the dancers are to a performance.
“We learn the steps and the routines, and then we practice together,” Panunti said. “The hardest part is remembering the order the steps come in, constantly counting in your head so you can stay in step with the rest of the group. It’s a lot to think about.”
In fact, all the young ladies are pros at what they do. In spite of routines that involve strenuous athletic activity, not one seemed to break a sweat. They got to demonstrate typical reels, traditional jigs and a host of dancing skills, sometimes in groups, sometimes as solo performers.
When they got a question from Holy Rosary first-grader Lilly Russin about what to do when “you’re in the middle of a show and you make a mistake,” the entire group chorused, “You just keep dancing!”
They have experienced leadership at the school, as well.
The Emerald Isle was started in 1980. Jennifer Woss, of Mountain Top, who has owned the studio for four years, started dancing there as a tot about 32 years ago. She began teaching there 20 years ago. She now has about 65 students, both children and adults.
“It’s more than a business,” she said. “It’s a family. The mothers and fathers who bring their kids look out for everybody.”
That’s what her own mother did when she chauffered her three daughters to step-dance classes. One of Woss’ sisters still teaches dance. And Woss’ daughter, Emily, who started as a toddler and is now a fifth-grader at Rice Elementary in Mountain Top and a medal-winning step dancer, is carrying on the family tradition.
“It’s just so much fun,” Emily said. “I really don’t pay attention to anything but the dancing and I love it.”
Emily and fellow medal winner Kaitlyn Slusser, a Wyoming Area sixth-grader from West Pittston, awed the third and fourth-grade audience with their rapid-fire tapping during one number in the show.
“I’ve been dancing for about five or six years now,” she said. “I saw it for the first time at an Irish dinner, and I told my mom I wanted to do that kind of dance.”
She said she also “really liked” the costumes, black dresses embroidered with Celtic knots. And claddagh symbols. And lots of green touches.
A lot of the little girls in the audience started to think that way ,as well. The youngsters found themselves tapping their feet, sometimes clapping along to the music and always applauding heartily at the end of each number.
Once the teachers got the first- and second-grade classes into their seats for the performance, an exercise that resembled herding cats, the youngsters kept their eyes on the leaping and spinning dancers.
“It’s okay, I guess,” said second-grader Matthew Lyons, of Moscow.
Lyons said he “sort of liked to watch dancing,” but he didn’t like to dance himself.
“I do sports,” he said, preferring baseball, basketball and soccer. But Lyons found himself “appreciating” dancing, as well.
After the dancers finished their performance, Woss got the classes — and their teachers — lined up in the school’s gym for hands-on, or perhaps feet-on, experience with step dancing. There were a lot of grins and giggles. But everyone cooperated with instructions to “put your heels together and point your toes in a ‘V’,” and “hold your hands at your side, like they’re glued there.”
Everyone got to take basic steps – and the overwhelming best part for just about every kid was the jump after the first two steps.
When the students headed back to their classes, the dancers packed up for their next gig. For them, it was an excused absence from school and a chance to show the results of months, even years, of practice and dedication.
“It’s not the part about missing school,” Slusser said. “It’s just so much fun to dance. This is a good day.”