Sean-nós & Set Dance with Maldon
Specializing in easy to follow step by step instruction for all levels
Fridays
9:00am-10:00am
[ONLINE]
Weekly intermediate class focused on Clare inspired steps. This class will cover the basics and can be taken in combination with the beginner class. Both classes will cover the basic material and the intermediates will be working on variations. If you want extra accountability or practice considering taking both classes.
Warm up & Technique
Thursdays
9:00am-10:00am
[ONLINE]
Weekly Beginners class focused on Clare inspired steps. This class will cover the basics and can be taken in combination with the intermediate class. Both classes will cover the basic material and the intermediates will be working on variations. If you want extra accountability or practice considering taking both classes.
Warm up & Technique
Saturdays
4:00pm-6pm
[IN-PERSON]
Combining Sean-nós steps, Clare battering and smooth dancing form to learn to dance in Ireland, or throughout the world wherever Irish music is played.
4pm-6pm every Saturday with a Live music céilí from 4pm-7pm on the last Saturday of the Month.
Waverly UCC, 3300 SE Woodward St., Portland, OR. $5-$10 Sliding scale lesson, $10 for the Céilí.
Welcome Set Dancers,
This is a companion course for our in-person class in Portland, Oregon. You can still follow along if you are in-person or learning online. I will offer tips and tricks for practicing at home by yourself.
You will discover creative ways to study set dancing even as a solo person. Many of you are at home on your own without a partner. It can be a challenge. But not as hard as you might think! I learned many of my set dancing and steps solo. In the process you can really hone your skills before having to work with a partner. I will also provide tips on how to practice without attending a ceili. Not to mention, some bonus tips and tricks for memorizing sets in isolation.
Kevin Burke once told me a story of a show where the dancers were two short of a set, so one of the musicians joined the group with a chair and danced the set with a chair as his partner. It’s a great story and I can’t do it justice. So, I must invite him as a guest to tell us the story himself. In the meanwhile, don’t be afraid to develop a temporary relationship with a nice looking piece of furniture.
Get your set dancing ready for the dance floor.
Saturday, September 17, 2022
Our first week we had 12 people ranging from 6 months old to 79 years old. Here’s to keeping set dancing going for years to come! Lovely to see you all out and dancing. We covered footwork for traveling, advancing, dancing at home and housing. You will find a few video references for these movements. We also danced the Clare Plain Set. This dance is from County Clare. The while you will see dancers battering the foundation is the smooth gliding step we covered in class. These steps will be the foundation for all of the Clare dances.
Warm up & Technique
Traveling: Smooth 3’s
Video coming soon
Ladies – Advance & Retire
Gents – Advance & Retire
Frame
Video coming soon
Home
Video coming soon
House
Video coming soon
The Clare Plain Set
Saturday, September 24, 2022
Our second week we will learn the Clare Lancers. We will also review and cover set dancing technique and form. Our second class was a blast. Michael and Margret visited from California. Michael played flute for some of the figures.
The Clare Lancers
Saturday, October 1, 2022
This week we will learn the Connemara set and Jim Loewenherz will play for our class. It’s such a blessing to have live music while learning. One of the great things is that we can dance at the pace that we are learning and right away be in sink with the music and each other. Starting out we will dance this set smooth and eventually when you are ready you can add the battering step to the set. You will find the instructions as well as the video reference for the set. Also on this page is the Connemara step broken down and a practice video.
Here is the battering step for the Connemara Set. It is not necessary to have this step in the set, but if you want to work on it on your own I will have a session down the line where we include it in the set and we will work on traveling with the step. If you like the battering footwork keep working on this step on your own and focus on moving with the step. This will give you a leg up when we bring it into the whole set in later weeks.
Some dancers find the stamp and stamp step easer to travel with when first starting out. You can cover a greater distance on each stamp and stamp.
Saturday, October 8, 2022
Merchant Set | Reel 128, Reel 192, Reel 128, Hornpipe 144
Videos for the Merchant Set can be found here.
Click and go to YouTube to see these videos.
Saturday, October 22, 2022
Ballyvourney Jig Set | 4 Slides (32bar tunes) 4x each
Saturday, October 29, 2022
Rambling House Ceili – a page of all the dances we will dance as well as a YouTube playlist and a Spotify playlist. I have tried to include most of the dances that we have covered in class in the ceili. There will be a few new ceili dances that you might not have learned yet and we are missing the Clare Plain Set at the ceili (we will be sure to dance it next time at the Butterball in November 😊).
Final Order of Steps
| A | Angle Step Right and Left |
| A | Stamp and Stamp in place |
| B | Side Step 3 Heel and toes |
| B | 2 Heel and toes in place and 2 heel and toes turning |
| A2 | Heel toe heel |
| A2 | Cross clock |
| B2 | Slide |
| B2 | Single Heel and Toe in place |
| A3 | Cross to the left |
| A3 | Circle Step |
| B3 | Cross to the right |
| B3 | Lead around in a circle |
Tune in! You are invited to join me for a special summertime tune exploration on daily at 9am. We will be exploring the the connection between steps and tunes.
Summer tune challenge! You pick, a tune a day, a tune a week or a tune a month. You’ll never be able to dance them all, but this summer you can at least get close with our tune challenge.
My own challenge is a tune a day. Every morning I’m going for one hour of dance practice in order learn and create steps to accompany a collection of traditional Irish tunes. They won’t all be gems, but my goal it to get better and better at creating steps for tunes. Over the summer I will share those steps and tunes with you.
From Daily from 9AM-9:30AM PST join me for some friendly guidance on dancing the tune.
Tune Challenge (Guided Chaos) – 25 min
This tune challenge came about from the idea of learning a tune a day. The summer goal is to work on learning by ear a tune a day and creating steps to go to that tune. The sessions will be 25 minutes of guided tune learning and step creation. We may not get through a whole tune in the 25 minutes. The idea is to build your skills learning to dance by ear and to build your repertuar of traditional Irish tunes. I will be dancing everyday and you are welcome to join me live daily or weekly. Up to you how many tunes you want to tackle this summer.
I approach my personal sean-nós dance practice like a musician. I think of myself as a percussionist or a backer when dancing to tunes. That approach means I am not always the most visual stage dancer, but rather a session player and a player of tunes.
Great backers in Irish music know the tunes. When listening to an album or a session it is a joy when the guitar, piano, bouzouki or bodhran player knows the tune. As dancers we are no different. There are so many tunes to learn and this can be a daunting task. My goal this summer is to guide you and myself through this process. I invite you to join me live or view the recordings at your leisure.
Depending on my schedule there may be a few days that the practice is not live on zoom and I will encourage you to play one of the previous classes or practice your tunes on your own on that day.
I call this guided chaos as we will be learning tunes by ear and each interrupting them into our feet. Utilizing sean-nós steps and vocabulary we will set steps to each of these tunes.
Here are some of the tunes we will be drawing from:
Click on the tune name to reach the tune page where you can find music downloads and the zoom recordings for each tune. We will gradually work our way through these tunes.
Tunes to try on your own
Tune Challenge: Week 1
Week 1 Playlist – here is a Spotify playlist of the week one tunes played by a variety of artists. Week one included: Cooley’s, Silver Spear, Winnie Haye’s, Cuz Teahan’s, An Rógaire Dubh, Sligo Duke, James McMahon’s and John Brennan’s.
Here is a playlist to practice to with all of the sites recordings for the week.
Here are all the steps that will accompany this course:
Connemara Reels – broken down videos of each step along with practice videos. Also included are past zooms covering this material. Videos ranging from 5 minutes to an hour.