overview

Hello dancers,

For the next 8 Wednesday evenings

5:00 PM Pacific – Beginners
6:00 PM Pacific – Intermedates
7:00 PM Pacific – In-person 2400 NE Alberta Street, Porltand, OR
Zoom link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84235671611?pwd=XQ3CucBEyzT016HK0O4Ts7zKNGiJ2p.1
Practice Music – Google Drive Folder

week 1

Week 1 — You Can Dance

1. Start Here: You Can Dance

The goal of this course is not to collect as many steps as possible.

The goal is to be able to dance.

Some of my favorite dancers have only a handful of steps. What makes their dancing compelling is not how many steps they know. It is how they use what they have, how they listen, and how they play with the music.

This week we begin with three pieces of vocabulary: 3 Shuffles, 2 Shuffles, and 4 Heels.

Intermediates you will have grapevine step & triplets.

These are building blocks, not a routine you have to reproduce.

One movement is enough to begin. A handful of movements can make a lot of dancing.

And one step is enough to begin.

Intermedates

week 2

Week 2 — Practice Counts

Practice does not have to be long, formal, or happen on a dance floor. Thirty seconds counts. One small piece counts. Coming back to it counts.

This week, beginners learn Cross Step and revisit 3 Shuffles, 2 Shuffles, and 4 Heels. Intermediates learn a cross step with extra beats and build on Grapevine and triplets, exploring direction, both sides, and connections to familiar movements.

Our focus is on making the movements more comfortable and finding our way from one to another.

Learn a Little Chunk

I once found myself practicing a tiny piece of a dance step in the cheese aisle at the grocery store. It helped change the way I thought about practice.

You can practice while the kettle boils, while waiting for something, or during a little pause in your day. You don’t always need music or a whole step.

Read the cheese-aisle story.

This week we’ll use a word I say often: woodshed.

To woodshed something means to take out one small piece, slow it down, repeat it, listen to it, and then put it back into the larger movement.

Where Is Your Weight?

When something feels tangled, ask:

Where is my weight? Where does it need to be?

Step: If you step it alows you to change your weight from one foot to the other.
Tap: If you tap it alows you to make a sound while keeping your weight the same.

Notice which foot is available for the next movement. Sometimes changing a step to a tap—or a tap to a step—opens up a connection.

Make the weight change obvious at first. You can make it smaller as it becomes familiar.

The Transition Game

Choose two movements. Dance the first into the second, then reverse the order.

For beginners, try Cross Step and one movement from Week 1. Intermediates can try Grapevine and something already in their feet.

If the connection feels sticky, practice just the end of the first movement and the beginning of the second. Then put them back together and try with music.

These are experiments. You don’t have to memorize a particular sequence.

Home base and Keep Dancing

Choose one comfortable movement as your Home Base. This is the step that is easies for you and that you can come back between playing with these steps. My dance teacher Mick calles this is banner step.

Put on a jig. Begin with your home base step and bring in another movement when you’re ready.

If you get lost, return to home base. Listen. Choose again.

You don’t have to use everything you know every time you dance.

Your Practice Menu

Choose one thing that helps today:

Practice one small piece for 30 seconds.
Revisit Cross Step or Grapevine.
Connect two movements.
Check your weight at a sticky connection or change weight in a step.
Listen to your feet without music.
Put on a jig and dance.

This is a menu, not a checklist.

What felt more comfortable this week? Where could a tiny moment of practice fit into your day?

week 3

Week 3 — There Isn’t One Right Way to Learn

1. Start Here

Different people learn in different ways. You may need to see something, hear it, copy it, stop watching it, slow it down, repeat it, understand the weight, or feel the whole thing first.

You may even need a different approach for different movements.

This week we add 8 Shuffles and begin treating our practice tools as a Learning Menu.

A restaurant menu gives you choices. It is not a checklist.

You would not go into a restaurant, look at the menu, and think: “I have to eat all of this.” You couldn’t. You’d make yourself unwell!

Our Learning Menu works the same way. Choose one thing that sounds useful. Try it. If it helps, stay with it. If it doesn’t, choose something else.

Don’t eat the whole menu.

https://maldonmeehan.com/there-isnt-one-right-way-to-learn/

2. Learn: 8 Shuffles or Run on Step

Listen to the sound first, without music.

Then ask a new question: can the same or similar sound be made with a different movement?

Intermediates – run on and madness

What do my feet DO? What do my feet SOUND like?

Experiment with step, tap, shuffle, or weight change. Then return to The Black Rogue.

3. Practice: Choose How You Learn

If you are stuck, you do not always need to try the same thing harder. Change your approach.

Watch.
Listen.
Copy.
Stop watching.
Slow down.
Check your weight.
Step or Tap.
Take One Foot Away.
Use the metronome.
Take the music away.
Ask a question.
Leave It Alone.
Just Dance.

You do not have to use my menu. You might say the rhythm, write something down, use your hands, sleep on it, or invent another way that works for you.

Instead of “I can’t do this,” ask: “What else could I try?”

Leave It Alone

Leaving something alone is not the same as giving up.

Giving up says: “I can’t do this.”

Leaving it alone says: “My feet don’t have this yet. I’ll come back.”

Intermediate / Explore Further — Week 3

Use exactly the same concepts with more vocabulary: Step-Heel-Step, hips, Run On with Pause, triplets, weight changes, direction, and anything already in your feet.

Progression: Hear it → make it → repeat it → change it → remember what you did.

Music note: Tatter Jack Walsh — 80 / 100.

week 4

Week 4 — Take Stock: You’re Already Dancing

Intermediate additions: Explore making Tip Step with Click two-sided; deliberately choose whether to repeat or change sides. Try a drum in different jig rhythms.

Tonight’s reminder: “You’re already dancing. Three movements are enough.”

Week 4 Halfway Reflection / Practice

This is a midpoint observation, not a report card.

What was my original goal?
Where am I now?
What is easier?
What is still hard?
How do I learn best?
Which practice tools helped?
What do I want to focus on next?
Has my goal changed?

Minimum practice: dance three times this week and choose one focus.

week 5

Week 5 — Mistakes Can Become Dancing

1. Start Here: Mistakes Can Become Dancing

Years ago, I was teaching a mixed-level sean-nós dance class at the Milwaukee Summer School.

I gave the intermediate and advanced dancers a step to work on and went to help the beginners. A little while later, I looked across the room. Everyone in the intermediate group was standing still. Not dancing. Just standing there.

Something had clearly gone wrong.

When I went back, I discovered the problem: me.

I had started by teaching the step correctly, then somewhere in the middle I had gone in a completely different direction.

They had already spent so much time working on it that I did not want to say, “Sorry! Forget everything I just taught you.” So I didn’t.

We kept going. I took the place where I had gone wrong and found a way to finish the step from there.

The mistake became a dance step.

What emerged was part of Rónán Regan’s lovely Aer Arann step and part of the unexpected direction I had taken. I still dance it. We call it the Milwaukee Step.

What If You Don’t Stop?

When we are learning, it is easy to think a mistake means: Stop. Go back. Start again.

But when you are dancing, the music is still going.

If something unexpected happens, try to keep dancing. Maybe you add an extra shuffle, land on another foot, change direction or rhythm, insert something, or forget what comes next.

Ask: What did my feet do?

Then, if you can: Repeat the mistake.

Do it again. What happens when you make the same movement on purpose? Can you repeat it a third time? Can you find your way back to something familiar?

The first time may have been an accident. The second time is an experiment.

Somewhere along the way, the “mistake” might become part of your dancing.

2. Learn: Tip Both Sides & Mick’s Advance & Retire step

Intermediates – Mick Advance & Retire as a jig

Explore Further

Once Tip Both Sides is comfortable, do not assume there is only one way to dance it.

Make the tips sharper or softer.
Change emphasis.
Make it smaller.
Make it travel.
Change direction.
Repeat one part.
Add an extra sound.
Change the ending.
Reverse the tip

Pick one idea. If something unexpected happens, ask What Did My Feet Do? Try to repeat it.

3. Collect the Mistakes / What Did My Feet Do?

Sometimes your feet do something you did not plan. Your first reaction might be: Oops. That was wrong.

This week, ask a different question: What did my feet do?

Put on a jig and dance. If something unexpected happens, try not to stop. Keep listening. Go Home if you need to. We now have enough vocabulary and steps to dance to any jig. I have designed these steps specifically to help you improvise and play. Each step or chunk ends with a tap or a step, which alows you to transition to the other foot or stay on the same foot. As you play with dancing this is one of the most helpful tools the ablity to do anything next based on a step or a tap. It creates so much freedom.

The first time may have been an accident. The second time is an experiment. By the third time, you might be making a choice.

Collect the Mistakes

Try making mistakes on purpose.

Start with something you know and mess with it.

Add something where you do not normally put it.
Leave something out.
Go the “wrong” direction.
Repeat something too many times.
Change feet.
Change the ending.
Come in at an unexpected place.

Collect the mistakes.

How many ways can something go “wrong” while you still keep dancing?

Some will be awkward. Some will make you laugh. Some will not work. Every once in a while you may think: Wait. I like that.

I make “mistakes” every time I dance. That is partly because I am making choices while I dance. I am listening, responding, and trying things.

Mistakes can be evidence that you’re trying something new.

4. Play With What Happened

Choose one mistake that made you curious. Ask: What can I do with this?

First, find it again. Then change one thing.

Direction.
Emphasis.
Bigger or smaller.
Repeat one piece.
Add a sound.
Take a sound away.
Change the ending.
Change where the weight lands.
Put it on the other side.
Connect it to something else.

Don’t eat the whole menu.

Try changing emphasis without necessarily changing the movement.

Try putting something in the middle of two familiar movements: a shuffle, tip, heel, step, tap, or pause. See if you can find your way out.

Try the other side. Notice what changes in weight, transition, or what you want to do next.

Then stop experimenting and dance. Do not try to demonstrate everything you found.

You don’t always need more vocabulary. Sometimes you can do more with the vocabulary you already have.

5. Keep Dancing

Put on a jig. No exercise to complete. No required vocabulary.

Start when you are ready. Make choices. If you make a “mistake,” keep going. Go Home if you need to.

Collect a mistake if something catches your attention, but do not turn the whole dance into analysis.

6. Week 5 Practice / Reflection

Tip Both Sides.
Collect the Mistakes.
What Did My Feet Do?
Repeat a mistake.
Change one thing.
Play with direction or emphasis.
Go Home and keep dancing.
Just Dance.

Reflection: What mistake did you collect? Could you repeat it? Did it become an experiment? Did you keep anything? Did you reject anything? What happened when you kept dancing instead of restarting?

Intermediate: same concept, richer vocabulary. Deliberately manipulate beat, direction, emphasis, weight, endings, and transitions.

7. Teach your step

Teaching is the final stage of learning. Learn one, do one, teach one. Teach your step to someone else. This will help you clarify the step and help you figure out exactly what is going on with the step.

Wednesdays Sean-nós Dance | Beginners & Intermediates