Irish Dancing

On Sunday afternoon I had the privilege of photographing members of The O'Sullivan School of Irish Dance at their annual Feis.

First of all I did not even know what a feis was. What would I do without Google????

Feis (pronounced Fesh) is the Irish word for festival. The first Feis was held in Ireland in 1897 and was a celebration of the Irish culture including language, song, dance and creative writing. The Feis arrived in America in 1964. Though many Feisanna (plural for Feis) include language, writing and soda bread competitions, the focus is on Irish dancing.

The O'Sullivan School did not have any soda bread bake offs, but they certainly have some amazingly talented dancers. I was overwhelmed by their brilliance.

The day had got off to a rocky start as they had not been able to gain access to the venue and ended up having to set up a makeshift dance floor in the school cafeteria rather than the auditorium as orginally planned.

This did not seem to make a difference to the level of performance. I was entertained for several hours and throughly enjoyed myself. Thank you all for inviting me.