Getting Into "Treble"
*with intensely irish*
It is hard to believe that January is already here! September seems like only yesterday, but soon St. Patrick's Day, the competition season, and even our year end show will be upon us...it seems like this year is going very fast! Sticking with our tradition of spreading Christmas cheer around the Kitchener-Waterloo Region, Intensely Irish spent the weekend before Christmas out performing! We started things off with a performance at the Kitchener Market, followed by an afternoon performance at A.R. Gaudie Retirement Centre. We had a lot of fun performing both some traditional dances as well as some Christmas-inspired routines. All of our dancers performed very, very well, especially some of our newest members for whom these shows were their first ever performances! In fact, we performed so well that Intensely Irish is even going to be featured in the February edition of Snap'd newspaper - keep your eyes open! The next day Intensely Irish continued to spread Christmas Spirit by performing a set at the Renaissance Singers Celtic Christmas Show. We were lucky enough to be able to hear both the choir and the band (Kettle's On) from where we were waiting and the show sounded amazing! Our set went very well too! Our dancers performed beautifully, the audience was very enthusiastic, and the hardshoes sounded amazing on the floor - it ended up being our strongest performance of the weekend! We then helped finish off the show by dancing to the choir's final piece. It was a great experience!! Now our Intensely Irish dancers get a bit of a break to start preparing for both St. Patrick's Day and our 2016 Competitive Season. I can't wait to see how much our group will continue to grow over the next few weeks!!
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We are now almost two months into our new dance year and the Intensely Irish dancers are off to a great start! Both our junior class and our senior class are working hard to learn new skills, steps, and dances. I think this year will be our best year yet!
We've also had our first performance of the year. Intensely Irish performed at Steckle Farms Annual Family Fun Day at the beginning of October. Although the weather did not co-operate, all of dancers performed very well. For some of them it was their first ever performance! At the end of our show, we got some of our audience members up to learn a jig - it was a lot of fun! Also, at the end of the month, Miss Katie represented Intensely Irish at the Halloween Ceili in Victoria Park. She performed a couple of short Halloween-inspired routines and had a lot of fun! Now our dancers are back in the studio and have a bit of a break until our Christmas events roll around. I can't wait to see all that our dancers accomplish this year! Considering that regular lessons stop over the summer, Intensely Irish stayed quite busy this summer! In fact, the day after our year end show, we were at it again - performing at the KW Multicultural Festival. Most of our dancers were able to attend and the large group looked and sounded absolutely awesome up on stage! It was an awesome performance and Miss Jen & Miss Katie were very proud of all of their dancers. This performance was followed by several other performances throughout the summer. In early July, a few Intensely Irish dancers performed at the Cherry Festival in Kitchener. This was our first time at this festival, but we had a lot of fun bringing Irish dance to our community. In early August, Intensely Irish brought some cheer to local seniors at Trinity Village Retirement Centre. We finished off our summer engagements with a performance at Kidspark. Although we had the unfortunate role of starting off the festival, our dancers performed very well (even on the slippery stage). Who knows, maybe next year we'll get a bit of a better time-slot and really be able to strut our stuff! We finished off our summer with our annual year-end party at Miss Katie & Miss Jen's house. The dancers all had a lot of fun playing games and watching old dance videos of themselves. Miss Jen's Hollywood Game Night-style games were a huge hit as well! It was a great way to end one year and start the next! It's hard to believe, but another year is over! Although it's sad that another year is done, all of our Intensely Irish dancers have grown so much over the past year. And we went out with a bang at our studio's year end show this past June. The theme of this year's show was "A Night at the Movies". Our Junior dancers performed a softshoe routine based off of the party in 3rd class scene from the movie Titanic. Although for many of them it was their first time on stage, they nailed the performance and had the audience clapping along. Our Senior dancers performed a softshoe routine to Galway Girl from the film PS I Love You. Their routine showed off many of the difficult moves we've been working on this year and the girls really worked well together as a team. Our Juniors and Seniors then combined forces to perform a spy-inspired routine based off of James Bond using sparkly, green fedoras as a prop. Our senior dancers impressed with their intricate footwork and toes while our junior dancers (many of whom just started hardshoe this year) brought lots of energy to the routine. In the end, the routine sounded phenomenal and the audience loved it! Needless to say, although it is sad that another year is over, Miss Katie & Miss Jen are very proud of all the things their dancers have accomplished this year and how well they performed at our year end show! But don't count us out just yet - we still have a busy summer ahead of us with a couple of performances and our 2nd annual summer class. Plus, there is always next fall to look forward too! This year Intensely Irish had two competitive routines - a pre-competitive small group consisting of 4 of our teen dancers, and a pre-competitive solo performed by one of our youth dancers, Grace. Over the course of the 2015 season, our dancers performed at competitions in London, Hamilton, Niagara Falls, and right here in Waterloo; absolutely rocking it every time! We kicked things off at Kick it Up (pun intended) in Hamilton. Both of our routines nailed it - especially since it was our soloist's first time on stage EVER and one of our teen dancer's first time ever competing. Both the routines looked polished and our dancers received many compliments on their great smiles, gorgeous costumes, and fantastic dancing. We even helped our studio, In.Motion, win a 5-foot trophy for being the overall highest scoring studio at the competition! Over the next two competitions our dancers continued grow and perform better and better! This was our first year with two competitive routines and it was so nice to see the dancers support their teammates at each and every competition. Our final competition brought us back home to Waterloo. Not only was it nice to finally be competing at a local competition, but it also happened to be Miss Jen's birthday, so we had fun celebrating that as well! Both of our routines had their best performances of the season and their marks definitely reflected that - it was an absolutely amazing way to end the season! Overall, our dancers had an amazing season, continuing to challenge themselves while also having a lot of fun! I can't wait to see how our team continues to grow and develop next year!
For the past few weeks, Intensely Irish has been busy and we have no intentions of slowing down! We're heading into the busiest time of the year and all of our dancers have been working hard in class every week to make the rest of the year a success! Every week in class our dancers are learning new steps, practicing their routines, and improving their technique and flexibility. Of course, it's not all for nothing...we are going to have some cool things to show off in the coming months. It all starts off this weekend as our pre-competitive soloist performs at her Competitive Showcase - we wish her luck! We then have our various St. Patrick's Day performances - 9 of them in total, with 6 on St. Patrick's Day alone! Our dancers are going to be so tired! The month finishes off with a second Competitive Showcase at which our pre-competitive small group will perform. Although March will be very busy, it is only just the start. During April and May our competitive routines will perform at a total of 4 competitions in Hamilton, Niagara Falls, London, and Waterloo. Then, in June, we'll wrap up a fantastic year with our year end show! All of our dancers are working hard to make these things happen! So stay tuned - you're going to see some awesome performances! Just a few days before Christmas, Intensely Irish Performance Troupe spread some holiday cheer throughout the Kitchener-Waterloo region. We started off our day with two holiday-themed performances at the Kitchener Market. All of dancers had a lot of fun, performing both our traditional routines and our Christmas-inspired ones as well. Although the floor at the market is not always the easiest to dance on with our hardshoes, all of our dancers handled themselves with lots of professionalism and flair. Some of our members even got to meet Santa! In the afternoon we took our show to A.R. Gaudie Retirement Home. We were even able to get some our our community centre dancers to join us for this show...who knows, maybe they'll be a part of Intensely Irish soon?!? All of our dancers, even our newest members, performed very well! The residents all seemed to enjoy themselves as well and I think everyone had a great time! Believe it or not, our next stop is St. Patrick's Day - stay tuned for more details! November 7th was Random Act of Kindness Day in the Kitchener-Waterloo Region. To help spread some kindness, Intensely Irish performed a set in the Uptown Waterloo Square. While it was a PA day, the unusually cold weather kept some people inside for the day. Between all of our dancing and the matching scarves and gloves Miss Katie dug out for the occasion though, the Intensely Irish dancers warmed up quite quickly. And those who did stay and watch some of our performance really enjoyed themselves too! The experience was also a great one for our dancers, as many of them showed off new steps/dances for the first time as well - great job girls!! Believe it or not, our next stop will be Christmas! Intensely Irish gets a few weeks off for some hard work at the studio, and then we'll be out spreading some Christmas cheer around Kitchener-Waterloo in December. Stay tuned for more details! Intensely Irish Performance Troupe started off the new season with two performances - Williamsburg Community Centre's Fall Festival & Steckle Farm's Family Fun Day. At the Williamsburg Fall Fesitval, Intensely Irish promoted Irish dance in the region and at Williamsburg Community Centre. It ended up being a beautiful day, with lots of sun and hardly a cloud in the sky - always good news for an outdoor performance! In addition to our own performance, the Intensely Irish dancers had fun watching the other performers and entertainers. For our performance, all of the dancers (from our seniors all the way down to our littlest beginners) performed so well and had a lot of fun! The audience seemed to have a great time too! At Steckle Farm's Family Fun Day, Intensely Irish did a 30-minute set in the old barn. Although it was pretty chilly, the dancers warmed up quickly with all of the jumping around. The performance went really well - we even successfully performed our new ceili dance, the Siege of Carrick. We did have a near disaster when Miss Katie forgot the sticks for our 'Warriors'. Luckily, we found some barn tools and brooms to use instead - they actually fit the setting perfectly! The audience seemed to really enjoy our performance too! Afterwards, Intensely Irish got all of the kids up on stage and taught them a jig to perform for their parents - it was a blast! |
AuthorIn addition to our lesson program, Intensely Irish Performance Troupe also performs at various venues & events throughout the Kitchener-Waterloo region. Archives
September 2023
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