Tyneside Irish Dance

In 2022 I set up my own classes, Tyneside Irish Dance (Website Facebook Instagram) These are fun and casual classes for adults who don't want to dance competitvely, want to try something new, find a new community, or just keep themselves fit. These have been a great hit with the local community, and those who wanted to continue dancing after university.

Overview

I joined Newcastle Uni Irish Dance (Facebook Instagram YouTube) in 2014, and started teaching in 2018. I set up Northumbria Irish Dance (Facebook Instagram YouTube) in 2020 and was President until summer 2022.

You can watch some of the dances I've choreographed and taught over on my YouTube channel.

Timeline

2023

After the success of the first sessions, the spring classes were increased by an hour, with beginners classes running 6-7pm, ceili 7-8pm, and experienced dancers 8-9pm. This has allowed the classes to be more catered to different abilities.

Tyneside Spring Sessions

Increasing the available classes

2022

The first set of sessions for Tyneside Irish Dance in Winter 2022 were to test if the classes would be successful. These ran 7-9pm on Mondays for all levels, with 1 hour for learning group dances, and 1 hour for learning ceili dances.

Tyneside Winter Sessions

The beginning of Tyneside Irish Dance

You can watch Treble on the Tyne 2022 here. This was a 2-night performance at Northumbria SU, where we raised £1595.19 for Newcastle Womens Aid and Newcastle West End Foodbank through tickets, donations, and raffle ticket sales. We had a total of 20 dances, and 5 musical performances in this show.

I contributed the following to the show:

Show Responsibilites
Tech assistance: I assisted the tech team in setting up the music, lighting, and stage visuals for the show, and worked with the team via a headset on the performance nights to ensure smooth running of the show.
Programmes & tickets: I designed the programmes and tickets that were given to show attendees using Canva.
Show order: I worked with committee members to decide the show order, ensuring the different levels and styles were well spaced throughout the show, allowing time for costume and show changes.
Socials: I made materials to be shared on our socials to advertise the event, as well as making a Facebook event.

Dances Choreographed
Fireflies (Beginners)
Dance Above the Rainbow (Beginners)
Iridium (Higher Inter)
Strings of Fire (Higher Inter)
Cup Song (Inter and Advanced)
American Wake (All levels)

Dances Co-Choreographed
Bunalaka (Advanced)
Everybody Dance Now (All levels)
Single Jig (All levels)
Tell Me Ma (All levels)

Dances Performed in
Everybody Dance Now
Bunalaka
Dragonfly (Solo) (Inter & Advanced)
Festival Slip Jig (Higher Inter & Advanced)
Capone (Advanced)
Reel Around the Sun (Higher Inter & Advanced)
Iridium
Trolleyed (Higher Inter & Advanced)
Breakout (Advanced)
Tell Me Ma
American Wake

Treble on the Tyne 2022

The societies' annual show.

2021

You can watch Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree here. I choreographed, taught, and edited this performance video after the success of our first Chrismtas video last year. To avoid copyright, we recorded all audio ourselves, which I then edited together with the heavies sounds.

Christmas Video Performance

Shown on YouTube

This year we were able to teach in person again. I am teaching 3 Tuesday classes and the majority of Thursday team dances, run the social media accounts and continue as Presdient.

Teaching Begins

Teaching Beginners, Higher Inter, and Advanced

Northumbria Irish Dance recieved the following awards for the 20/21 academic year:

Society of the Month Dec/Jan

Society of the Month March

Society of the Year

Best Society Collaboration

NSU Awards 2021

Awards we recieved throughout the year

You can watch Treble on the Tyne 2021 here. As this was a fully online show we did not have tickets this year, however we hosted a raffle and raised £107.50 for Maggie's Newcastle. We had a total of 13 dances in this show.

I contributed the following to the show:

Show Responsibilites
Video and audio editing: I spent around 300 hours editing over 1000 files into the show over 6 weeks, using Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe After Effects, and Adobe Audition. This involved storyboarding and collecting the videos from our members, as well as working with teachers to ensure their dances were shown how they wanted.
Costumes: I worked with our committees and members to decide on the costumes for each of the dances
Show order: I worked with a few committee members to decide the show order, ensuring the different levels and styles were well spaced throughout the show.
Socials: I made materials to be shared on our socials to advertise the event, as well as making a Facebook event for a virtual watch party. These materials included a virtual programme for the show. The programme front page, with all members pictures on it Dances Choreographed
Rattlin Bog (All levels)
Iridium (Higher Inter)
Fairy Reel (All levels)
Kings (Higher Inter)

Dances Co-Choreographed
Cup Song (Inter & Advanced)
Run the World (Inter & Advanced)
Single Jig (All levels)

Dances performed in
Rattlin Bog
Cup Song
Iridium
Trolleyed (Advanced)
Victory (Higher Inter & Advanced)
Fairy Reel
Run the World
Single Jig
Kings

Treble on the Tyne

An online version of our show

We were able to continue teaching longer than usual due to everything being on Zoom.

Teaching Ends

Online teaching ended for the year

For Women in Leadership Development Week, we taught Run the World to attendees and opened up our weekly fitness class to all students.

WILD Week Class

As part of a NSU Campaign

For St Patrick's Day I choreographed, taught, and edited our "Rattlin Bog" dance (linked below). I also edited several short performance videos, where the dancers used choreography from previous years and their own steps (also below). These videos were edited with Adobe Premiere Pro, using Handbrake to convert the video formats. As well as these, we uploaded several "memories" and chat videos, where members talked about dancing before and during the pandemic.

We also ran several events, where we collaborated with other societies. I worked with the NSU Veggie and Yoga Societies to run a joint Yoga session with Irish Dance, and afterwards Irish Dance held a "Soda Bread Chat", where we compared soda bread that we had made the day before (myself and 2 Newcastle committee members uploaded a tutorial with a list of ingredients for members to follow). To end the day we had a joint cocktail making social with NSU Hospital Arts, where ingredients were also posted on our socials in the days prior.

Despite everyone remaining inside for St Patrick's Day, our performances and events made sure we offered a comparable experience to a standard St Patrick's Day.

St Patrick's Day

We had multiple performances and collaborations

2020

To bring the feeling of dancing together, and to make up for not being able to have our usual Christmas social, I choreographed, taught, and edited our Christmas performance video.

This was the first time I had edited a video, using OpenShot to put the videos together.

You can find the video here. Due to copyright restrictions this video is only available in some countries.

Christmas Video Performance

Shown on YouTube

I held a wellbeing through Irish dance class, focusing on breathing techniques and having a positive headspace when dancing. Our fitness coach also held a wellbeing fitness class.

Wellbeing Week Classes

As part of a NSU Campaign

With restrictions changing and having members in various cities and countries, we ran classes on the usual schedule using Zoom.

To make up for the lack of in-person teaching (and Zoom lag), I filmed tutorials to assist with learning the dances, both with and without music, and facing to and away from the camera. These were uploaded to a private playlist on our YouTube channel.

Teaching Starts (Online)

Teaching Higher Inter

After being at Northumbria for a year I set up an Irish Dance Society so that Northumbria students could officially take part in Irish Dance activities. As I was at Newcastle Irish Dance since 2014 I felt it would be good to have the societies work together.

It took a few months to find a committee, however the ongoing collaboration with Newcastle Irish Dance helped get the society started.

NSU Irish Dance Set Up

For dancers at Northumbria Uni, with me as President

For the academic year 19/20, Newcastle Irish Dance recieved the following (out of 200+ societies):

Winner for Society of the Year

Runner up for Best Society Performance

Shortlist for Best Fundraising Event

NUSU Society Awards

We won several awards!

COVID restrictions started the day after our last performance, so classes finished earlier than normal, but we still had some class pictures from the show.

Beginners picture Beginners

Inter picture Inter

Advanced picture Advanced

Group picture Everyone

Teaching Ends

Due to COVID restrictions

You can watch Treble on the Tyne 2020 here. This was a 2-night performance where we raised over £2100 for Crisis and Streetwise Newcastle through tickets, donations, and raffle ticket sales. We had a total of 16 dances in this show.

I contributed the following to the show:

Show Responsibilites
Show order: this involved ensuring the order of dances allowed time for costume and shoe changes, as well as making sure the different level dances were well spaced. This was done by creating a spreadsheet of all dancers and the dances they were in.

Front cover
Dances Choreographed
American Wake (All Levels)
Cup Song (Lower Inter)

Dances Co-Choreographed
Shut Up and Dance (Beginners & Lower Inter)
Traditional Reel (Beginners)
Festival Slip Jig (Advanced)
Run the World (Intermediate)
High Hopes (All levels)

Dances Perfomed in
American Wake
Cup Song (night 1 only)
Siamsa (Advanced)
Cry of the Celts (Higher Inter & Advanced)
Reel Around the Sun (Advanced)
Dragonfly (Inter & Advanced)
Trolleyed (Advanced)
Festival Slip Jig
Run the World (night 2 only)
Stolen Kiss (Advanced)
High Hopes