Author Archives: Kate

Successful rehearsals, ready for performance!

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Yesterday we had some great rehearsals. First, students at St. Augustine had a general rehearsal in the afternoon for the Skype call they will have with students at the Gaelscoile d’ide Primary School in Fermoy, Co. Cork, Ireland:

The pupils will share how they prepare for St. Patrick’s Day and will begin developing friendships with students in Ireland.

Among other things, the Pupils will sing to each other, recite poems, exchange St. Patrick’s Day cards, dance, dress in national wear or green and white outfits.

Five different newspapers in Ireland, with a combined readership of one million people, have been and will be covering the event: ‘The Irish Independent’, ‘The Irish Examiner’, ‘The Evening Echo’, ‘The Avondhu’ and ‘The Corkman.

Graham Clifford, feature Writer and Broadcaster working with the Irish Independent Newspaper and ‘The Observer in the United Kingdom is on island to lead the coverage for the newspapers.

The school was decorated with lots of St. Patrick’s Day accessories as well as the cloth from the national dress. It looks very festive!

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The girls were really focused and practiced the choreography we’ve been working on over the past few weeks. I think the Irish students are going to be impressed!

In the evening the adults had dance and drumming rehearsal. We were sharing the space with the Emerald Community Singers while they decorated the hall for tonight’s performance (more green, orange, and white!) so it was a bit crowded, but we made it work. We were able to rehearse on the stage and work on some of the finer points of the Siege of Carrick céili dance that we’ll be performing. After many repetitions, collisions are now at a minimum and everyone is looking much more comfortable.

The Emerald Community Singers and Martin Healy Band will be the main acts (and the band will be providing live music for us!), so it promises to be a great show. The ECS is always entertaining—a fun combination of singing, dancing, and comedy.

We then went outside to the basketball court to go over some drumming patterns. It wasn’t easy without Dominique, but luckily I had recordings of previous classes for reference. Once we get started, it sounds pretty good, and we get tighter as we go along. I think we can manage a simple, basic presentation of what we’ve learned over the past couple of months, especially if we can convince one of the members of Jalikunda African Band to lead us (they arrive on Thursday!).

St. Patrick’s Festival really kicks in today—from now until Monday, March 17, the week will be jam-packed with events. Ready, set, go!

Last class at St. Augustine before performance time

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Apologies for the lack of photos or videos today, but we have been too focused on rehearsing for the upcoming performances to pull out the camera!

The Irish dance class learned a final piece of choreography so that they will know all the same pieces as the other schools. Now all schools (St. Augustine, Brades, and Lookout) know the same snippets of choreography so we can easily stitch something together when we all meet up next week at Salem Park on St. Patrick’s Day. The girls showed noticeable improvement this week with keeping straight lines and avoiding collisions, so things are looking good!

We will have a sort of “dress rehearsal” at St. Augustine on Wednesday morning when a film crew from the Irish Independent comes to the school to take some footage of the dancing. The students will actually be Skyping with an Irish language school in Ireland, so it will be a bit of a transatlantic encounter! I wonder if they will be impressed by our Caribbean-style Irish dancing?

The St. Augustine dancers will perform at the St. Patrick’s Catholic Dinner on Saturday March 15, and then again on St. Patrick’s Day itself when they join up with the other schools.

In other news, unfortunately Dominique has had a family emergency and had to leave Montserrat a week early this morning, just as the festival kicks off! So we will need to improvise without him. I will try to lead the final drumming classes as best as I can (we’ll see how much drumming I’ve learned myself!) and we plan to still have some drumming students perform during the festival activities.

We’re all sending thoughts and prayers to Dominique and his family from Montserrat during this time.

A successful blending of rhythms at our last day at Brades School

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It was our last day at Brades Primary School this afternoon, and we joined the drumming and dancing classes again, like we did last week. First we had to get a hang of the rhythm again and get our energy up. It is Friday, after all! The girls needed a little push before we started hopping around.

We reviewed the céili dance from last week, which we hope to perform on St. Patrick’s Day at the afternoon Slave Feast festivities in Salem. The choreography is looking good, and it’s a good combination of Irish dance with some movements created by the students themselves. The drumming is also sounding tight!

Stay tuned for more about St. Patrick’s Day performances! We will definitely be there, but the details have yet to be confirmed.

Also, next week there will be a workshop during our usual slot at Brades School with visiting artists Jalikunda (West African drum/dance troupe, with members from Senegal and the Ivory Coast) and Oliver Mtukudzi (from Zimbabwe). It will be interesting to see what they perform and teach the students, and how it differs from what they’ve been learning the Blended Rhythms workshops!

Performance schedule – stay tuned for updates!

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We will be updating this post as performances and appearances for both students and instructors during the St. Patrick’s and African Music Festivals are confirmed. Stay tuned for updates!

Wednesday, March 12
– 7:30pm >> Kate and adult Irish dance students will be performing with the Martin Healy Band and Emerald Community Singers at the Shamrock Cabaret (@ Old Salem School)

Thursday, March 13
– 7pm >> Kate will be making her debut with the Volpanics Steel Pan Orchestra at Rhythm Night (@ Salem Car Park, by Gary Moore’s)

Saturday, March 15
– 6pm >> St. Augustine Irish dance students will be performing at the St. Patrick’s Catholic Dinner (@ Montserrat Cultural Centre)
– 9pm >> Dominique’s band Jalikunda will perform at the African Music Festival (@ Salem Park)

Monday, March 17
– Afternoon/evening >> Workshop students will participate in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, at the Slave Feast, and throughout the day’s festivities (@ Salem Car Park near Gary Moore’s)

A whole slew of rhythms at Lookout Primary School

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This afternoon was all about rhythm (more so than usual) at Lookout Primary School. The drumming class reviewed every rhythm we’ve learned over the past couple of months, and the students remembered them well! We also had a reprisal of “Dracula” from last week.

The dance class was small this week, but very concentrated. These girls at Lookout are some of our most creative and focused students. They are always adding their own twist to the steps and choreography, and they are always interested in breaking down the footwork so they can learn it properly. Their hard work does not go unnoticed!

We focused this week on sean-nós steps, including the basic step and heel/toe steps. We even put together a simple choreography, using the steps to move around the room and dance together in a circle. I explained where sean-nós comes from (the West of Ireland) and that it’s a older style that is more rhythmic than the céili dancing we’ve been doing lately.

It was an afternoon all about rhythm!


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St. Augustine students not only dance Irish, but they speak it too!

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Today we had a special visitor at St. Augustine’s during the younger girls’ (grades K-2) class: Father George from St. Patrick’s Church in Lookout stopped by to watch the class, so we had an audience! The girls did a great job showing him the “Cotton Eyed Joe” dance they’ve been working on for the past few weeks.

I was also thrilled to see that some of the girls are practicing jumps from Irish dance, and jumps that I’ve never even shown them! I’m not sure where they saw “quivers” and “scissors,” but they were doing them! Very impressive.

This week I gave them a short lesson so that they can learn a few Irish phrases, but I was surprised to find that they already know some! They didn’t know how to say “hello” (“dia dhuit”) but they do know how to say “thank you” (go raibh mait agat”) and “Happy St. Patrick’s Day” (“Lá fhéile Pádraig sona dhuit”). That last one was new to me, so, you see, I’m learning from them too!

The older (grades 2-6) girls worked on their performance piece since we have a couple opportunities to show off our new skills during the St. Patrick’s Festival…which is fast approaching! We still need to work on our straight lines and working together as a team, but overall things are looking good.

Here are the younger girls practicing their skips and kicks:


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Dancing and drumming blend together at Brades

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Yesterday at Brades Primary School was the first time that we had truly “blended rhythms” when the drummers played for the dancers! The dancers started with a warm-up around the room to get used to the new music, and it only took a few minutes for everyone to get a hang of it. The rhythms are essentially exactly the same, but the drums just sound a little different from the Irish fiddle and accordion 🙂

Putting the dancing and drumming together was a great experience. Not only do the rhythms blend surprisingly well, but the students (both dancers and drummers) seemed to focus more, since they knew they were relying on each other for the collaboration to work. And they also seemed to feel a bit more pressure with a new audience!

And the dancers learned, of course, to always bow to (or otherwise acknowledge) their musicians after dancing.


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“Dracula” takes over Lookout’s drumming class

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This afternoon at Lookout, the drumming class was invaded by the “Dracula System”! The catchy calypso by this year’s calypso and soca monarch, King Baptiste Wallace, was the tune of choice while the students were playing the assiko rhythm. They were moving and grooving to the beat, and spontaneously burst out in song: “I been working night and day…for the same old salary! Although I get paid…it makes me angry! Dracula…take your money! Dracula…suck your money! It is Dracula System…it makes no sense!” Check out the video to hear the boys’ rendition of this most popular song of the year.


This student in particular was having a blast:


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Dance class was small but focused this week. The girls worked on performance choreography, breaking down some of the steps and working on keeping straight lines and round circles. Stay tuned for news on when and where these students will be performing this self-choreographed céili dance!

More outdoor rhythmic exercises with St. Augustine students

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This week we were outside at Little Bay field again with the students from St. Augustine, and once again we lucked out with the rain (which is always unpredictable here in Montserrat).

The drummers worked on the same rhythms they’ve been practicing for the past few weeks, including assiko and kassa breaks. This time a few of the girls who usually do the Irish dance class decided to drum instead, so there was some good cross-over!

The dancers worked more on a possible performance piece, this time incorporating the “waves” from the Waves of Tory céíli dance and their own version of the “body wave,” which is different from the Brades students’ “hand wave.” I guess every school has its own flavor!

We also did skip two threes all the way around the track, which was the crazy suggestion of one of the girls. A quarter mile is much longer than it looks! We were all huffing and puffing by the end.

This week one of our students took a long video of the drumming class, and I’m happy to have his unique perspective on the class. It’s always good to have different videographers to look at things through a fresh eye!


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Adults learn sinte rhythm and make right/left stars

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In this week’s adult djembe workshop, we learned a new rhythm called “sinte.” This was the most complicated pattern yet, and there were lots of different parts to remember. Here, have a listen:

We sped it up at the end, and it sounded great! A few of us were moving/dancing while playing, and I spied some of the kids outside unable to resist dancing too 🙂

Dance class was more difficult this week as well. First we reviewed our sean-nós steps (including the basic step, heel toe step, and heels/hips step) and I wore my hard shoes (similar to tap shoes, but with fiberglass tips and heels instead of metal) so that everyone could hear the rhythms better.

Our céili dance this week was the Siege of Carrick, which starts with a circle to the left, then has a right and left star, and then a complicated “up and down the center” figure that requires a good sense of space to avoid colliding with your neighbors. We’ll polish up this dance next week before posting videos of it!


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