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.