In the world of dance, discovering another Irish dancer felt like a surprising connection, akin to finding someone from your hometown in a distant land. Encounters were rare, but occasionally, you’d hear about someone else making a similar transition: moving from the strict rules of competitive Irish dance to the more open and experimental world of postmodern dance. Pioneers like Jean Butler and Colin Dunne, in their post-Riverdance careers, were charting this new territory.
This conversation arose from a desire to explore this shared journey. Doug LeCours, Mickey Mahar, and Michael Thurin, like myself, grew up competing in Irish dance during the Riverdance boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s (my own start was slightly earlier in 1994). Over time, we all found ourselves drawn to more experimental dance forms and somatic practices. I’ve admired Mickey’s work with Miguel Gutierrez and Maria Hassabi. I’ve seen Doug in performances by Julie Mayo and John Jasperse. And I recently met Michael, whose work blends performance and photography, after seeing their collaboration with Jmy James Kidd. While we share much in common, Doug, Mickey, and Michael also share a history distinct from my own: navigating the world of Irish dance as young queer male dancers in the era of Michael Flatley.
This past fall, we connected via Zoom, bridging a nine-hour time difference for a two-hour conversation (Michael in the Bay Area, Mickey in Berlin, Doug and I in New York City). Our discussion ranged from early dance class memories to reflections on gender and sexuality, and the lasting impact of Irish dance – with a few tangents about dresses and wigs, of course. What follows is a condensed and edited transcript of our conversation, which could have easily continued.
—Siobhan Burke, Dec. 2021
Early Days in Irish Dance Training
Siobhan Burke: When did each of you begin Irish dancing, and what initially attracted you to it?
Michael Thurin: For me, it was around 1998 or 1999, when I was about 9 or 10. I had always been drawn to dance as a kid, but nothing quite clicked. Coming from a very Irish Catholic family, the Riverdance phenomenon was huge in the Bay Area. Family friends were involved in Irish dance, so I went to watch a class. The next week, I was taking my first class, and incredibly, a month later I won my first feis. It felt like it was made for my body, and the studio environment was more welcoming than other spaces I knew as a child. That was a major draw.
Doug LeCours: Riverdance was also my gateway. I discovered it at a video store. I tried a class and, like Michael, took to it quickly. I think I was drawn to the discipline and formality. I grew up in New Hampshire, near Boston, so I ended up commuting a few hours for classes a couple of times a week. While I have some Irish heritage, it wasn’t a big part of my family background. I just found it and pursued it.
Mickey Mahar: Unsurprisingly, my story is similar: the late 90s Riverdance wave. Plus, I had a very Irish grandmother who worked at the church where my school practiced. I think my parents were looking for an outlet for my boundless childhood energy, and the Irish aspect made sense. It’s interesting that we represent so many different regions here.
SB: Mickey, where did you grow up?
MM: Milwaukee, about an hour and a half from Chicago. My school, Cashel-Dennehy, was affiliated with a larger, more prestigious school in Chicago. Once you reached a certain level and aimed for Worlds, you had to train with them in Chicago. They were significantly better than us, and we always felt like we were in their shadow.
Even back then, there were many schools, maybe five just in Milwaukee. I found the local rivalries fascinating, how each school had distinct identities, reputations, and even myths, and how we, as 9-year-olds, would embody those differences.
SB: During most of my competitive years, I was with the Griffith Academy in Hartford, CT, and there was a strong emphasis on being respectable young ladies. That was a core part of our school’s identity, as I remember it. Did you all feel your schools had specific identities? Were you expected to represent them in a particular way?
MT: I started at a small school called Deeley-Smith. It had been around since the 60s and felt very traditional, East Bay California. It wasn’t highly competitive, more community-focused, and deeply rooted in its history and lineage. It felt like the dancers there were driven by a genuine love for dance. When that school closed, I moved to a much larger, very competitive and well-known school, Butler Fearon O’Connor. It was a completely different world. The dancing became more commercialized and polished. There was pressure to be assertive and command attention at competitions. I never fully embraced that—I wasn’t a fiercely competitive dancer, even though I had competitive success. It just wasn’t in my nature.
DL: My first teacher was John Cunniffe, who had trained with Rita O’Shea, a respected Boston teacher, so we felt a connection to that lineage. We saw ourselves as underdogs—we rarely won team events. I began winning as a soloist, but our teams didn’t fare as well. I was both envious and intimidated by the more intense schools that seemed to have a lot of internal drama. Smith-Houlihan, in Boston, had almost a legendary status.
MM: My school marketed itself as both competitive and family-oriented. It tried to strike a balance between extremes. On one end, you had Trinity, the biggest Chicago school, with the attitude of “We will make you champions.” On the other, there was Glencastle, which was more like, “We’re here if you want to have fun.” We positioned ourselves somewhere in the middle.
Gender, Sexuality, and Irish Dance Culture
(Faux-Hawks and Flatley’s Influence)
SB: For young people in Irish dance, as in many dance forms, gender expectations are a significant influence. Boys and girls compete separately, in categories that are similar yet distinctly different. For example, Michael, you mentioned the slip jig was a favorite dance, but it’s exclusively for girls. And of course, there’s a level of pageantry for girls that is much less pronounced for boys.
This is a broad question, but I’m interested in your experiences with gender as young Irish dancers—anything you’d like to share.
MT: Being the only boy dancer at my first school, and achieving early success, made you very visible. At the Oireachtas, my age group might have eight boys, while the girls’ group in the same age range would have 150. You become this kind of unicorn, a prized boy, receiving a lot of attention, and I recognize the privileges that came with that. It’s a self-awareness I try to maintain.
MM: Absolutely. Boys in dance are often encouraged in a very positive way, often more so than girls. I experienced this when I started exploring other dance forms. It was like, “You’re amazing, whatever you need, we’re so happy to have you.”
DL: I relate to much of what you’ve both said. The “prize boy” experience resonated with my desire to be well-behaved. It’s also interesting to consider how I was socialized in predominantly female spaces and felt welcomed yet also distinct. It’s a unique way to develop as a young person. I should also mention, my first teacher, while never explicitly out to us, was definitely a gay man. He even gave me a video with Absolutely Fabulous episodes on it! He introduced me to Ab Fab!
MM: That’s amazing.
MT: It was definitely a “glass closet” situation, where everyone knows but it’s unspoken. In performances, there were often very heteronormative roles, frequently danced by gay men—or less visibly, lesbian women—which is common in many dance forms, especially ballet. I always found a certain irony in that. It also manifested in competitive dance styles. I was often told to “butch up” my dancing, which felt inauthentic and uncomfortable.
DL: Around the time I was competing, the faux-hawk hairstyle was everywhere. Do you remember that?
MM: Yes! It was the bane of my existence. Outside of Irish dance, I was desperately trying to achieve a sweepy, Hollister-Justin Bieber-Aaliyah look, and my Irish dance teachers were adamant: “Absolutely not.” They would make me cut my hair, and I’d come back to class, and they’d say, “Not short enough. You need to look Irish.” But I refused to go shorter. I would actually cry about it. To this day, my mom says, “I’m proud of you for not giving in.”
SB: Did any of you ever wish you could wear a wig?
MT: Definitely! And I was always envious of the dresses.
DL: Jealous of the dresses, too.
MM: I always knew we had it easier, considering how heavy and expensive those dresses were. My parents would say, “Just so you know, we wouldn’t be able to afford this if you were a girl, it’s already breaking the bank.” But I envied the extreme personalization. I remember early on, you could literally open the Book of Kells and say, “I want a swan.” It was cool how you could express your identity through that. Remember the Annabelle wig, when that became popular?
SB: What was the Annabelle wig?
MM: It was a wig that wasn’t tight curls. It was almost like a Farrah Fawcett style.
DL: And the double-wig era, too, when they would clip two wigs together for extra volume.
MM: Also, I was obsessed with the girls who just wore a simple bun.
DL: The bun!
SB: I don’t remember the double-wig era at all. You all have such vivid memories!
MM: There’s something about being a boy and queer—you were absorbing all of it. We weren’t wearing these things, but we were the perfect audience for it. Our young queer minds were firing on all cylinders, overloaded and excited, which is why it’s all still so clear.
MT: Yeah, you retain all of that because you couldn’t directly participate in it. Obsessing over it was the only option.
SB: As young queer people, did Irish dance feel like a safe space? Was it accepting?
DL: Looking back, I realize I was exposed to many queer influences through Irish dance, especially through my first teacher. It was complex, but I felt safer than I could have imagined in any other childhood environment. I actually came out the same week I quit Irish dancing, at 16. I was supposed to go to Worlds, but I hadn’t been practicing. I was falling for a boy in high school and wanted to spend time with him instead.
MT: I relate to that a lot. When I was dancing, my sexuality wasn’t something I had language for yet. But at practices, feises, and with Irish dance friends, I could express myself in ways that would have been punished at public school. So, in that sense, there was a kind of safety there.
MM: I never felt unsafe, but it actually felt quite heteronormative to me. It felt like a sport, with all the competition and gender divisions. I remember hearing comments about certain teachers and judges, “They’re so gay,” as if pointing out their queerness reinforced our own heterosexuality. Somatically, though, I felt like I could be extremely queer. The fast movements, sharp angles, really high kicks—that felt very glamorous somehow.
SB: Michael Flatley was such a prominent figure when you were all coming up in Irish dance, and he projected this hypermasculine image. How did that impact you?
DL: When I told adults I did Irish dancing, the Flatley phenomenon made it acceptable to them. It was a cultural touchstone that earlier generations didn’t have. It made it understandable and less “other.”
MT: Yeah, having this hypermasculine, almost sex symbol figure made it more acceptable. It was like, “Oh, you’re a young boy, and my only reference for this dancing is this barrel-chested boxer. You’re not a sissy!” But watching him in Riverdance—it was so over the top. The all-male, leather-clad section—I thought, this is so gay!
MM: So gay.
MT: So gay. It tries so hard to be masculine that it becomes something else entirely. I just found it comical.
MM: I specifically remember taking a stand, and in my desperate attempt to be alternative, I’d say, “I’m more into Colin Dunne.”
MT: Absolutely.
DL: Yes, yes, Colin Dunne.
Leaving Irish Dance and Finding New Paths
(The Lingering Influence)
SB: Eventually, you all transitioned away from Irish dance and toward other forms. What was that transition like for each of you?
MM: I went to a performing arts high school where half the day was dance and half academics. It was daily ballet and Horton technique. I think if I’d jumped straight from Irish dance into a downtown, release-based style, I would have been lost. But there was a linearity in ballet and Horton that I connected with. Even Limón technique would have been challenging initially. Releasing my upper torso effectively took me years.
I went to Vassar College and initially tried to keep competing. I kept hitting a ceiling at Worlds, always close but never quite breaking through. At Worlds in Philadelphia, I was half a point away from placing higher. I remember texting my mom, “I’m done with this.” After that, I dove more fully into dance at university.
DL: I did Irish dance for two years, and then at 10, I also started jazz, tap, ballet—the whole range—and competed in those areas too. I remember my first ballet class, when they said, “You have to bend your knees. Plié,” and I was completely confused. For college, I went to Middlebury, to a dance program with no ballet. It was mostly release technique and improvisation. I had never been asked to fall or use my weight in that way. My relationship with that kind of movement is still complex, but I think I was craving a different kind of movement pattern, something less shape-driven.
MT: I stopped dancing at 19, during my freshman year of college. I think I needed to forget I was a dancer. I was eager to focus on academics and was getting more into visual art. That year I danced at Worlds, and it was a disaster. I was first out for the hornpipe, fell four bars in, and then in the third step of my reel, my shoe started to come off. Even for someone who wasn’t intensely competitive, it was not a great experience.
I started dancing again when I moved to Los Angeles for grad school. I found Pieter Performance Space, where I discovered different somatic practices, and that opened up so much for me. It’s been five years of relearning how my body dances, with a greater awareness of how Irish dance shaped me: my hip flexors, my pelvis, my center of gravity. It’s been really exciting.
SB: I think it’s a very challenging transition, moving away from that intense verticality and trying other dance styles. For years, I felt frustrated by what I saw as limitations from my Irish dance training. Could you talk more about the physical experience of encountering other dance forms? Did they feel natural? Do you still feel Irish dance impulses in your body, or have you left them behind?
MM: When I moved to New York, there was a certain type of release-based dancer that everyone admired—like Michelle Boulé or Vicky Shick. At the few auditions I went to, in the final interviews, for Sleep No More, they told me, “You have no relationship to the floor.” Similar feedback at Gallim. The styles that were desirable in 2012, I wasn’t getting into. I just couldn’t surrender my weight. And I’m actually grateful for that, because I started working with choreographers who weren’t interested in that aesthetic.
I worked extensively with Miguel Gutierrez, and he allowed me to use my existing movement vocabulary but also shape it. What I think about most is the frenetic energy and buoyancy that is so valued in Irish dance. It’s all so lifted—grounded only on the two knuckles of your third toe. Everything originates there. In some of the work with Miguel and others, I was able to harness that quality.
The other thing I see as directly linked to our shared training is the emphasis on taking up space in competition. If you weren’t the lead boy, front and center, it was like, why even bother competing? In some current performance work, often in vast museum spaces, I feel a bit like I’m back on that stage, where claiming space is paramount.
SB: That brings back so many memories—the pressure to be at the front! My mom used to say, “Out of the gates!” because I was naturally timid.
MM: I’m fascinated by how our parents tried to coach us. So endearing.
SB: Michael and Doug, what about you?
MT: The first thing I found when I started dancing again was Feldenkrais. I became really drawn to it. The horizontality brought me into a new relationship with the floor—beyond just my feet—and helped me experience time and the scale of movement differently. I had to move far across the spectrum, from striving to be off the floor, pointing my toes, exerting energy, to this other extreme of fluid, yielding, almost cellular space that was primarily about sensation, not formal shapes. It was and still is very pleasurable.
For a long time, I felt a kind of insecurity about Irish dance. I’d say, “Oh, I’m not really a dancer. I just did Irish dancing.” But working with dancers in L.A. like taisha paggett, Alexx Shilling, Jmy Kidd, Sam Wentz—when I hesitantly revealed my Irish dance background, they were like, “What are you talking about? That’s amazing. You have a wealth of specific knowledge and training that’s real, important, and historically rich.” I’m starting to embrace the way my body is structured and moves. I’m finding new ways to access that verticality, which ironically is making releasing from it much more effective.
DL: When I got to college, all I wanted was to be on the floor. I was fascinated by “what’s happening down here?” Being loose and relaxed was a completely different experience. Now, as I get older, rediscovering verticality has been really interesting. I’m dancing for John Jasperse now, and he loves a straight leg, so some things feel surprisingly familiar. Another thought, related to what Mickey said about taking up space, is that as Irish dancers, we learn to perform a solo. I sometimes wonder if I’m fundamentally a soloist, if that’s where I’m most comfortable.
MM: That solo aspect really resonates. Also, Michael, you mentioned duration, because Feldenkrais is about taking your time. In Irish dance competition, you have two and a half minutes. It’s such a specific time frame. There’s no resting, no dips in energy. There’s something powerful about that energizer bunny quality, but you also need to learn about pacing, about how to build and structure a performance. Because for so long, it was just like Siobhan’s mom said: “Out of the gates!” It’s all there and then it’s over.
DL: There’s an exhilaration to it, to those short bursts. Your heart rate spikes, you’re sweating. I find that part of me still seeks that intense, sweaty, epiphany experience, and when I don’t get it, I feel a little unfulfilled. I notice myself bumping up against that.
Final Reflections
SB: Well, we’re almost out of time. It’s been wonderful talking with you all. Any final thoughts before we wrap up?
DL: This was really enjoyable. I haven’t revisited some of this stuff in a long time. It’s like unpacking a box from the past.
MT: Yeah, definitely. There almost needs to be an adult recovery program for former Irish dancers.
DL: I’m still in touch with a friend from Irish dance, and she always says, “When I describe it to other people, it sounds like I was in a war.” There’s a strange nostalgia associated with that intensity.
MT: A war and a cult.
DL: Definitely a cult.
MM: And a war with yourself, in a way. I also immediately describe it as a cult.
MT: This frenetic, obsessive, self-critical quality.
MM: It’s not unlike gymnastics or other intense group activities. I think the main difference is the lack of broader cultural understanding. There’s no Simone Biles equivalent, you know? That’s why conversations like this are valuable, because it’s hard to discuss these experiences with people outside of it.
Siobhan Burke is a writer based in New York City. Since 2013, she has been a dance critic for the New York Times and a contributing writer for Dance Magazine. Her writing also appears in Artforum, The Brooklyn Rail, Cultured, Harper’s Bazaar, Open Space, The Village Voice, and other publications. She was a 2013 USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Fellow and a 2018 Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant recipient. As a dancer, she toured North America with Riverdance and performed with artists including Darrah Carr, Hadley Smith, and RoseAnne Spradlin. She teaches at Barnard College.
Doug LeCours is a dancer, choreographer, and writer living in New York City. His work has been presented by AUNTS, Center for Performance Research, and New York Live Arts. He has performed with choreographers including Tess Dworman, John Jasperse, and Julie Mayo. His writing has been featured in The Brooklyn Rail. He trained in Irish dance in New Hampshire and Massachusetts and competed internationally.
Mickey Mahar is a dancer and performer originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He trained at Cashel-Dennehy School of Irish Dance, Milwaukee High School of the Arts, and Vassar College. He currently works in visual art contexts, performing in works by Anne Imhof and Maria Hassabi in galleries and museums worldwide. He lives and works in Berlin.
Michael Thurin is a movement-based artist working in performance, photography, and text. His work has been shown at Pieter Performance Space, Irrational Exhibits, and SF Camerawork. He received an MFA in Art from UC Irvine in 2019. As a competitive Irish dancer, he trained with Deely-Smith Irish Dancers and Butler Fearon O’Connor School of Irish Dance.
