The lilts of fiddles and flutes began to sound through campus last semester as a newly formed Irish dance group hosted practices with hopes to perform at the collegiate level starting next fall.
The GW Irish Dance Club started hosting team practices once a month in September to teach and rehearse traditional sets in Irish step dancing like St. Patrick’s Day, The Blackbird and King of the Fairies to step dancers. Co-presidents Anya Spevacek and Lily Woloshin said they hope to foster an environment that differs from the “toxicity” and “competitiveness,” which they said veteran dancers often associate with Irish dancing and collegiate competitions.
Spevacek, a sophomore, said she hopes members of the organization can compete against other local colleges next academic year through the national Collegiate Irish Dance Association. She added that the competitions that the association hosts are more relaxed, and participants aren’t as focused on their scores or critiques from judges, as opposed to more intense competitions where dancers’ scores impact their future advancement of competitions.
“This isn’t the same competition that you went to when you were 10 years old, and you had a teacher yelling and screaming at you,” Spevacek said. “This is not that. This is us, we’re gonna go have a fun trip and get to go experience something all together.”
Spevacek said she wants the organization to maintain a laid-back environment for dancers, in contrast with the intense competition within the sport she said many veteran Irish dancers experienced growing up.
“I think just communicating that to people that have danced in the past and be like, ‘No, we’re not trying to bring up old memories or bad experiences. This is just for fun and just to kind of be with each other and do something that we all have a tie to,’” Spevacek said.
Most Irish step dancers begin competing at an early age after mastering the shoes, music and first steps of the sport, where they will be judged on their rhythm, technique, mastery of steps and styling. To qualify for the World Irish Dancing Championships, young dancers are required to place in the top percentages of regional and national competitions after performing three separate dances for nine judges and about one percent of dancers ever qualify as solo dancers.
Woloshin, a sophomore, said Irish dance is a “niche” sport which makes it easy for dancers to connect with each other because of its small population among students. She added that her and Spevacek bonded over their shared interest in Irish dancing upon coming to GW and met up on campus to dance together.
“I noticed that Anya on the GW students page for 2027 had a picture of her dancing, and I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, let’s see if we can get together, and maybe she’d want to dance sometime,’” Woloshin said. “And then it slowly progressed into us wanting to recruit members who are retired dancers who still wanted to practice and get together on the weekends or weekdays.”
Woloshin said during initial recruitment efforts, the group reached out to students they knew danced as children in order to find people who shared the “universal” steps of Irish dancing like the jig and sets. She said the organization will be a space where all members will have a chance to teach each other as some dancers’ knowledge may differ from others.
“I think that’s the fun of the club, learning new things instead of repeating dances that have been engraved in our memories for years,” Woloshin said. “It’s always really cool to take a step back and let someone lead a new step that we haven’t seen before or aren’t too familiar with.”
Woloshin said the organization hopes to promote a relatable community for dancers by incorporating Céilí dances — a native Irish group dancing which can be traced back to the 1500s — like the Four Hand Reel and other traditional sets. She said these dances consist of “universal” choreography, so most Irish dancers already know the steps.
“Even though we haven’t rehearsed and practiced together, we can still meet each other and still know the same steps, which is pretty cool,” Woloshin said.
Spevacek said the dance group experienced difficulties booking consistent rehearsal spaces for their practices last semester due to high demand for rooms like the studio on the fifth floor of the University Student Center.
Student organization leaders expressed similar concerns last fall with limited availability and high rental fees for programming in spaces like Lisner Auditorium and the City View and State rooms in the Elliott School of International Affairs. Last semester, officials announced three new rehearsal spaces for performance-based organizations located on the lower level of the student center, which some student leaders called “impractical” due to thin curtains dividing the room that allow sound to escape.
“We know if there’s an empty room in the USC, we’ll use it,” Spevacek said. “Maybe we’re not dancing in our dance shoes, but we’re still gonna dance if it’s in our socks, if it’s in our gym shoes. We still want to get that time together and have that community experience.”
