In a bright, colourful dress with a shower of curls on her head Ali Wilke will be leaping long and stepping high in honour of St. Patrick’s Day.
The 14-year-old, along with other members of Okotoks Irish Dancers, will be performing on at local elementary schools including Good Shepherd and St. Mary’s to commemorate St. Patrick’s Day on March 17.
Wilke will likely love every second of it, as she is a young lady whose passion for Irish dance runs deep. She said it initially came from seeing a recorded performance by a world famous touring dancing troupe.
“I watched the show ‘Lord of the Dance’ with Michael Flatley and I thought it was really cool,” she said. “I never thought I’d be able to do something like that. Now here I am doing stuff like that and it’s awesome.”
Wilke eagerly became one of original members of the Okotoks Irish Dancers when the dance company formed about five years ago under its original name The Irwin School of Irish Dancing. Since then she has amassed a nice collection of trophies and medals from competitions.
Fuelled by her past successes Wilke has big aspirations for the future.
“I’d like to start a school when I’m older but definitely before that I’d like to make it to world championships,” Wilke said.
The teenager is presently moving out of what is termed the Prizewinner level of competitive dance into the Preliminary Championship stage. Winning events there will take her to the Open Championship category, which could then lead to a berth in the World Championships usually held in Ireland or Scotland.
She said she is looking forward to one day having the opportunity to compete overseas.
“I haven’t really travelled yet,” Wilke said. “I have only done competitions in Calgary.”
The dancer explained she feels she’s on the right path to competing internationally due to the guidance of her instructors at Okotoks Irish Dancers.
“Our teachers are great,” she said. “They make you feel like you are good at what you do but they also you give you honest, positive criticism.”
One those instructors and a co-founder of the local Irish dance school is Cathy Sobieski-May. The winner of numerous dance titles, she started dancing with the Irwin School in Calgary when she was four and competed nationally and internationally for more than 20 years.
Her school in Okotoks presently has 20 students ranging in age from five to 14 and the children learn how to perform both for appreciative audiences and the critical judges.
“There’s the competitive and performance worlds of Irish dance,” she said. “It all mingles together. I think most schools cover both areas. We ourselves like to have a good balance even though we do lean more to the competitive side of things.”
The local school teaches both soft and hard shoe solo dances to its students as well as the Ceili team dancing on sprung floors out of their studio at the Elks 31 Club in downtown Okotoks. Sobieski-May said there is one dance in particular her students really enjoy.
“The kids really enjoy doing a treble reel,” she said. “It’s something you regularly see in Irish dance performances. It’s very fast paced, there’s great rhythm to it and it’s danced with a hard shoe. The kids love it and it’s always a crowd pleaser.”
Sobieski-May said there has been a shift in the makeup of students getting involved in Irish dance. For one thing she explained you no longer only have names like O’Shea or O’Reilly who want to be part if it.
“At one point I remember being the only non-Irish person at a dance school,” she said. “Now all ethnicities seem interested in it. I am half-Latin myself and I’ve seen Latin kids and African kids doing it. It doesn’t matter anymore where you come from.”
The Okotoks School of Irish Dance can be found on-line at www.okotoksirishdancers.com
