Hi.

Irish Dance and Photography are my life and it turns out that they mesh pretty well together.

To people who aren’t Irish Dancers I may sound weird or crazy when I say Irish Dance is my life.They just don’t understand how something so unusual to them can take up so much of someone else’s time. I’ve told this to someone and they can’t quite understand how It’s something so time consuming and something that takes so much dedication and yet there isn’t any money or prizes.

They don’t understand. Irish Dance gives someone so much.It gives you something to work hard for;It gives you physical exercise;It gives great new experiences from traveling to different places for competition. It has the capability to give you a whole group of friends(who wouldn’t have met if you didn’t Irish dance)that you will never drift away from because of one common bond Irish Dance;but to the outside person who barley knows what Irish Dance is,it’s just a bunch of girls in huge curly wigs wearing weird sparkly dresses doing random things with their legs.Funny how the perspective changes.

But not all the people who don’t Irish dance think it’s weird.Some are intrigued by it.They wanna know why and how….why I started dancing why I wear weird wigs and dresses why I spend so much time Irish Dancing and how I even physically do that little thing with my feet(called a treble).Well that’s an easy question:the little thing I do with my feet becomes second nature after dancing for close 11 years but the other questions aren’t so easy.

I think every Irish Dancer comes to the point when they aren’t even sure why they keep dancing.They ask themselves what’s the point if I’m not planning on dancing in or after college.Why am I not improving? Why do I keep doing this if I can’t recall at Oireachtas or Nationals or Worlds?Why am I not moving out of prizewinner or prelim after all this hard work?It’s something we all have to individually figure out on our own.At the end of the day it’s all worth doing if Irish Dance is something you’re passionate about and something you love.

I’ve actually quit before and it was because of all the reasons above. I didn’t love it anymore I wasn’t inspired by it at all.That year when I stopped dancing I started to get into Photography,cinematography and movie making but I just hadn’t found anything to make a movie about.During all this I missed dance a lot.I really wanted to dance again.So after a lot of thought I began dance again.When I started dancing again in 2009 I realized something. I dreamed of becoming a director and making the 1st documentary about Irish Dance. I’ve actually made three different versions and this year I finally made it the way I wanted it.With the release of Jig my original dream is gone but that doesn’t mean it’s gone completely.Irish Dance will be changing just like rest of the world so in like 15 years it’ll be different then it is now and Jig will be outdated.So I still plan on making a documentary about Irish Dance just not the 1st one.It’s become a tradition every year for me to have a screening party and everyone from my studio to come over and watch my new “documentary”.So this will be the last year I will be making one(for now at least)

In Conclusion,everyone needs a little inspiration to keep going and that’s what I hope my photography does.I hope it gives you the inspiration to keep working at your craft.

Sincerely,

Madison

Me at the 2011 Southern Region Oireachtas

The poster I made for my documentary