After my father died, the only treat she would allow herself was a Friday night out at the bingo in Sundrive. On one of those Friday nights Mum came home beaming from ear to ear. She had won the jackpot and picked up one hundred pounds, which was a small fortune at the time.
At this point, my Aunt Em had emigrated to America with her son, Tom. They went over to New York in November 1963, the same month that President John F. Kennedy was shot dead in Dallas.
Aunt Em left Ireland with Tom, who was then in his early twenties, because she felt he would find better opportunities in life over there. I remember begging Aunt Em to take me too. I was then eighteen and I too wanted to get out of Ireland and try a different life.
This was too much responsibility for Aunt Em at the time and I was so disappointed when she turned me down. However, she explained that she wanted to get settled there first, and then I could follow her.
After Aunt Em left I knew that my mother had a desire to visit her in New York, and I insisted that the money she won hitting the jackpot in bingo that night should be set aside for the trip.
So that’s what Mum did. She headed off on her dream trip to the States while I went to stay with Matt Meleady, his wife Angela and their young children at their home in Glasnevin.
The Meleadys had become like a second family to me. I often stayed with them, babysitting and helping with the housework. And I grew very close to their eight children: Aoibheann, Feargal, twins Eimir and Doireann, Colm, Niall (my godson), and twins Eoin and Maitiu.
They were like younger brothers and sisters to me and I helped their mother, Angela, to raise them and look after them. I used to take them to school, and to their dancing classes. Angela was a typical Irish mother who was very homely, always cooking meals, and totally devoted to the needs of her children.
* * *
Outside of college, Irish dancing was the major passion in my life. From about the age of twelve, my head was constantly spinning with ideas for creating steps and movement.
I choreographed my first Irish dance steps at that age. In those days we used to say, ‘I made up a step.’ The word ‘choreography’ didn’t come into the vocabulary until years later. So I was making up steps, inventing my own dances, and I loved it. I lived for it.
When I became a teenager, it was time to move from the Inis Ealga dancing class and join the seniors in Craobh an Chéitinnigh, the Keating branch of the Gaelic League.
I also did some drama there, working alongside people like Martin Dempsey, who would go on to become a famous Irish actor.
Every Sunday during my early days I’d be dancing in competition at some feis, accompanied by my mum. As we didn’t have a car, we hopped on buses or took a train to places like Skerries and Drogheda.
At the feis I’d dance on the small flat trailer of a lorry or tractor in the open air. The little trailer would accommodate a judge sitting at a table, a musician and three dancers. How we ever managed to perform without tripping and flying over the edge I’ll never know. There certainly was no such thing as health and safety in those times.
My mother was forever scrimping and saving to make sure that I kept up my dancing. There was a lot of expense, particularly as we often travelled abroad to take part in festivals. My first trip was at the age of thirteen; we went to Germany, where we did an exchange and stayed with local families.
There was also a great festival in the Isle of Man in those times and we took part in that for many years. So from a very young age, Irish dancing was my passport to the world outside our little island of Ireland and my sheltered existence in Dublin.
I never dreamt just how far it would take me as my life unfolded.
But as my college days drew to an end, I was now getting deeper and deeper into the world of Irish dancing, and starting out on the road to becoming a professional teacher myself.
A Dance Teacher is Born
I was eighteen when I danced in competition for the last time, and the trauma of that day created the teacher and trainer that I became in life.
The year was 1963 and I was taking part in the All-Ireland Irish Dancing Championships in the magnificent old Mansion House, the official home of the Lord Mayor of Dublin and a near-perfect venue for lots of prestigious events.
As I awaited my turn to dance, nerves were slowly creeping up and getting a grip on me like a devil in the night. I couldn’t fight them because, quite frankly, in that moment I didn’t feel that I was an elite dancer.
Our school was good, but we weren’t one of the top dancing classes in the country at that time. I knew that the exceptional Irish dancing classes in that era were run by Cora Cadwell, Ita Cadwell and Harry McCaffrey. They were the top guns of the day.
Out of loyalty I had stuck with my own class and now here I was participating in the All-Ireland Championships with the awful feeling that I wasn’t going to measure up.
I had won senior championships along the way because I worked by myself as I got older. But I was yet to win an All-Ireland competition. This was the first time I had a decent chance and I was buckling under with pressure as I knew the standard was exceptionally high.
By the time I stepped up on stage to dance, I was literally trembling.
As I waited for the music to start the energy drained from my body and I could feel my right knee shaking like it had a life of its own. And what flashed through my mind in that moment was the thought: ‘When I become a teacher I am going to train and drill my class so well that none of them will ever feel nerves like this on stage.’
* * *
Every day after Caffrey’s commercial college, I’d take the bus and go straight to Matt’s dance class. At this stage I was helping him to teach dancing and I was doing all the choreography. It wasn’t a paid job; I was doing it for the love of it. Outside of school and then college, dancing became a world that I was totally immersed in.
When I finished my course in Caffrey’s, it was Matt who got me my first job as a secretary. I went to work for the affable Dermot Doolan, who was general secretary of Irish Actors Equity at the time. I became Dermot’s personal secretary and we were running the casting for extras in films.
After work I would then go straight to dance class, spending every spare hour there. Even though I enjoyed my job, I was always looking forward to dancing. I began to think about it as a career in life.
How good it would be to make a living doing something that you loved so much!
Two years into my Actors Equity secretarial job I took the plunge to become a full-time Irish dancing teacher.
My working life as a dance teacher began in the national (primary) schools of Dublin, starting off at Mother of Divine Grace in Finglas and Holy Faith Convent in Glasnevin, then branching out from there.
Each day of the week I’d go into a different school and teach students from first class up to sixth, doing twenty minutes with each of the groups of young people. The principal of the school would pay me an hourly rate.
I taught up to 400 students in a school every day, and then that evening I’d go to Matt’s and teach there on a voluntary basis. Every day was full-on, teaching from nine in the morning until eleven at night. This left no time for me to have a social life or friends my own age to hang out with. But I would often think to myself at that point in my life, well, it doesn’t really matter because you love what you’re doing.
And I did.
So I continued to work all the hours that God sent me.
* * *
My mother returned home from America and she couldn’t stop herself singing the praises of that land of opportunity. Mum had had a great time in New York with Aunt Em, who took her under her wing and helped her heal after the loss of my father.
As we talked for endless hours about her experiences in the States, my mother would stress how she felt there was a good life waiting for me there if I was interested in taking the leap, adding that she would emigrate with me. She was planting a seed, because by now my initial dream of a life
in New York was no longer driving me.
I think my mother, being wise and intuitive, saw that dancing had consumed my young world to the detriment of every other aspect of life. She could probably see that I needed to break away in order to get a perspective on where I was going with my life.
I told her I would think about it, that maybe I could work there teaching Irish dancing.
However, it would be a while before I could consider that as I needed to do my teacher’s exam and get my certificate when I turned twenty-one, which was the required age.
As my work continued in the national schools, I branched into shows not thinking for one moment that this would prove to be great experience for me in the years ahead. I had no dreams of being in show business at that point in my life. It really just happened in a very natural way.
Every year the schools would put on an end-of-year dance display, or drill displays as they called it, for the parents before the summer break in May or June. When I first started doing this, I realised that it was actually quite boring for the parents to have to sit through class after class coming out and doing Irish dance after Irish dance. I felt some variety could be introduced to break it up … and that’s how the shows began.
Every year I would then produce a different musical, such as Oliver!, Fiddler on the Roof or Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, with the cast made up mostly of sixth-class pupils.
Some of the schools, like Marino, had huge numbers and their own drama teachers, so we shared the work. The talent that emerged every year was just incredible. We saw little stars born year after year. The classes that weren’t involved in the musicals provided the entertainment with their Irish dancing displays, and I also choreographed dance routines for different songs in the show. So that’s where I got my first experience of staging big shows.
At that time there was a variety talent contest in Ireland called Tops of the Town, and the teachers in the schools would say of our productions: ‘These are every bit as good as the Tops of the Town.’
The show became the highlight of every school year. I was obsessed with it and every spare hour at home was spent on show preparation, working on the costumes and the production. The teachers loved it too and they all got involved, making costumes and doing various bits and pieces.
Sister Mary, the principal in Marino, was enthusiastically supportive of what we were producing every year, and she gave me the run of the whole school to prepare a new show.
She’d tell her teachers, ‘Whatever class Marie wants for as long as she wants goes to the hall for rehearsals.’
The shows became so big and so good and so professional that everyone, from the school principals to the teachers and students, were immensely proud of their involvement and got such a great kick out of it.
* * *
I passed the T.C.R.G. examination and became a certified Irish dance teacher in my twentieth year, which meant I could now enter my pupils in competitions.
By this stage the Inis Ealga name was building and building, and Matt asked me to continue with him as a voluntary teacher. I agreed, but started my own classes on Mondays and Thursdays because Matt didn’t have Inis Ealga classes on those days.
My classes were still under the banner of Inis Ealga, but they became known as ‘Marie’s class’. I still attended and taught the other classes for free, but the Monday and Thursday fees were for myself.
From the outset, I had a clear vision of what I wanted to do with my young dancers. My ambition was not just to make a champion, but for everyone in my classes to be as good as one another.
And that went back to the moment I stood on stage at the All-Ireland Championships with my knee shaking.
I wanted my pupils to be so well trained and so self-assured as regards their ability and skill that they would step out on any stage full of confidence. That’s why I didn’t concentrate on picking individual champions from my classes. I made sure that every individual dancer got the same attention, the same coaching, and were as good as each other.
Years down the line I was asked, ‘How did you produce so many Irish dancing champions?’
That’s how I did it.
* * *
All the new kids who came into Inis Ealga were joining the Monday and Thursday class to build it up. Soon we were entering competitions from beginner’s stage, and doing exceptionally well. I began to build a little bit of a reputation as people started to take note of the success rate that my batch of dancers were achieving, and applications for membership of my classes began to mount up.
However, it was all work and no play, as they say, and eventually I started to question where I was going with my life. As much as I loved the Meleady family and Inis Ealga, I wanted the freedom to do other things.
But as Inis Ealga grew into an empire and invitations stacked up for us to do workshops worldwide, this became more and more impossible. I didn’t know how long I could continue living with that kind of pressure and the restrictions it imposed on my personal life.
Not that I had a personal life.
There had been some brief romances, but none of the guys hung around. It didn’t help that there were always three of us in the relationship: the boyfriend, myself … and Irish dancing.
By contrast, my childhood friend Beryl had the perfect balance in her life. Beryl had a job working in a major department store on South Great George’s Street as an assistant. One morning on her way to work Cupid obviously contrived to link up Beryl with the man of her dreams – at her local bus stop.
Ciaran, the lovely guy she went on to marry, was working nearby and they struck up a conversation and hit it off.
Love blossomed and grew, and when Beryl and Ciaran got married, I was among the guests invited to celebrate their special day. It was a beautiful wedding for a really lovely couple.
In a way, Beryl was like a sister to me. We had both been little girls playing together in our homes on Cashel Road in Crumlin, and staring out the window at the boys having so much fun on the street.
Those childhood memories always stay with you.
I was delighted to hear the news when Beryl became a mum for the first time, and that more children filled her and Ciaran’s world. Beryl and Ciaran were two great people who bring back fond memories to me. However, with the passing of time our lives went in different directions and we eventually lost touch.
But like all close friends, if we met in the morning we’d just pick up where we left off.
The Rolo Kid
‘Look, it’s the Rolo kid!’
The words rang out in my ears as I passed people on the street.
Strangers were pointing and shouting in my direction.
I was mortified, but secretly a little bit chuffed as well.
For a few years in the early 1960s I was a little bit famous. Not as a dancer. Not as a teacher. But, strange as it may seem, for a ‘my last Rolo’ advertisement on Telefís Éireann!
In the TV advert for the chocolate-covered toffee sweets that was broadcast nightly, I was one of three Irish dancers acting out a scene based around the storyline of ‘my last Rolo’.
We were dressed in the old-fashioned Irish dancing costume with a cloak on the back, and there was a pocket stitched on to the one that I was wearing.
I had a dancer each side of me, we did a couple of steps and at the end of it I reached into the pocket on my costume and produced a packet of Rolos. I shared them with the other dancers, and then there was one left for me.
The advert ended with the camera focused on my face as I chewed my last Rolo, desperately trying to convey with scrunched-up facial expressions how delicious it tasted. Not a good look!
I have a friend, James, who says he won’t rest until he finds a copy of that Rolo advert and sticks it up on YouTube to embarrass me today.
* * *
The magic of television had arrived into Ireland in December 1962 with the launch of Telefís Éireann, and the following year I made my first appearance
on an Irish music and dance show called Beirt Eile, which was co-hosted by Liam Devally and Kathleen Watkins. Liam was a very popular Irish personality and singer who went on to become a barrister and then a top court judge. Kathleen Watkins later married Gay Byrne, one of Ireland’s greatest ever broadcasters who made his mark as the host of The Late Late Show on television.
Telefís Éireann had signed up Matt, or Maitiu Ó Maoiléidigh as he was known, to organise the music and dancing content of Beirt Eile. The senior dancers on the show were from Inis Ealga, and that is where I first started on television, doing céilí dancing as part of a group of dancers. We’d do the two-hand, the four-hand, the eight-hand, all the different céilí dances, and that would be interspersed with the céilí bands, solo musicians and singers. And once a month Matt would run the céilí practice for the TV one night during the week, and then we’d record two programmes on the same day, with the show being aired on a Friday night.
Beirt Eile ran for two years, and then it was replaced with a new TV show called Club Céilí, a bilingual programme of Irish music, song and dance. The host, or Feár An Tí as he was called, was Sean Duignan, a strikingly handsome young man who went on to work with RTÉ news and as a political correspondent for forty years. Sean also served as press secretary to the Fianna Fáil–Labour Party government in the early 1990s. Matt too had a central role on the show, as well as being the content organiser.
Matt had a gregarious, outgoing personality and a great sense of humour with a quick smile. He really shone in situations like that. The camera, as they say, loved him, so he looked good on screen. And he had the likeability factor, which is an essential ingredient for the success of any personality, no matter how talented they are.
One of the features of Club Céilí was a dance class in which Matt created a new céilí dance for two, four or eight people. He would showcase a different dance every week. And once a month the Inis Ealga group would do a special performance or solo dance in which I constantly appeared.
Lady of the Dance Page 4