‘The joys of Irish dance’
New Milford dance academy sees local student on national stage
NEW MILFORD — Emma Heydet spent hours practicing the treble reel step over and over again in her bedroom. She’d pause the recording of a teacher she’d never met doing an Irish step dance and play it back, determined to get the steps right before she had to do it on national television.
The treble reel step is complicated. And 10-year-old Emma said she could figure out the first part, but kept having to press pause video to nail down the second part. Learning the dance virtually from a new teacher added to the complication of it all. For a month, she worked diligently to learn the moves.
And by the time she traveled to Antun’s catering hall in Queens, NY, to film the dance for a special St. Patrick’s Day segment, her steps were perfect.
Emma was one of eight young dancers to represent the USA Irish Dance Alliance on national television. In her white leotard and skirt, Heydet danced for nearly five hours with the others while camera crews recorded the segment.
“At first, it was kind of hard because it was with a different dance teacher
and it’s not the same as your own dance teacher, but as the classes kept going on, it got easier,” Emma said of the virtual practices. “I just practiced every night and looked at the videos.”
When the dance aired on St. Patrick’s Day on CBS, NBC and the Catholic Faith Network, Emma’s family — including her two older brothers — watched together, celebrating their sister’s success with sour candies and congratulations.
“It was really cool to watch myself on TV,” Emma said.
The young New Milford resident has been taking Irish dance since she was 5 years old, and dances locally at the Thorne Academy of Irish Dance, a dance academy started by sisters Catie Friel and Hali Thorne. Friel and Thorne both danced competitively growing up, and decided to start their own Irish dance academy together in 2016.
Their dance academy is one of only a handful of schools that belong to the USA Irish Dance Alliance, and the only one in the organization that is based in Connecticut. Others are located in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and New York, Friel said.
For this year’s virtual St. Patrick’s Day celebration, schools in the alliance were asked to select one of their best dancers to go to New York to film a TV segment. The sisters immediately thought of Emma, who was a good dancer and had dutifully logged in to all their virtual Zoom classes through the early days of the pandemic.
The selected dancers had never met before the event, save a handful of Zoom rehearsals, but Emma said she quickly made several friends.
While Emma’s performance was noteworthy, it wouldn’t have been possible without the continued perseverence of this teaching duo, who has continued teaching Irish dancing classes in New Milford throughout the pandemic. Through a partnership with the local Parks and Rec department, the academy has been able to use the John Pettibone Community Center for their classes.
From Monday through Thursday, the sisters teach classes for an hour, which Friel said makes them a little more accessible to a family schedule. Even Friel’s daughter, who is all of two years old, has started to take classes.
Ages are described as “little, up to 14” and all genders are welcome.
In the summer, they practiced out in the parking lot, Friel said. Now, they share the community center with local vaccination clinics, so depending on the day, classes alternate between the cafeteria and a classroom in another wing.
And in spite of it all, their numbers have grown.
The program, which started with 12 to 15 kids, now has over 40 students that meet four days a week, according to Friel.
Through word of mouth and their partnership with the Parks and Rec department, local families heard about the dance classes. The classes are centrally located for New Milford families, and are very affordable, Friel said. Now, kids come from New Fairfield, Danbury, Warren, Redding, among other towns, to take lessons at the community center.
Friel said Irish dance is a good pandemic activity because it’s one of the few that allows for social distancing: the dancer’s hands are tucked tightly at their sides the whole time.
“With Irish dance, you don’t need to be standing close to your neighbor,” Friel said. “We actually call it socially dis-dancing.”
Parents also loved the idea of getting their kids away from electronics and out in the fresh air moving around, Friel said.
Carol Heydet, Emma’s mother, loves seeing the joy and confidence it brings her daughter.
“The minute she starts dancing she changes,” said Carol. “She has a huge smile while she’s doing it.”
Carol, who grew up with many Irish friends in the Bronx, said she always wanted to Irish dance but never did. When her daughter started taking dance classes, she saw a flyer for Irish dance and just decided to sign her up. Emma never looked back. “All she does is hop around,” Carol said. “She always wants to be at dance class.”
It also helps that Emma loves her teachers. Friel and Thorne’s impact on young Emma is apparent.
“I think it would be really cool to go to the Worlds,” the young girl said, referencing the renowned Irish Dancing World Championships. But Emma’s other dream is to one day become a dance teacher like Friel and Thorne, “and [teach] other little kids the joy of Irish dance.”