But I can.
The drunken crowd would part like the Red Sea, making way for a handful of bubbly, curly-haired Irish dancers from Helena ready to woo everyone with their high kicks and fast-moving feet.
With each performance, it rained green.
In hindsight, I’m sure some intoxicated spectators made sport of wadding up dollar bills, trying to smack a cute little dancer. But it didn’t matter. It made us jump and kick higher.
We loved getting out of school every St. Patrick’s Day. We loved wrapping our hair in sponge curlers. We loved presenting the governor with a loaf of soda bread after our performance at the Capitol. But most of all, we loved the audience’s enthusiasm in the bars in Butte.
When the song ended, we’d bow, smile, and scramble to pick up the dollar bills at our feet before our parents herded us out the door.
Irish dancing in Montana has changed a lot since then.
At least five cities, including Missoula, across the state now offer Irish dance lessons. Certified instructors affiliated with one of the best Irish dance schools in the world travel to Butte once a month to teach. More Irish dancing schools are popping up all the time. The costumes are more glamorous and the level of dance is more sophisticated.
My jig steps are laughable these days.
Although I haven’t strapped on a pair of gillies (which resemble a black ballet slipper) in more than a decade, my roommate’s passion for everything Irish is a refreshing reminder of my younger dancing days.
Roommate Sarah Donnelly, a 21-year-old University of Montana student, is also a product of what was formerly known as the Carrigan School of Irish Dance in Helena - and a dancing prodigy when compared to my “skills.”
For several years now, Donnelly has taught Irish dance to students of all ages in Missoula. Helena native Maria Mullins, 20, a student at UM, also teaches. Classes are once a week at the Missoula Children’s Theatre. Ten dancers ranging in age and ability get together to learn jigs, reels and hardshoe.
Come St. Patrick’s Day, you’ll find them dancing at several elementary schools around town, St. Patrick Hospital and possibly in the parade.
News about Missoula’s Irish dancers has circulated mostly by word of mouth. Classes have been held off and on since 2001 depending on the availability of instructors. It wasn’t until Donnelly moved to Missoula that the program could finally hold classes regularly for most of the year.
“It’s a dance that’s easy enough to learn, but takes practice to look good,” said Cameo Flood, a parent organizer and a member of the Montana Gaelic Cultural Society. “Kids can get involved and feel like they are doing it right away.”
Donnelly has danced for 10 years. She’s earning a minor in Irish studies, blasts Irish music even when she’s not dancing and decorates the walls of her bedroom in Irish flags and maps of Ireland. A year ago, Donnelly studied abroad at University College Cork in Ireland.
There, she took lessons at an advanced Irish dance school.
“The only person my age was a two-time world champion,” said Donnelly, recalling that her skill level was more on par with that of children in middle school. “It opened my eyes. There’s so much more too learn.”
Now back in Missoula, in addition to teaching weekly Irish dance classes, Donnelly and a group of friends - all UM students - gather at our house every Wednesday, push the living room table to the far wall, and use our already-scratched wooden floor to practice their hardshoe steps.
“Step to bang-bang ... toe and toe and toe step-back.” They say the steps out loud as they go.
“I love it,” Donnelly said. “I don’t ever want to stop dancing.”
That’s exactly the attitude that started the Irish dancing revolution in Montana 14 years ago.
It began with a cute 12-year-old girl with blue eyes and blond hair.
Sarah Carrigan was in fifth grade when her family moved from Denver - where she competed in national Irish dancing competitions - to Helena, a place with no formal Irish-dancing groups.
Like Donnelly, Carrigan didn’t ever want to stop dancing.
A year later, Carrigan gathered up a dozen friends - I was one of them - and began an Irish dancing club. We started off learning century-old traditional Irish group dances in the auditorium of Jefferson Elementary School.
We wore salmon-colored T-shirts and black stretch pants for performances before eventually upgrading to royal-blue dresses with Celtic designs.
In 1997, a horse spooked at the end of the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Butte, overturning the carriage that had earlier carried Lt. Gov. Judy Martz, and kicking the driver in the chest. The frightened horse bolted down a side street, right to where our Irish dance group was standing. One of the parent chaperones experienced minor injuries.
That was the last time we traveled to Butte for St. Patrick’s Day.
But the dance tradition persisted.
“The state really needed it because there are so many people with Irish heritage there,” said Carrigan, 26, recently in a phone interview from Denver, where she now lives. “I am glad that it is once again part of Montana’s culture.”
Today, there are two Irish dance schools in Helena, and classes offered in Bozeman, Kalispell, Butte and Missoula. A Helena instructor, Jaymie Dean, 25, is working with the university to develop an Irish dancing curriculum for the fall semester that would be affiliated with the Irish studies program, she said.
“I see it starting to really thrive,” she said. “That’s the exciting thing.”
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