I had my first workshop experience with Anne-Marie Cunningham during a summer school in Proïtze, August 2003. Maybe because she has been dancing for five years with Riverdance, she focuses a lot on style and technique, rather than on steps. This makes her workshops very hard, but quite effective if afterwards you continue to pay attention to her instructions. I firmly believe that my succesful Feis an Earraigh 2004 participation, specifically for the treble jig, is the result of her drill sergeant like behaviour. So be sure I came well prepared to The Hague!

Although it originally was foreseen to have the workshop in two different groups according to the participants' dancing levels and running in separate time slots, it was finally desided to give tuition to all dancers at the same time: 4 hours consecutively on Saturday and again 4 on Sunday. Style and technique exercises were given to the entire group at the same time, Anne-Marie, as an experienced platoon leader doing an inspection, walking through the ranks to correct any dancing misbehaviour, the worst being to stop dancing what could cost you an additional 64 bars of treble step down. Only for step tuition, dancers were split according to their skills in soft and hard shoe dancing. After a few bars of steps were shown, Anne-Marie moved to the next group, while the others could start practising, thereby helped by Sean Kilkenny, whose school in The Hague was hosting the event. I do prefer this kind of workshop over shorter ones, although it is physically more demanding.

The workshop was attended by some 20 dancers, most of them coming from Sean's school in The Hague (amongst whom Andrea van der Wilt), and three dancers from his school in Duisburg, amongst which Cornelia Hufnagel who is also active in the show group Celtic Rhythm.
Belgium was, besides me, only represented by dancers from Christine Verbiest's school near Antwerp.

• in reel time, jumping as high as possible on both legs, alternating with stretched legs or back kicks;
• standing on toes for 4, 8, 16 ... bars;
• and point and point ... on one leg for x bars, then changing;
• L-and R-point R-cut R-step L-down, everything sharp and swiftly;
• 1-2-3's with high jumps, legs stretched, sharp back kicks, feet crossed all the time;
• point heel, with foot starting crossed, pointing outwards, then circular movement with the foot (in fact entire leg from the hip onwards!), to place the heel with knees crossed, foot pointing outwards;
• hop knee: hop starting with stretched leg, high up, then bend knee foot stops just before the other knee, toes pointing down. Back leg stretched, toes pointing down when in the air, foot outwards when down;
• twists, making sure knees are crossed all the time, also when alternating front feet;

• // L-treble L-down / R-treble R-down // ...;
• / - R-tip R-down // L-down R-dtreble R-down / L-down R-dtreble R-down // ... for 8 bars, taking care of sharp back kicks, high up, trebles not too fast and done in front (not from aside), back foot outwards;
• same as before, alternating left and right;
• / - R-treble // R-cut R-dtreble L-and / R-back L-treble // L-cut L-dtreble R-and / L-back R-treble // .... Cut sharp and high;

• Anne-Marie: you are all too lazy.


• Sean: if it doesn't hurt a little bit while you're dancing, you are not doing it right.

• reel
• slip jig
• treble jig