John Hosten is an Irish Dancing teacher, trained at the O'Rourke School of Dancing in Limerick, currently living in Brugge, which up to June 2004 gave courses for Dansschool Ramon. He is, as far as I know, the only TCRG/ADCRG recognised by An Coimisiún le Rincí Gaelacha giving courses in Belgium. He's assisted by Barbara Wille, also known as fiddle player in the Belgian folk group Poitin.

Although he has been very successful in hiding himself from too much attention, his skills start to become known to a wider public. Our first personal attempt to get in contact with him failed unfortunately: we enlisted for his workshop during Gooikoorts 2003 but ended up giving the workshop ourself since John broke his ankle the day before.

Later, we encountered one of his former students: Maaike Franco.

One of his pupils, the little Kevin, danced for Queen Paola during her visit to Brugge, 10/02/2004.

For Gooikoorts 2004, we were invited to give together two introductory Irish dancing classes. Readers who understand Dutch may want to read the extensive reports with step explanations we wrote about the workshops: there was one class on reels, and one class on jigs. You can also watch directly from here video's of Beginner's light jig, Beginner's slip jig and Beginner's reel, all performed by John to help attendants of the classes.

You may contact John at jfworkshop@hotmail.com, or pay a visit to his website (under construction).