Mick Mulkerrin, from County Meath, is a well-known set dancing teacher who also teaches extensively in Europe and the U.S., quite often in company with Mairéad Casey. For this workshop, he was alone, teaching both beginners and advanced dancers.
I attended only the advanced class, not because I wouldn't learn anything from the beginners' lessons, but simply because that ran in parallel with Patrick O'Dea's sean nos workshop. Since set dancing workshops are much more regularly organised than sean nos classes, the choice to be made was straight forward.
I won't report here on the popular sets that were covered, such as the Kilfenora, the Connemara, the Clare Lancers and the Cashel, primarily because they are already discussed elsewhere on this website. Rather, I focus on the three sets that I danced for the very first time.
Aran Set
Mick learned this set when he was visiting the Aran Islands, places with beautiful scenery west of Galway, to give a set dancing class. As a gift for his effort, the islanders introduced him this set which he then brought back to the Irish mainland.
There are on-line descriptions for this set:
Music for the set can be found on:
Mick emphasised two things for this set:
- Men must make sure to face outwards before starting the swing
- Rather than dancing in place, a specific batter should be used after the grand chain. The batter goes like this: // L-heel-down R-heel-brush-forward / R-tip-brush-back L-heel-down /R-back-stamp - /L-heel-down - //R-heel-brush-forward - / L-heel-down - / R-stamp-crossing-left-forward - / - - //. Here is the batter in slow motion (mpg, 0.8 Mb) performed by Mick.
Thanks to the nice collaboration with Dancilla, you can find here the videoshots that I took from the 1th Figure (reels) (wmv) in which Mick is dancing as first top gent, and the 2nd Figure (reels) (wmv) and 3rd Figure (polkas) (wmv), in which he is pushing and pulling people to make them move in the right direction. He surely loves it !
Williamstown Set
This set comes from the north Galway/Roscommon border area and is named after the village Williamstown in Galway.
Available on-line descriptions for this set are:
Music for the set can be found on:
This set figured again in Mick's Irischer Herbst class in 2005. We then were able to videotape it. Here are the first, second, third, and fourth figure. Enjoy the shots !
Borlin Jenny
This is a reel set which is not to be confused with the Borlin Polka Set, coming from the same village.
There are a few on-line descriptions for this set:
Music for it is on:
Also from this set, I videotaped a few figures: 4th Figure - reels (wmv) with Patrick O'Dea as second side gent, 5th Figure - reels (wmv) with Patrick as first top, and finally the 6th Figure - reels (wmv). In this 6th figure, you should pay attention to the first top couple (the lady wearing a red T-shirt). Mick really appreciated their light and harmonised way of dancing, particularly during the square the set movement.
