You've always wanted to dance at the Worlds, but you started as an adult and they say it can't be done? Not so. The following is a "worlds" eye view from one adult to the rest of us.

Lynn Lightman began taking lessons, at the age of 24, with the Claddagh Dance Company in Ventura, CA, under the direction of Maire O'Connell, ADCRG. Lynn reached the level of open/prizewinner for all solo dances and continued dancing with Claddagh until December of 1998. After relocating to Oklahoma in 1999 she discovered that there were very few people who knew much about Irish dancing in her newly adopted state. She began a small dance school in Chandler, Oklahoma, and then joined forces with the McTeggart School in 2001. In December 2002, she qualified for the 2003 World Championships. She became a TCRG in 2003 and operates the Murphy Sullivan School of Irish Dance in Oklahoma.

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I arrived at Shannon Airport on Wednesday and my mom and I rented a car. It turned out that my license had expired (I didn't know!) so she had to do all of the driving.

We arrived at the Gleneagle Hotel a couple of hours later and we tried to locate the people we were staying with. I also needed to pick up my pass to get in and out of the competitions all week. Luckily I found the person with the pass quickly, but finding the roommates took a little while longer! We hadn't had much sleep and skipped one day's shower...so we were a little frazzled at that point!

We decided to go to downtown Killarney to cash in some dollars for Euros...it was so funny to be running into people that I know from California all the way out in Ireland (since I now live in Oklahoma...). But that is what happened all week. It was so fun to see all the world champions, former world champions, stars of shows (Jean Butler and Colin Dunne were there..), and all the TCRG's and ADCRG's, although knowing they were all there in the audience made the prospect of my dancing in front of them a little more daunting. Mostly I didn't want to mess up my dances, and then secondly, I wanted to be able to blend in, not be noticed as the 35 year old dancer ! I think it worked ! People kept asking me my age and guessing I was 22....

Well, the cottage we rented was really cute and affordable ($400 for the week for 4 people ! It had laundry, kitchen, 3 baths...)...but the location was sort of inconvenient....about 3 miles north of town. It was nice to be out in the beautiful countryside, except for the roosters waking us up each morning ! We spent our first night settling in...and we went to the grocery store and picked up some food for the week. The next day we went downtown and discovered the "Internet Cafe and emailed friends and family to say we had arrived safely. Then we started watching competition after competition. It was so exciting, and the dancing was so good. I didn't see anything really "new" in terms of steps or dress designs. It was surprisingly like a regular feis actually!

The stage was smaller than I had imagined and that put me at ease. There were some practice rooms that were a bit intimidating, so I only went in there one time.

In between the competitions we went out to eat and listened to music at pubs and drank pints of Stout. It seemed surprisingly similar to the pubs back home...in fact if I didn't know any better, I wouldn't have even guessed I was in Ireland, except for all the Irish people there ! We took a long walk to Muckross Castle and up to the waterfall nearby. It was absolutely gorgeous weather and many of the locals were out enjoying it too. The lake was beautiful, with the green grass, blue sky and white clouds...breathtaking. I found the Irish houses irresistible. Most were brand new it seemed, and painted very bright colors with interesting modular windows and no screens. Their front yards were very bare, no foundation plantings or knick-knacks....lots of stone walls and sheep in the fields. Very few old-fashioned cottages left. But somehow it didn't matter....The actual towns were very quaint. I found the street man-hole covers interesting...they had celtic knotwork on them!

On the day of my competition I wasn't very nervous...I mostly just wanted to get it over with and all I wanted to do was make sure I "passed" in terms of my steps looking up to par. I knew I wouldn't get a recall so I never even practiced my set dance ! And I was right...! Some of the adjudicators actually judged me quite high, but others judged me really low, which brought down my overall score. I placed 70th, along with about 6 other dancers. The point system is so confusing I'm not really sure what my real ranking is. There were 82 dancers, and some had tied, but they don't award any points after the 50th dancer...so you can't compare the rankings after that.

It's a different point system than at a feis. The only way to figure out your true ranking is to figure out where you placed in each competition with each judge, and I gave up after looking through the 82 numbers for judge # 1 (there were 6 judges...).
I was very happy with my dancing, and it was a very worthwhile trip overall...In fact I'd like to go to Belfast next year just to watch. (I'm awaiting my TCRG results, which I should get any day, and hopefully I passed and I can't compete anymore...). It was a nice culmination of my dancing career, assuming it is close to being over...and having started as an adult dancer, was extremely thrilling. I was very proud of myself, just for getting there ! I would encourage any other adults interested to just go for it !

- Lynn