Profile: Keeping the Irish tradition alive

IOWA CITY — When Trea Champagne started the Champagne Academy of Irish Dance in Iowa City in 2007, she began with just a few people she knew, and they practiced in her living room.

The space quickly became cramped.

Now, Champagne has 42 dancers ranging from beginners as young as three-years-old to more advanced adult dancers, some in their 50s or even 60s.

'I don't have an age limit,' Champagne said. 'But as people get older, Irish dance can really take a toll on (their) body.'

It is, after all, pretty demanding.

Dancers constantly are hopping in short bursts of cardio, their arms held rigid at their sides and legs crossing quickly, tightly and centered beneath their torsos.

They prop themselves high on the balls of their feet — what Champagne describes as 'a really intense calf workout' — only to bring them crashing loudly down to the ground, stomping in sync with the beat.

'That doesn't mean you can't continue dancing,' said Champagne. 'My grandmother danced until she was 79. Granted, she may not have had the height, but she had the rhythm.

'She just kept going and that's really what inspires me sometimes.'

Her grandmother, Dottie O'Tracy, was a beacon of Irish culture in Trea's childhood in Minnesota. Dottie taught Trea basic dance techniques and cultural traditions that have been passed through her family through the generations.

'It's a complex history mainly because it was an oral tradition and not very well documented,' said Champagne, explaining that although she doesn't subscribe to any particular origin story, she believes the style formed during a period in Ireland when traditional music and dance were forbidden in public by England.

To stifle their dancing but still keep traditions alive, the Irish would limit their movements by keeping their arms down and footwork tight — an explanation for the style of dance we see today, according to the Celtic and Irish Dance Association.

The association contends the style was kept alive in secrecy through the 1700s. The first Irish Céilí, a social dance event, was introduced by the Gaelic League in 1697 to allow dancing indoors — despite the condemning of Celtic traditions at that time.

Though Champagne's grandmother has died — along with her formal dance teacher, Brenda Buckley, who had taken Champagne under her wing in Trea's early 20s and encouraged her to start her own dance academy when she moved away.

Not only does she teach dance, but also traditional music, Gaelic language and history lessons.

She says she 'didn't feel like a gatekeeper' of these traditions until they died, but now she feels responsible for passing the traditions to her own children as well as her dance 'family.'

'It's something so near and dear to myself and my family …

. I'm really excited to pass it on to my own children,' she said. 'And as a teacher, I feel like a mom not just to my own kids, but to everybody else.'

She admitted she felt a little intimidated, as she's 'there's always been someone else who knows more than (she does). But now, that doesn't seem to be the case.

'Some Irish traditions ... just like any cultural traditions ...

are fading away,' she said. 'That's what I hope to keep alive. That's why I keep doing this.