by Brendan Clay
brendanjamesclay@gmail.com
In 2013, eight teams of Irish dancers competed at the first Villanova Intercollegiate Irish Dance Festival, founded by then students Rory Beglane and Mattisan Rowan and team faculty advisor George Pinchock. On Saturday, November 10, Villanova hosted 17 teams—the largest being Temple University with 26 dancers—at the Jake Nevin Field House for the 6th annual festival.
“I don’t think it was even in my realm of thoughts that I could get to the point where there were 17 different schools competing at Villanova at one time,” said Beglane in a phone interview. He graduated in 2016, but still continues to coordinate the festival with fellow dancer and former president of the University of Vermont’s Irish dance team Zack Warshaw.
“During my time I was just hoping to break 10, which I think we finally did my last year,” he said. “That was always the goal. So to get 17 it just wasn’t even on my thought radar until it finally happened, truthfully. Last year hitting 14 I thought was huge, and wasn’t sure if it was going to be a one time thing or not.”
Dancers compete in the categories of the 4-Hand, the 8-Hand, the Intermediate Treble Reel, the Advanced Treble Reel, and the Fun Number. The Advanced Treble Reel is further divided into competitions for upperclassmen and underclassmen. The Fun Number is the last event of the competition.
Based on the longstanding dance drama category, as Beglane explained to me in an e-mail, it consists of large choreographed numbers both to traditional or traditionally influenced music and other music as well. Most often teams choose pop songs or songs from musicals, as in this year where Rutgers University danced to a number from the movie The Greatest Showman and both Temple University and Stonehill College danced to Mamma Mia by Abba.
The dancers are assessed by a panel of three judges certified through the Irish Dancing Adjudicators Examination. This year they were Joannie Cass Jr., Joe Seletski, and Ellen Riordan. First place went to a team from St. Joseph’s for the 4-Hand, a team from Sacred Heart University for the 8-Hand, Jesse Long of Temple University for the Intermediate Treble Reel, Emma Schiller of Loyola University for the Underclassmen Advanced Treble Reel, and Owen Luebbers of Temple University for the Upperclassmen Advanced Treble Reel. Ohio State University took first in the Fun Number for their piece called “These Moves are Treble.”
