It's not every day a troupe of world-class performers visits Cambridge-Isanti High School's 700-seat Richard G. Hardy Performing Arts Center. However, on June 10, the PAC will raise the curtain on A Taste of Ireland, a show that brings a mix of Irish dance, music, and history to the stage for one night only.
One of the principal performers, Cian (pronounced Key-in) Walsh, actually prefers performing in smaller venues like Cambridge.
“The more intimate spaces are the ones that we love. Everyone might think, ‘Oh, we're in a big, huge theater,' but personally, I prefer a more intimate, kind of cute theater. Just in terms of the show, how interactive, how expressive you can show your personality on stage, and you've got the opportunity to do a little bit of freestyle. When we're closer to the audience, when we're closer together on stage, the show really thrives in those types of venues. You can get more of a connection.Â
“It's quite an interactive show, so we kind of like to bounce back and forth sometimes. I'm one of the principal performers, so I do a solo for close to 10 minutes. (At the end) I'll jump into the audience and sit down next to someone, and the audience gets a good laugh out of that. It kind of breaks that fourth wall.â€
Walsh, who won a Ceili Dance World Championship before joining the cast, has been dancing since he was six years old. His parents are both Irish dancers who own a dance school called The Kiely-Walsh Academy in Cork, Ireland. He competed in dance for 14 years before joining the cast of A Taste of Ireland in 2022 for the Celtic Christmas Tour in New Zealand. Since then, he has worked his way up to principal dancer, touring the globe with a tight-knit group of dancers.
“Everyone at Taste of (Ireland) are like one big family as well. It's not any way close to a normal your nine-to-five job that you go in, and you're with your coworkers for the seven or eight hours. Then you go home, and you carry on with the rest of your day. When you're on tour, you're with each other 24/7. You're living with each other basically. You cook, clean, do everything together. We are a very tight-knit group, which is great.â€
Life on the Road
A quick glance at the tour schedule makes it clear the company has very little time to enjoy each of the cities they visit. In Minnesota, they have seven performances in nine days, including the Cambridge show.
“We won't get a whole lot of time off in smaller areas. We'll kind of arrive on the day, do the show, and then stay there. Then in the morning we head away, off to the next place, but in bigger cities we might have a day off or two days off if we're lucky.â€
They tour for extended periods before having a chance to go home. “We'll do three months (on the road), and then I might be at home for two-three weeks, and then another three months, at home for the same amount of time. Then I think I'm away from August right up to Christmas, so that would be about five months away before I come home for Christmas.â€
While on the road, the team tries to bring a sense of normality and familiarity to their hotel rooms. On the company's TikTok page (@atasteofirelandcompany), there are videos of the dancers making meals in their rooms.
“We've all got our air fryers or our portable woks and different things. So we do our grocery shops, and cook normal dinners rather than heating up something in the microwave or something kind of quick like that. Especially when you're on tour for 10 months of the year, you need to be looking after yourself in terms of what you eat and not just surviving through the day on microwavable stuff.â€
Sharing these meals has become a way for the cast to connect after long days on the road. “We do enjoy amongst ourselves when someone comes out with a new recipe, or someone makes something new, or tries something new, and then it gets a few other people on it. More ways to just keep us going on tour and keep it lively amongst us.â€
The Physical Toll
The performances are athletic and physically grueling. Walsh's 10-minute solo, in particular, requires monumental stamina and serves as a key moment of each show. To endure week after week, the troupe leans heavily on prevention and recovery.
“We do our best to look after ourselves as well. Whether it's before the show in terms of warming up, foam rolling, stretching, eating well, taking vitamins, and different things to help, and then after the show, we're in the ice bath looking after ourselves like that as well. It is quite grueling, but also, I feel like when we're on stage performing, we don't necessarily feel it because there's such a buzz. Whether it's the audience or just the music or just the vibe, there's such a buzz. So as long as we look after ourselves outside of the show, we can get into autopilot mode. And as tired as we might feel, we're all young and fit, so it never bothers us really.â€
As for sleep, Walsh says most of that is done on the bus. “You'd be surprised. After we do a show that finishes at 9:30, 10 o'clock, you've got so much adrenaline that sometimes it can be tough to sleep, but when we get on the coach, if we've got a three- or four-hour drive, that's usually the point where everyone tries to catch up on their sleep.â€
Walsh admits the lifestyle is not without its challenges, noting, “the toughest part really, is being away for so long, being away from home, away from your family, and friends.â€
However, he maintains a grounded perspective on his career. “But we can't complain. With the job that we have and how lucky we are to say that we can travel the world doing something we love. So we always have to pinch ourselves. And when we're feeling a little bit down, or if we're going through a little tough period, we kind of have to sit back and be like, okay, it's not really that bad. I'm traveling the world, able to perform in different theaters, the crowds are on their feet, cheering along. It can be tough, but you just gotta remember that you're really lucky and be grateful to be able to do this as well.â€
A Taste of Ireland
The show takes audiences on a journey through the history of Ireland. The performance covers, “its creation through to the Vikings coming over, the tough times of the Irish potato famine, and the Easter Rising, right up to modern-day Ireland. We like to take the audience on that kind of journey with us and tell the story and history of Ireland through the world-class Irish music and Irish dancing.
“I do hope people take away an understanding of the history and what Ireland's been through down the years. Because people might have an affiliation to Ireland, but they might not have fully understood the history, or they might not know. I just hope that it portrays the kind of hardship and the tumultuous times that Ireland went through, and then where it is today.â€
A Taste of Ireland will be at the Richard G. Hardy Performing Arts Center on June 10 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are still available and can be purchased online through Eventbrite: https://bit.ly/4u8B9v2
