Irish dance troupe finds its footing

Jenny London and Kim Coleman have the luck of the Irish on their side.

Once just two dance instructors for New Mexico’s McTeggart School of Irish Dancing, the sisters formed their own dancing academy after their program was dropped in September from the McTeggart company.

Rather than drowning their sorrows in a bottle of Irish whisky, the sisters, along with 30 other dancers, leapt to start their own company. The group, called the Coleman Irish Dance Academy, performs regularly at UNM. Luckily, London has more than 10 years of experience teaching dance.

“There’s a lot of experience that I have and my sister has, as well, that allows us to keep a firm foundation in the Irish dancing world,” London said. “My sister and I have been dancing for 23 years, so there’s a lot of knowledge there that we can rely on to choreograph new dances.”

Piecing together new dances for an upcoming Irish dance competition called Feis, instructor Kim Coleman gets her choreography from past experiences and dancers she works with.

 “The dancers that we have have been with us for years and years, and a lot of them chose to stay,” she said. “The girls we have are really dedicated, and they have great attitudes. I think they’re just awesome.”

Amy Bourque, UNM student and dancer with the Coleman Irish Dance Academy, said it’s no surprise that most of the dancers who were a part of McTeggart followed London and Coleman.

 “They’re the ones who taught us,” she said.

Bourque helps with beginner and intermediate classes. She said she loves creating new choreography sets for the group.
“Once we started choreographing, everyone had so much fun. We loved it so much more, and it’s made it a lot closer to ourselves. It wasn’t like someone showing us, ‘Hey, do this.’ We did it ourselves. These are our dances,” Bourque said.

 As the Coleman Irish Dance Academy continues to push on, Coleman reminisced about past Irish dancing experiences.
 “Dancing is really great because it helps you exercise your muscles and memory, but the lessons that you learn in dancing, how to win and lose gracefully, and to work toward bettering yourself, are more important, I think, than to just getting trophies,” she said.