Where to Dance Your Way Through Summer ‘21:
SUMMER PROGRAMS & CAMPS
After an injury unexpectedly ended her career performing with Riverdance in the late 1990s, Sheila Ryan-Davoren was tasked with finding a new job. She had fallen in love with touring and knew that she wanted a career that revolved around dance but did not pin her down to one place. “I had always dreamed of opening up my own dance school, but I did not want the commitment of having to stay in one area,” Ryan-Davoren shared in a 2019 interview with Irish Dancing Magazine.
So, she dreamed up a summer camp for Irish Dancers having had fond memories of attending traditional summer camps in her childhood. She saw a need for summer camps tailored specifically for Irish Dancers. “At that time, dance schools really didn’t have a summer camp,” she recalls. “They might have continued teaching over the summer, but they didn’t call it ‘summer camp.’”
Ryan-Davoren went onto create the incredibly popular Camp Rince Ceol, an Irish Dancing summer camp that she built from the ground up with her husband Tony Davoren. The duo met while on tour with Riverdance. Everything with CRC seemed smooth sailing with the camp growing year after year. In fact, 2019 proved to be the most successful year in the camp’s 20-year history.
Following the success of 2019, the excited team at CRC made extensive plans for the summer of 2020 including expanded programs and locations. But, after investing thousands of dollars in deposits, advertising, and staff recruiting, BOOM, the pandemic hit, and the camp came to a screeching halt. Well, almost.
Sheila and her team at Camp Rince Ceol were determined to give campers some sort of a summer camp experience and follow through on financial commitments made on behalf of the camp, so the idea of a virtual “Camp in a Box” program was born and proved to be remarkably successful; participants loved it!
In making plans for the summer of 2021, CRC, again took to the drawing board and this year is offering both an in-person camp option as well as an expanded Camp in the Box program which includes a new online Elite program for high level dancers.
With Covid-19 being so unpredictable online options appear here to stay. Interestingly, new online programs have opened the camp and professional program experience to a much larger, global market. One positive out of the pandemic is that dancers who cannot afford the cost of attending an in person professional program, halfway across the country or globe, can now experience can now participate online. Those offering online options also saw younger participants, who perhaps were not ready for the in-person program, dip their toe in with an online option.
With the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorization of the Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use on Saturday (Feb. 27), residents of the USA now have a third shot cleared for use in the country. This bodes well for all summer camps and programs taking place in the USA. For those outside the USA, many summer plans are still up in the air, however, most are offering online options.
Booking a summer camp helps improve your dancing and networking skills and the Irish Dancing industry. Many of those employed by the summer camps and professional programs have lost their primary source of income due to the major dance shows touring schedules grinding to a halt. In fact, the pandemic has decimated the livelihoods most involved in the professional Irish Dance world and many have seen little to no help from their governments. You can help reverse this trend by signing onto a program, whether virtually or in person!
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