September 22nd, 2004, Jim Keenan, who runs Thursday evening classes in Rockville (Maryland), visited our weekly set dancing class in Antwerp to teach us the Kilfenora Set. We had met Jim (with blue shirt in the middle of the picture on the left) twice before: once during a set dancing ceili of the Brussels Irish Club in Leuven, and then ... on the very same plane flying in from Washington, when I returned from my trip to Buffalo. It is a small world for sure.
The Kilfenora Plain Set is an old set that has been re-engineered out of few available descriptions and testimonies. It was re-introduced by the world-famous Irish dancing master Pat Murphy at his Nenagh, Co. Tipperary, workshop in November, 2002. We encountered the set shortly later at the big Malahide set dancing event, Jan 2003.
Kilfenora is a small friendly village in North Clare and is known as the gateway to the Burren. Kilfenora is also home to the famous Kilfenora Céilí Band which is close to being 100 year in business!
An online description (pdf) is available thanks to Irish folk-fans from Aachen. The description by Joseph O'Hara is very similar to this. Experienced set dancers will immediately recognise lots of similarities with the Corofin Plain Set. The story goes that a dancing master from Kilfenora once relocated to Corofin and "created" for that village a new set which was heavily inspired on the Kilfenora.
Music for it can be found on Matt Cunningham's Dance Music of Ireland, vol 13, and on this Davey Ceili Band CD.
The set is shown on the video Come to the Ceili Mor. But we took also a few shots. Figure 1 (wmv), Figure 2 (wmv) and Figure 3 (wmv) have been recorded during the Irisher Herbst 2004. The first part of the 6th Figure (wmv; 2.3 Mb) hornpipes as it was danced during the Wattrelos workshop, February 2004. The clip stops where the gents changed partners and are ready to do the body "as in the Caledonian".
Style
Jim spent quite some time on explaining the particular style, typical for Co. Clare, in which this set should be danced:
low to the ground (except for the sevens during the 4th figure), but nevertheless lively;
never stop moving, especially not in the second figure where both for tops and sides there are many 2 bar sequences during which one should dance in place instead of waiting;
keep the partner in front of you when housing or swinging.
Steps
Just as Brendan Cronin, he emphasizes the importance of keeping the heels and mostly also the foot soles close to the ground in line with the Clare style.
For the basic Clare reel step (1-2-3-and 1-2-3-and, ...) think more of moving the body forward by pushing on the back leg, than stepping with the front leg. If you want to batter, practice first on the advance and retire movement. Jim uses primarily R-dig R-step and L-dig L-step patterns, i.e. planting first the back of the heel in the ground which is then followed by a quick tap of the sole of the same foot with the heel slightly lifted up.
Nowadays, Jim said, "younger" set dancers adopt a slightly different style for the basic Clare reel step. And he showed what Brendan had taught us.
For the jigs, the down jig step is used as the basis. Here also pushing off on the backleg is important. The basic advance and retire in jig step goes like this for the gents, and opposite for the ladies: // L - -/ R - - // L - - / R-cut R-dig R-tip//R-step L-dig L-tip / L-step R-dig R-tip//R-step - L-step/ R-step - //.
These steps can be used for the set and dance at home parts as well but if you master them well, it is better to throw some additional batters in between. A nice jig step was given as an example: //L-step - R-backtoe / R-down L-dig L-tip//L-step - R-brush-in /L-hop-R-cut R-dig R-tip// followed by the last two bars of the basic step.
