Sadie Breault doesn’t get stage fright anymore. After 12 years of step dancing in parades, ballparks and competitions, the 15-year-old says she no longer feels nervous performing in front of crowds. Which is good because she doesn’t have time to be.
Breault is a longtime student of the McDade-Cara Irish School of Dance, a Delco studio that’s been open since the 1960s. The school is preparing to perform once again in the Philadelphia St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Sunday, a massive event that its teachers say is one of roughly 100 it has scheduled over the next two weeks.
“We typically have a couple of practices leading up to the parade where we put the dancers together,” said Annmarie Murray Sheehan, a veteran instructor at the school. “Usually it’s a two-hour practice, two times and that’s pretty much it because they dance regularly.
“As much as the parade is a big deal, we run out of time sometimes to focus on just one thing.”
Irish step dance involves quick, intricate footwork, all executed while the dancers keep their backs straight and arms glued to their sides. It is typically accompanied with Irish traditional music, which is heavy on fiddles and flutes. Though competitions happen year-round, step dancers are never busier than they are in the weeks around St. Patrick’s Day, the Irish religious holiday that inspires numerous cultural celebrations (and more than a few raucous parties) in U.S. cities with heavy Irish American populations.
Philadelphia, where about 9% of residents report Irish ancestry, is certainly one of them. Some believe the first step dancing in America occurred here, when dancer John Durang demonstrated a jig in 1789. The McDade-Cara Irish School of Dance started a bit later in Edgmont in 1962. Its founder Maureen McDade McGrory was a dancer herself who spent her childhood traveling with her father, Jimmy McDade, as he led the All-Ireland Orchestra in the Philadelphia region. Though McGrory died of cancer in 1993, several of her former pupils, including Sheehan and her daughter Sheila McGrory Sweeney, now teach at the school. Their daughters are also now instructors, along with Sheehan’s sister.
“It’s a family affair,” Sheehan said. “It’s always been like that, which is great. It’s the best part in that way.”
The same is true for Breault. She began dancing 12 years ago at the suggestion of her mother, who danced herself at the urging of her father, who emigrated from Northern Ireland. Now, her younger sister, Mary, is step dancing with her, including at the parade this weekend.
“There’s two separate groups,” she explained. “There’s a group with the champion dancers and then there’s a group with the tinier dancers. But we still get to see them in the parade and walk with them a little bit. So it’s really fun to see that.”
Provided image/McDade-Cara School of Irish Dance
Sisters Mary and Sadie Breault (right) also performed together in the 2023 Philadelphia St. Patrick’s Day Parade, alongside another pair of dancing sisters, Gracie and Reagan Anderson (left).
The older, champion dancers have been working on a routine in tribute to the parade’s grand marshal and host of WTMR’s Irish Hour, Thomas Farrelly. The students will dress in the royal blue colors of his home, County Cavan, with nods to the various organizations he founded or developed in their costumes. The “tinier” dancers, or troupers under 9, will wear their usual team costumes — turtlenecks and green jumpers embroidered with a harp, the symbol of Ireland — as they perform a simpler routine inspired by the parade’s 2024 theme: St. Patrick, bless Philadelphia with a new dawn of hope. For parades, the younger performers ditch their typical soft shoes, leather split-sole “ghillies” that lace along the top of the foot, for sneakers to better handle the hustle and bustle (and blacktop) of the parade.
Though they don’t need much practice to be parade-ready, the dancers and their teachers will start Sunday “bright and early,” Sweeney said, to gather in Center City by 10 a.m. After ferrying all their flags, banners and props — and, likely this year, ponchos and umbrellas — into Philadelphia, the teachers will meet with the students for any final rehearsals or checks before the parade begins at 11 a.m. Then the group will depart from 16th Street and JFK Boulevard, performing along the early blocks of the route and at the grandstand at the end of the route, where each dancing group will get 90 seconds to perform for TV cameras.
It’s a lot of work, and they have plenty more ahead of them, but the dancers at McDade-Cara live to hop, switch and click in front of a crowd.
“The excitement from the kids is just so fun,” Sweeney said. “They thrive on parade day, they love it. It really is a great day.”
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