Titanic Irish dance wins NI crew fresh fans around world

Belfast Telegraph

30-04-2025

A video of their dance Titanic: Ship of Dreams has now been watched more than 150,000 times and won considerable praise; not only for the standard of the dancing, but also for the storytelling they brought to the performance.
What makes the achievement all the more impressive is it's the first time a team from the school, based across counties Armagh and Tyrone, took part in the competition.
Gerard Carroll, the man behind the performance, said he'd like nothing more than to expand the performance for the stage given how well it was received at the Convention Centre and beyond.
'I'm astonished by the reaction we have been getting,' he said. 'Since I first opened the Irish dancing schools 13 years ago I've dreamed of being able to do something like this and to see the 19 dancers on stage, giving it their all and now thrilling so many people with the video of their performance, it's hard to believe it happened.
'We'd been working on the routine for a full year,' he added. 'There were a lot of tasks involved and a lot of moving parts to what finally came together on stage and for that everyone who has worked on this has to be immensely proud of their efforts.
'The first steps were writing the story, then composing the music, the choreography, and selecting 19 of our dancers suited to the roles and who could dedicate for a full year to what we wanted to achieve as a school.
'We visited the Titanic Museum in Belfast as a team for some initial inspiration for our piece as well as for some team bonding. It worked a treat.'
One of Gerard's major obstacles was trying to fit his Titanic story into the six minutes the team was permitted for the performance.
'That was the rules for the competition,' he said. 'It would be a dream to expand the production as there were so many parts of Titanic's important story that we did not have time to include, for example the building of the ship, the stories of the emigrants, so there is a lot of scope for expansion.
'This was the first time our school has ever entered this competition, so we were surrounded by other schools who had a lot more experience in this category. We debuted the performance at two separate dress rehearsals for family and friends, but when we performed it on the world stage, it was the first time we ever presented a piece like this for competition.
'We knew that we needed to work harder than anyone anticipated since we were totally new to this field of dance, and coming second in the world surpassed our expectations.'
Despite the acclaim that has followed, Gerard says he has no hard feelings about not coming out on top. 'A team from Louth won and they were great too,' he said.
'Two of the five judges actually had us in first place and we were only 10 points from winning.
'Because dancing is so subjective they use the panel of judges who independently give their scores. I am an adjudicator myself and I know how difficult those decisions are to make.'