Stephanie Spear 
Troupes of Irish dancers are as ubiquitous around St. Patrick’s Day as green beer. For these dancers, St. Patrick’s Day is only part of the schedule: they perform and compete year-round, and even travel internationally to perform. Shannon Foley, the founder of Foley Academy of Irish Dance, located at 11260 Roger Bacon Drive in Reston, talked with The Fairfax Girl about Irish dance and what it takes to prepare for the most visible and exciting time of year. Read on for more about Foley Irish Dance and the year-round dance schedule.
About Foley Academy of Irish Dance
Founder Shannon Foley grew up in Vienna and was inspired by performers she saw locally. “My parents took me to a big festival at the Old Town Alexandria Waterfront, and there were Irish dancers,” she said. “This was at the peak of Riverdance’s popularity. I knew I wanted to try it.” She started dancing at age 9 and continued dancing throughout college and high school. “I was very shy, so performing and competing was good for helping me get over that,” she said.
Shannon graduated from college at George Mason University and began her career as a technical writer for a government contractor, dancing all the while. “I had started teaching at a different school, and I had an idea in my head to start an Irish dancing school at some point,” she said. The teaching certification exam took about a year’s worth of preparation. “It’s a three-day test, and you’re tested on your personal dancing capability, teaching, and simulating a class with pretend students,” she said.
The certification and examination are administered by the Irish Dancing Commission, An Coimisiun le Rince Gaelacha (CLRG). “I received my TCRG (Teagascóir Choimisiúin le Rincí Gaelacha, Teacher certified by the Irish Dance Commission) in 2017 and attended the presentation in 2018 at the World Championships (Oireachtas Rince na Cruinne) in Glasgow,” Shannon said. Once Shannon took the test, she started making plans for her own dance school and opened Foley Academy in 2018. She left her technical writing career in 2025 and now works full-time at Foley Academy.
Shannon’s husband, Jacob, is her right-hand man in the studio. During our visit, we saw him direct the flow of students between classes, answer questions about an upcoming event, cue the music, and generally manage everything else. “He wears a lot of hats: operations and IT support, maintenance, photographer, front desk, and general problem-solver,” Shannon said.
Studio Life
Even though most people see Irish dancers only at St. Patrick’s Day, there is a year-round cycle of studying, rehearsal, evaluations, and performances. “St. Patrick’s Day is a big event, it’s like our Christmas,” Shannon said. “But our big recitals are in the spring and fall, and we have competitions year-round.”
She said that students are drawn to Irish dance for a variety of reasons. “It’s usually a mix of wanting to explore their Irish heritage and being curious about the high-energy dancing,” Shannon said. “Performing in a group is really special, too, and people like that.”
“As a general description, Irish dance sits at a unique intersection of cultural performing art, elite competitive sport, and theatrical presentation. It’s rooted in Irish folk tradition, but reaching a high level requires years of disciplined training – hundreds of practice hours, technical repetition, cardiovascular conditioning, strength work, and precision timing,” Shannon said. “What looks effortless on stage is built on an extraordinary amount of athletic and artistic preparation behind the scenes.”
Foley Academy has classes for students as young as three years old and through adulthood. “The adult classes are strictly recreational,” Shannon said. “It’s great for fitness and socializing. Irish dancing is a great form of exercise for all ages, since you’re building leg and core strength. Maintaining the posture requires a lot of muscle control.”
The studio’s Spring recital is ‘the big show’ and typically takes place in June. It’s a large, themed show with a connected storyline for all of the groups performing. “Last year’s theme was Celtic knots,” Shannon said. “We had about 600 people in attendance.” Then there’s the Fall Recital. “Foley Academy’s Fall recital is a studio showcase of each level’s core step material – the specific steps and technique standards dancers work on in class at their current level. Dancers perform both soft-shoe dances (such as reels and light jigs) and hard-shoe dances (such as hornpipes and treble jigs). These are the same major Irish dance styles often featured in professional stage shows like Riverdance,” Shannon said.
See more: Meow Town Cat Lounge in McLean Blends Cat Rescue With Inclusive Employment
Shannon said that the main facets of Irish dance are performance, competition, and community service. “The competitions are really exciting, we’re always preparing for at least one at a time,” she said. “There are local competitions about once a month somewhere on the East Coast, plus regional, national, and world competitions.”
“We’ve had roughly two dozen dancers travel to international-level competitions over the years. It’s a relatively small group competing at a very high level. Most recently, we had a dancer attend the All-Ireland Championships (Oireachtas Rince na hÉireann) in Killarney,” Shannon said. “Comparable major events that our dancers have attended include the North American Irish Dance Championships, the Great Britains, and the World Irish Dance Championships.”
View this post on Instagram
The community service aspect is something the dancers really enjoy. “We love to perform and share our skills with the community,” she said. “We perform at local community events such as Celebrate Reston, the Reston Holiday Parade, and the Reston Multicultural Festival, in addition to retirement communities and seasonal festivals throughout Northern Virginia. We love to make connections with the community. Often, people will tell us that they did Irish dance as a child or remember the music. It’s really special.”
St. Patrick’s Day Rush
Our visit to the studio in February felt a bit like visiting Santa’s workshop in November: lots of excitement and anticipation in the air. “Right now we have about 34 shows booked,” Shannon said. The St. Patrick’s Day performances highlight the community service element of the Irish dancing community. “We just go from show to show, and the students just love that thrill of getting in front of the community and enjoying the people and the energy because everyone knows at St. Patrick’s Day, when the Irish dancers come out, it is so energetic,” she said. “The audience loves the music; they love seeing the kids perform.”
“We’ve been performing at some of these venues, like Reston Sunrise Senior Living, since 2018,” Shannon said. “And our older students use these performances for their community service hours. These performances are a really great way for dancers of all ages to learn that this [dance] is something they can use to give back. It’s a great way to give back and bring joy to people.”
Read more: 15 Mobile Services You Need to Know in Northern Virginia
In terms of organizing the dancers to ‘staff’ each show, Shannon said, “The dancers are booked in groups for different performances, so they’ll do three shows in the morning or three shows in the afternoon, or maybe two in the evening.” The newest beginners and beginner one students are only required to do one show. “And we encourage everyone to participate with us at the Alexandria St. Patrick’s Day Parade. It’s the biggest one in the area,” she said.
View this post on Instagram
The St. Patrick’s Day performances are also an opportunity to fundraise for the studio’s non-profit, called Foley Friends. “Some venues will pay us to perform, which helps us offset costs for recitals and other performances,” Shannon said. “We do not charge for tickets to recitals because of Foley Friends.”
Finally, we had to ask: what’s with the wigs? Shannon laughed. “When I was dancing and competing, we had to use rollers to get that bouncy look, and it hurt,” she said. “The wigs started as a solution to that, and now it’s become a trademark. People like that the curls and height show off the movement of the dance. And, putting the wig on is a lot faster and easier than setting your hair in curlers and styling it.”
To learn more about Irish dancing or to book Foley dancers for an event, visit the studio’s website.
Follow @thefairfaxgirl on Instagram + TikTok for the latest Northern Virginia updates, and check out our events calendar, which has over 100+ events weekly to peruse.
