The school was founded by Elaine Walker in 2004 in Gärtringen. We have now outgrown our modest beginnings and, with our current spacious studio, we are able to offer dancers a comfortable home from home and an exciting, fully appointed dancing and learning space to facilitate learning to a high degree. Dancers can certainly be the best that they want to be with us. Our main goal at O’Brannlaig is to share the spiritedness of Irish Dance while encouraging each dancer to reach his/her full potential. The first steps are easy to learn – indeed, it is very thrilling for a new dancer to learn an entire dance at his/her very first class. Over time the dancer develops greater concentration, balance is heightened, body awareness improves, closer attention to detail becomes a must, a discernment of timing is developed. This is all achieved with a ton of laughter and while having a great time.
Some of our dancers are content with the personal rewards and challenges that classes in our friendly atmosphere give them. Others participate happily in the performances we do at fests, parties and special events. Finally, over half of our dancers participate in Irish Dance competitions, first as beginner solo dancers but eventually on teams as well. Learning the skills to become part of a team is of great importance to us: to achieve the beauty of an Irish interlacing group dance all the dancers must move as one, equally aware of their own role while constantly supporting their team members.This is in itself a great lesson in life.
Scoil Rince O’Brannlaig is a member of the World Irish Dance Association (WIDA) which hosts over 20 competitions a year throughout Europe, including National and International Championships and European and World Championships. WIDA´s philosophy is to provide fair, open, non-beauty pageant style competition based solely on the level of a dancers´ performance. Its ethos is close to Elaine´s heart and a cornerstone of the Academy. Without the correct level of attainble competiton, a competitive dancer cannot develop and will always lag behind his / her British, Irish or American counterpart where competition is offered at a rate of 3 a month. WIDA´s commitment to competition on mainland Europe - 25 competitons in 2011 facilitates this development.
The progress made by our dancers in these short 6 years is a credit to the school and we are very proud of each and every one of them. Thanks to the inspired choreographies of Elaine and the constant hard work of our teachers and dancers, our teams have been German Champions since 2006, European Champions since 2007 and World Champions since 2009. More and more of our competitive solo dancers have earned themselves the prestigious status of dancing in the exclusive Open and Championship category. Many of our solo dancers have titles, including German Champion, English Champion and European Champion. We have dancers who have qualified to dance at the World Championhip and have had dancers place on the podium at this prestigious event.
As the language of Irish Dance is English, and as all our teachers are native speakers, a lot of English is spoken in our school. Teaching is primarily in English and competitions are held completely in English. This is a fabulous opportunity for our dancers to absorb the English language and they grow to love the language as much as they do the dance. All our teachers are bilingual. As we have a mix of German and American dancers, our dancers and their parents learn to communicate first hand and great and lasting friendships are built.