Fast On Their Feet: Tradition In Action

Just back from the 2025 Oireachtas Rince na Cruinne in Dublin, Sofia Brantingham, Molly Whitehead and Fiadh-Rose Howlin share their passion for Irish dance. Elizabeth Kerr reports For someone so young, dancer Molly Whitehead has an incredible knack for diplomacy. When confronted with the blazingly boneheaded comment of “Isn’t Irish dance, like, Michael Flatley?” she gracefully deflects, and notes that no… there’s much more to the form than Lord of the Dance, and traditional Irish dancing has a history that goes back to the 1700s, at least, and can include céilí dances, old-school sean-nós and stepdance, among others. “Competitive Irish dancing is quite different from per formative Irish dancing, which is essentially Michael Flatley – and he’s the peak of that,” she says with a laugh. “The competitive version is much more strict and physically demanding. The placement of your arms and your feet are similar but there are a lot of rules about which dance you do at which age and so on.” Molly, 16, is on a Zoom stream on this day, sitting in the sun in Discovery Bay Plaza. We’re chatting on Zoom because we also want to connect with two of Molly’s fellow students at the Hong Kong chapter of McGahan Lees Irish Dance Academy: Sofia Brantingham, 21, and Fiadh-Rose Howlin, who’s coming up 13. The trio are just back from Dublin, where they represented Hong Kong, Lantau specifically, at the 2025 Oireachtas Rince na Cruinne (ORnC) – the 53rd World Irish Dancing Championships. Soon enough everyone is at the ‘meeting’: Mui Wo-based Sofia from the ferry to Central and Fiadh-Rose from her home in DB. Hear ‘dance competition’ and most of us conjure images of Dancing with the Stars and assume Sofia, Molly and Fiadh-Rose took par t in some kind of genteel contest where they collected a lovely bouquet of flowers for finishing. Quite the contrary. Competing in Irish dance, as Molly explains it, demands muscular strength and robust cardio health to go with mental acuity. “During a dance, every single one of your muscles is working and your brain is in overdrive. You have to look like it’s effortless, always keeping a smile on your face, and wearing heavy dresses and wigs that make everything hurt.” At this point, Katherine Toong, the trio’s teacher at McGahan Lees Irish Dance Academy (Instagram @irishdance_hongkong), pipes up: “Sofia has danced with me for six years… I’ve helped Molly and Fiadh- Rose for the past two. Sofia assists me in every class, the dancers all love her and really look up to her, Molly and Fiadh-Rose’s love and dedication to Irish dance make my role both easy and inspiring. Competing at the highest level involves more than just dancing. It requires learning and perfecting new steps, mastering timing and rhythm, incorporating resistance training to become more powerful and prevent injuries, while also incorporating at-home stretching to maintain mobility and joint health.” For the uninitiated, the ORnC is a long, hard road. “It’s like a rugby or football tournament and the Worlds are kind of like the finals,” says Fiadh-Rose. “It’s more than just a mental thing because there are so many par ts to it and to do well you have to get everything right.” Getting to Dublin this year for the event running April 13 to 20 was clearly quite a feat. Age aside, the three young women couldn’t be less alike, refreshingly so. Sofia was born in Taiwan to a Canadian mom and American dad, and lived in Shanghai until she was nine when her father’s work brought the family to Hong Kong. In this, her fourth appearance at the Worlds, she placed 35th (out of 101 dancers) in the Ladies 20-21 age category – and won the prestigious Aisling Award for highest rank in her age group from Asia, Europe, Mexico, Nordic Europe, South Africa and South America. Molly was born in Ireland and moved to Hong Kong with her family in 2019 via the Philippines. This year marked her second appearance at the Worlds, and while she placed 118th (out of 158 dancers) in the Girls 16-17 age category, not as high as expected, she danced her heart out and is rightfully proud of her achievement. Plus: “My shoe didn’t fall off this time,” she says with a laugh. “Two years ago, the first time I qualified, when I went to do my second dance the heel of my right shoe came off. I tried to keep my nerves in check as I’ve been taught, and it was all good fun.” “I taped your shoe on this time,” chimes in Sofia with a chuckle. Fiadh-Rose was born in Hong Kong to Irish parents. She’s been dancing since she was about three: her mum teaches at McGahan Lees Irish Dance Academy and is a certified Irish dance adjudicator. In this, her second time competing in the Worlds, Fiadh-Rose finished a mind-blowing 10th (out of 159 dancers) in the Girls 12-13 age category. “When I was really young, I won a championship and it got me really, really excited. I kept on pushing, and I got a lot better, and then last year my results really shot up, and I really wanted to do better,” she says. Sofia, Molly and Fiadh-Rose are at very different stages in their Irish dance careers, but they are all on upward trajectories. They came to the form for different reasons but are equally committed. Sofia followed a friend and got hooked. Fiadh-Rose grew up around it and appreciates the strength, speed and balance it gives her. And for Molly, discovering Irish dance was a kind of homecoming. “I think, for me, it was definitely being able to connect more with being Irish,” she says. “I’ve lived in Asia more of my life than I’ve lived in Ireland, and you do eventually feel that strain from disconnection. Learning Irish dance really helped me connect with my roots, and also to meet people when I moved here.” The immediate future for the trio sees more school – Molly and Fiadh-Rose are both at Discovery Bay International School; Sofia begins studies in sports science at the University of South Australia in the autumn. Fiadh-Rose is preparing to compete at the 2025 North American Irish Dance Champions in Maryland, and there’s a ton of practice for everyone en route to the regional qualifier in Prague in December for the 2026 Worlds. Outside class, there’s long-distance running (for Fiadh-Rose), cross-training (for Sofia) and video gaming (for Molly). Fun stuff they can do at home on Lantau, which all three agree is, well, a lovable place to be based. “I love Mui Wo,” declares Sofia, the outlier. “I was at the beach an hour ago, and now I’m in the city going to dance class. It’s great.” Molly enjoys the DB bubble, seeing it as safe and freeing when compared to Manila. “Moving to DB was very, very much a culture shock. Seeing all these little kids going around by themselves, I was like, ‘Oh my goodness’. It’s nice that you can go anywhere, run errands or hang out with friends. It’s great in that sense.” Fiadh-Rose, the Hong Kong native, agrees: “I love DB. Everything’s so close together, one minute you can be down in the plaza with friends, the next at the beach. It’s so safe you can just kind of go your own way. Nothing really dangerous happens around DB or really Hong Kong.” Fiadh-Rose is in no position to be setting a career path at (almost) 13, but Sofia and Molly are relatively confident Irish dance will be in their futures on some level; they both enjoy teaching younger kids, and they’ll be dancing for as long as is physically possible. Molly is aiming at a career in performance and then, maybe, directing. Watch your back, Flatley.