Before Celtic Heels was a dance studio in Greenfield, it was just Cara Leach, teaching two hours a week at the Guiding Star Grange. Leach, the owner, said it grew from two hours to several days a week, and then to renting out a room in another studio, before it became the full studio it is now.
“It’s been a slow growth, but every year we have more families interested in what we offer,” she said.
Over those years it became a staple in the area, with performances at local festivals and events as the community has embraced the Irish dance-based studio.
The studio is celebrating its tenth anniversary in Greenfield this year at a time of change for the business. They had to move out of their old location in March and moved into a new location, renovated specifically for the studio, in July.
The studio also recently opened a second location
in Florence. She said all of the change with the Greenfield studio made her think about the future of Celtic Heels.
“It made me evaluate what I wanted to do with the business, so I decided to expand and we opened a new space in Florence,” she said.
She said she hopes the new location can help the studio reach more students, who may think the drive to Greenfield is too far for weekly classes. The Florence location has only been open two weeks.
The studios are non-competitive, so the students don’t enter into competitions, but instead focus on performance.
The main focus is Irish dance, but they also teach classes in barre, tap, lyrical and ballet that complement Irish dance. In addition, they have a “Bring Your Baby to Barre” class for mothers of infants and a child’s yoga class called “Magic Carpet Ride,” where the yoga mat is a magic carpet and the children go on a new adventure every class.
There is also a dance company that students can join once they turn 11. The company performs at local events and parades as well as the studio’s signature winter event, the Irish Nutcracker. Leach also said the group had performed at the recent Garlic and Arts festival.
Celtic Heels has seven instructors in Greenfield and Florence, including Leach, and about 70 students.
Some of the instructors actually started out as students. Chaeli Barbaro teaches beginner and intermediate Irish dance and started studying dance at Leach’s mother’s Irish dance school in New York when she was eight. Barbaro said the Celtic Heels dance studio is really a place where students can grow and learn.
“In this dance studio you’re free to make mistakes and be yourself,” she said. “Everyone is supporting each other and working as a team.”
The Greenfield and Florence locations are branches of the same dance studio Leach’s mother started and teaches at in Red Hook, New York. Her mother, Joan McGrenaghan, started the studio when Leach was 3 years old.
Leach had been branching out on her own before the move to Greenfield, and when she turned 16, she started teaching her own classes in New York.
Leach said that ending up in Greenfield was happenstance. She said she came to the area when her husband decided to go back to school and chose The University of Massachusetts, Amherst. When they were looking for housing, they realized buying a place in Greenfield would be more cost effective than renting an apartment in Amherst.
So the two took a leap of faith, bought a house and Leach has been teaching here ever since.
“We didn’t really know anything about the town,” She said. “We just moved in and we’ve been here ever since.”
Teaching was something she had already been doing, and was something Leach had become passionate about.
“I realized I loved the process of teaching, and seeing those moments when a student finally gets a challenging step and how proud they are of themselves,” she said. “And it was just so rewarding for me and the kids and I realized it was something I wanted to make a much bigger part of my life”
She said she grew up immersed in her Irish heritage, with frequent trips to Ireland, where her mother would always schedule time for Leach to take lessons with local dance instructors.
Leach danced in parades with her mother and sister growing up, and her father played the fiddle and her grandmother would dress up as a leprechaun for holidays.
Her grandparents were Irish immigrants who both came to New York separately, and met in an Irish dance hall stateside.
Her heritage and upbringing are the reason she now teaches Irish dance. She trained under many different styles of dance, but decided to go back to Irish dance because it was near to her heart.
However, Leach said that the students at the school come from many different backgrounds. Some students do take the Irish dance classes because of their heritage, but many just take it because they like the music and style of dance.
She said the classes are predominantly female, but there are several male students coming up in the younger classes.
Many students take multiple classes, and the studio offers a discount for multiple classes, as a way to make it more affordable for families and students interested in multiple dance styles, according to Leach.
Students like Emma Wilburn, who is 15 and has been dancing at the school since 2010. She decided to join because the family has Irish heritage and she and her mother wanted her to have an experience with Irish dance.
“It’s definiley turned into something more to just Irish tap,” Emma’s mother Jeanette said.
Emma takes several difference classes at the school, and said she sees her instructors as role models. Because the school is performance based, she said it keeps her focused on being the best version of herself, and not in competition with the other dancers. She said the instructors really care about the students.
“They really support you, whether it’s dance or outside of dance,” Emma said.
Jeanette said she’s seen Celtic Heels become a space for her daughter to grow as a person, and it’s helped give her perspective and focus outside of high school. She said the experience at the school has been invaluable because Cara and the instructors teach the girls about accountability and persistence.
“It’s healthy to see that in order to get to your goals, you have to work for it,” she said.
For the instructors, the connection with students fostered over the years has been one of the most rewarding parts of the job.
“I love the students at Celtic heels,” Barbaro said. “They’re sweet and excited and always energetic.”
Leach has been able to watch students from these studios grow up and eventually leave for college, where some have continued to dance and stay in touch. Looking back at the previous 10 years of business in town, Leach said she never really expected it to go the way it did.
“It’s really all I could have hoped for in creating a dance studio,” Leach said.
She said the instructors work to incorporate Irish heritage in some of the younger classes, so students learn where the dance styles come from. She said it’s been a joy to get to know the students and families while connecting to the town through performances. For Leach, watching the town accept the studio has been an important part of the last 10 years.
“I never wanted to just offer a dance class, I always wanted it to be something more.”
Miranda Davis can be reached at 413-772-0261, ext. 280 or at: mdavis@recorder.com