Every Saturday morning, the second floor of a converted storefront on Main Street fills with the sharp, syncopated crack of hard shoes against maple. Down the hall, beginners as young as four practice their sevens and threes in soft shoes, counting aloud in unison. This is not Dublin or Boston—it is Wadsworth City, Ohio, where a small but dedicated network of schools, families, and performers has built an Irish dance scene that now draws students from across Medina and Summit counties.
From One Studio to a Network of Schools
Irish dance instruction in Wadsworth began in earnest in the early 2000s, when the McGovern School of Irish Dance opened its first Ohio location in the city. Today, McGovern maintains a Wadsworth studio near the intersection of State Route 57 and High Street, offering classes in both soft shoe and hard shoe disciplines, as well as ceili and figure dancing for team competitions. The school is certified through An Coimisiún Le Rincí Gaelacha, the Dublin-based commission that governs competitive Irish dance worldwide, and has sent dancers to regional feisanna as far as Chicago and Indianapolis.
In 2014, the Rince Nua Academy of Irish Dance established a second Wadsworth presence, operating out of a studio on Broad Street. Rince Nua emphasizes a blended approach—traditional step dancing rooted in Co. Cork and Kerry styles, paired with theatrical choreography designed for stage performance. The academy produces an annual winter recital at the OJ Work Auditorium, typically held in mid-December, which regularly sells out its 350-seat capacity.
"We have families driving from Akron and Strongsville because they want instruction that respects the tradition but also prepares kids for performance beyond competition," says Rince Nua director Caitlin Brennan, a TCRG-certified instructor who trained in Limerick before relocating to Ohio in 2011.
Learning From Visiting Masters
Both schools supplement their regular class schedules with intensive workshops led by out-of-town instructors. In March 2024, McGovern hosted a two-day hard shoe workshop with Colin Dunne, the former Riverdance principal who helped redefine male Irish dance performance in the 1990s. The clinic drew 45 dancers from four states and focused on Dunne's signature rhythmic improvisation techniques.
Rince Nua, meanwhile, brings in guest teachers each summer for its August intensive. Past instructors include Dublin-based choreographer Jean Butler, who spent a week in Wadsworth in 2022 working with advanced students on contemporary Irish dance theater. These workshops are open to dancers from any school, and organizers say roughly 30 percent of participants typically come from outside the immediate area.
Where Wadsworth Dancers Take the Stage
Performance opportunities extend beyond the classroom. Each St. Patrick's Day season, McGovern dancers perform at the Wadsworth Public Library's annual Celtic Heritage Program, a free community event that draws standing-room-only crowds to the library's community room. Rince Nua students regularly appear at the Wadsworth Farmers Market summer concert series and at fundraising galas for local organizations such as the Wadsworth YWCA and the Medina County Historical Society.
For competitive dancers, the closest major feis is the Ohio State Championships, held each November in Columbus. Wadsworth-based dancers have placed in the top ten at the championship level for three consecutive years, according to results published by the Irish Dance Teachers Association of North America.
Notably, there is no event currently operating under the name "Wadsworth Irish Dance Festival." The city's Irish dance community instead coalesces around seasonal performances, regional competitions, and the annual Medina County Irish American Festival, held each July at the Buffalo Creek Retreat in nearby Lafayette Township. Several Wadsworth dancers perform at the festival each year, and both local schools operate recruitment booths at the event.
A Community Built in the Lobby
What distinguishes the Wadsworth scene may be what happens when the dancing stops. Parents who once sat in separate studio lobbies now organize a joint annual supply swap for used ghillies and hard shoes. Dancers from rival schools carpool together to out-of-town competitions. In 2023, the two schools collaborated for the first time on a joint fundraiser, a ceili dance social held at the Wadsworth Senior Center that raised $4,200 for the Medina County Food Bank.
"The competition side is real, but at the end of the day we're all trying to keep this tradition alive in northeast Ohio," says Meghan O'Donnell, a McGovern parent who chairs the school's community outreach committee. "When you don't have a huge Irish-American population base like Cleveland or Chicago, you have to build that community intentionally."
According to U.S. Census data, Irish ancestry accounts for approximately 14 percent of Medina County residents—below the state average of 16 percent and well under the concentrations found in C
