Posted on May 11, 2024 by Marjorie Brennan
In the flatlands of central Oklahoma, where Woody Guthrie's folk legacy still echoes through street names and annual music festivals, a different kind of cultural sound has taken hold—the rapid-fire click of hard shoes on hardwood floors. Okemah City, population roughly 3,000, has become an improbable hub for Irish dance, with three dedicated schools now operating in a town better known for Depression-era ballads than Riverdance-style rhythms.
How Irish Dance Found a Home in Woody Guthrie's Hometown
The current wave traces back to 2021, when former Tulsa instructor Siobhan McCormack relocated to Okemah after her husband accepted a position at the local electric cooperative. McCormack had trained for fifteen years under a Dallas-based adjudicator and taught classes on weekends at a Tulsa cultural center. Unsure whether demand existed in a rural Oklahoma town, she posted a single inquiry on a community Facebook page.
"I thought maybe five or six kids would show up," McCormack recalled. "Within two weeks, I had thirty names on a waitlist." That autumn, she leased a former insurance office on Main Street and opened the McCormack Academy of Irish Dance, Okemah's first dedicated school.
Her success revealed an untapped appetite. By spring 2022, Celtic Steps Downtown had opened in a renovated storefront near the Lake Country River, founded by McCormack's former student Kaitlyn Reyes. In 2023, longtime Oklahoma City instructor Declan O'Shea launched a satellite operation, the O'Shea School of Dance, running twice-weekly classes out of the Okemah Community Center after several families from his Edmond studio relocated east for lower housing costs.
What Irish Dance Looks Like in Okemah Today
The three studios now serve a combined enrollment of approximately 140 students, ranging from four-year-olds in beginner soft-shoe classes to adults in mixed-level ceili sessions. Instruction follows the structure common to Irish dance schools worldwide: dancers progress from reel and light jig basics in soft shoes to the percussive treble jig and hornpipe in hard shoes, with optional competitive tracks through regional feisanna.
Class formats vary by studio. McCormack Academy emphasizes performance and cultural education, with mandatory monthly sessions on Irish music history and legend. Celtic Steps Downtown focuses more heavily on competition preparation, with six students having placed at the North American Nationals in 2023. O'Shea's community-center program operates on a drop-in, pay-what-you-can model aimed at working families.
Costs reflect the divide. McCormack charges $85 monthly for one weekly class, plus $200–$350 for the hand-embroidered solo dresses required at the advanced level. O'Shea's sliding scale starts at $30 per month, with a costume-lending library staffed by parent volunteers.
" My daughter started with Declan because it was what we could afford," said Teresa Vance, mother of two O'Shea students. "Now she's begging to audition for McCormack's performance team. This town gave her a path in when we never could have managed it in the city."
Reaching Beyond the Studio Walls
The reach of Irish dance in Okemah now extends well after class dismissals. The Okemah Grape Jam, a September heritage festival originally devoted to Guthrie-era folk and bluegrass, added an Irish Dance Showcase to its schedule in 2022. The 2023 edition drew an estimated 400 spectators to the courthouse lawn stage—roughly one-eighth of the town's population.
McCormack's advanced students also perform annually at the Sakum Tu Multicultural Festival, organized by the Okemah Public Schools' bilingual education department. In 2024, for the first time, the district's two elementary schools piloted a six-week Irish dance unit in physical education classes, taught by rotating instructors from all three studios.
" We were looking for activities that build coordination, rhythm, and social connection without the equipment costs of traditional sports," said Okemah Elementary PE coordinator Denise Hollis. "The studio owners volunteered their time. By week three, we had kids who'd never heard a fiddle before teaching their parents the sevens at home."
Local businesses have taken notice as well. The Okemah Mercantile on Broadway now stocks hard-soled Irish dance shoes and poodle socks during competition season, items previously unavailable within a ninety-mile radius. A parent-run costume circle operates through a dedicated WhatsApp group, with used solo dresses changing hands for $80–$150 rather than the $1,000-plus price tag of new garments.
Why Here? The Okemah Question
The obvious tension in Okemah's Irish dance story is geographic: this is
