Following the international success of The Magic of Ireland, the formidable team of Michael Patrick Farrell and Dan MacDonald bring you the contemporary Celtic theatrical interpretation brögue
Michael Patrick Farrell is one of Canada′s top performers and choreographers of Irish dance. He is a master of three distinct forms: Irish step, céilí and set dancing. Having competed successfully at a world championship level until 1990, he spent the next four years studying social work and travelling in Ireland to study, bring back and teach some esoteric forms of Celtic dance throughout Canada. He has lectured at University of Toronto, York University and Ryerson Polytechnic University, given many international radio and television interviews and been the subject of a documentary. He founded and is artistic director of the Celtic Dance Company of Canada. National broadcasts include a commissioned work for the CBC on Parliament Hill, the du Maurier Concert Stage Gala (Vancouver), and the 1999 Juno Awards. He was honoure to be chosen to choreograph the finale for Canada′s showcase of premiere professional dance talent, Dancers for Life (1997), at the Hummingbird Centre in Toronto. His career as a performer culminated with a personal invitation to perform at Canada′s Prime Minister Jean Chretien′s Farewell Tribute, broadcast nationally from Toronto′s Air Canada Centre. Most recently, he has provided choreography and artistic consultation for The Magic of Ireland, which toured Britain, Europe and North America for the 2007/2008 season. Farrell choreographs, trains and directs professional dancers from alternate disciplines in Celtic dance performance.
Dan MacDonald is from a family of musicians from the small village of Ironville, Cape Breton and began playing fiddle at a very early age. His fiddle education came mostly from his father, Lloyd MacDonald, who is a well-known and respected Cape Breton fiddler, and from the surrounding musical culture of Cape Breton Island. Cape Breton Fiddler′s Association practices in Baddeck, the Gaelic Maud in St. Ann′s, playing for dances in Glencoe and playing for Highland dance and Cape Breton stepdance groups formed the basis for his music. The big Cape Breton concerts: Big Pond, Cheticamp, Highland Village day, Broad Cove and many others were the backdrop of his childhood. In the late 1980s, MacDonald, and his family formed Scumalash, a traditional Cape Breton band, with whom he toured throughout the United Kingdom between 1988 and 1992, culminating in the release of a self-titled album. Scumalash recently returned from a reunion tour of England.
In 2001 MacDonald moved to Bowling Green, Ohio where he began playing with a traditional Irish group, Toraigh. Toraigh toured the Celtic festivals of the Midwest, including the Cincinnati Celtic Festival, Dayton Celtic Festival, and the Newport Irish Festival. During this time period MacDonald was also able to compete twice in the Midwest Fleadh (regional Irish Music competition) in the senior fiddle and ceilidh band competitions with a band involving some of Detroit′s foremost Irish musicians, placing second in both categories.
MacDonald moved to Toronto in 2003, where he became a co-host at the Irish music session at Dora Keogh Irish pub and later became a member of the traditional Irish group, Spraoi. Spraoi has played to sold out audiences at the Tranzac, Hugh′s Room and the Brampton Folk Festival. In 2006, MacDonald became music director of The Magic of Ireland, an Irish dance and music show, with which he toured the UK, Canada, the USA and Europe. An active freelance performer and teacher, MacDonald is in high demand throughout Southern Ontario, where he performs and teaches at various venues and events.
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