4-year-old is already award-winning Irish dancer – kicks up a storm for St. Patrick’s Day crowd
YouTube can be an interesting place (that’s putting it mildly, right?) – there are just some videos that people keep coming back to. They might not be the high-def and overproduced videos of the last few years, but it’s clear that some performances simply stand the test of time. One of those videos is of a little Irish dancer.
Uploaded 10 years ago, the girl we only know as “Lucy” performed an Irish dance for a crowd on St. Patrick’s Day – and despite the video not being of the best quality, it’s been seen over 1.7 MILLION times since it was posted.
Pretty amazing!
What’s also amazing are Lucy’s dance skills.
Referred to playfully as “McCutie Tiny Irish Dancer” in the title of the video posted by “3dancingroses Sisters,” this 4-year-old can really tear up the dance floor.
We presume the performance took place in the U.S. since there is an American flag in the background, but that’s really all we know about the viral video.
It begins with Lucy being introduced as an award-winning dancer who has already managed to rack up 2 trophies 6 medals in her dance career.
Not bad for 4 years old!
“We might have a future world champion here on our hands,” says the hostess of the program.
She’s learned 4 Irish dances so far – one for each year of her life – and the one demonstrated in the video is the “reel.”
To perform the reel, you can see she’s wearing soft dance shoes instead of hard ones, so there won’t be tapping.
Since the stage show Riverdance came out in 1994, people the world over have fallen in love with traditional Irish dance and music.
In the U.S., you can find classes for children in many major cities and since the basic steps are relatively simple, kids can start quite young. (This might explain Lucy’s success at such a young age.)
As you can see, Irish dancers frequently keep their upper bodies immobile and rely on sweeping leg movements and fancy footwork to wow their audiences.
Lucy’s dance demo begins 45 seconds into the video. She shows off some high-kicks, shuffles, and pointed-foot-tapping that characterize the stepdance.
She might only be 4, but the little girl moves across the floor smoothly and confidently as the audience claps along to the beat.
They’re having fun, and Lucy is all business, just barely cracking a smile once or twice when she executes a great hop and gets some major air.
Even though the dance is short, it’s certainly not for beginners (trust us, we tried). It requires precision, concentration, and athleticism – likely the reason dance lessons, in general, are so popular for both boys and girls.
Lucy has the grace and poise of someone 10 times her age and if our failure to execute even one of her steps properly proves anything it’s that this is a real skill, despite the fact that a good dancer can make it look easy.
Her 4-year-old master focus only makes it more fun to watch.
One of the many beauties of Irish dance is the costumes – no skimpy hot pants, but beautiful skirts and knee socks and elaborate hair that bounces with each jump.
At the end of the performance, Lucy takes her bow and the audience gives her a big round of applause.
She walks off the floor knowing she’s put on another great show – but one that she may have never realized would be viewed well over a million times!
Be sure to scroll down below to see Lucy in action.
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