April 17, 2017

Meet Maeve Croke of Celtic Irish Dance Academy in Los Angeles

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Maeve Croke.

So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I started dancing as a kid back in Ireland where I grew up. I was very lucky at the young age of 16 I was chosen to Travel with Michael Flatley’s Lord of the Dance. I toured with them for a year and half before touring with River dance the show were I spent 10 years touring the world and also had the role of Dance Captain .

A lot of this time was spent in the states and I really grew to love it. From early on, I always wanted to live in America and so when the time came to stop touring I decided to teach here in the US, I taught in AZ & TX for a few years before settling in LA and now run Celtic Irish Dance Academy since July 2014 .

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
After touring for so long getting back to “normal life ” was a challenge. It takes a while to settle into the daily routine. But as far as teaching I just really love it I go through stages of what I prefer teaching younger beginner’s kids or more championship levels but it is all so rewarding I can’t choose, I spend a lot of time in the studio and rarely have free time but I know I work best like that I love to be busy

We’d love to hear more about your business.
Celtic Irish Dance Academy is one of the newer Irish Dance schools in CA and continues to grow with new students all the time. We teach competitive and Noncompetitive Irish Dance both Solo and Teams. CIDA students compete at an International level and 6 Dancers will travel to Dublin Ireland this April for the World Irish Dance Championships the ultimate goal for any dancer.

With a background in Riverdance we love to put on shows and have done A Celtic Christmas show for the past 3 years which has been a huge success and will do so again in Dec 2017.

What were you like growing up?
Like many of the kids I teach today, growing up I spent most of my time at dance class and then weekends were spent traveling to compete at feisanna (Irish dance competition). I was very dedicated and never missed a class, I walked straight after school to dance and walked home again most weekdays.

I did like other sports like basketball, hockey and tennis I also love swimming but they all came 2nd to me but I was a very active kid and growing up in Ireland there was lots of opportunity to play outside.

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