MOSES LAKE — Three Eastern Washington venues will get their Taste of Ireland this spring when “A Taste of Ireland – The Irish Music & Dance Sensation” comes to Yakima, Spokane and Wenatchee.
“It’s a live Irish music and dance production, which takes the audience on the history of Ireland, their very tumultuous history, from the Easter Rising, the famine, the Vikings taking over, all right up through to modern day Ireland,” said dancer Brittany Pymm. “And we show that through Irish music and dance.”
The history, emotional and intense, is the first part of the show, Pymm said. The second part is where they turn loose the “craic” – pronounced “crack” – which is Irish for a wild good time.
“The second half is where we can, as dancers and performers, showcase our personalities to the audience,” Pymm said. “And I feel like the audience can really connect with that.”
“A Taste of Ireland” debuted off-Broadway in 2024, according to the show’s promotional materials, and has gone all over the world. Many of the dancers and musicians performed with “Riverdance” and “Lord of the Dance.”
Pymm herself comes from Perth, Australia, and has been immersed in Irish culture her whole life, she said.
“My mum was born in Belfast in Ireland, and they moved out to Australia when she was quite young but wanted to keep the Irish culture alive within our family,” Pymm said. “She put me and my sister into dance class. All of us Irish dancers on the tour, we all started in the competitive world of Irish dancing. We’d go away to the championships and everything like that. And then in 2019, I auditioned for A Taste of Ireland and joined the company that later that year.”
The dancers are the most visible part of the show, Pymm said, but the musicians – a singer, a fiddler and a guitarist – are top-notch as well and not to be missed.
“They could stand alone,” Pymm said. “They’re very strong; they’re very powerful … They’re not just there to give the dancers a break. They really push the story and add to the story. We have really emotional numbers like Danny Boy, which everyone knows, but we have paired that with like a contemporary solo, which maybe you wouldn’t expect to see in an Irish dance show.
About one in 10 Americans claims some Irish ancestry, according to the U.S. Census. Irish culture and music have spread all over the world, and Irish pubs can be found as far from the Emerald Isle as Argentina, Malaysia and Qatar.
“We always joke around that no matter where you go, someone always has a bit of Irish in them,” Pymm said. “Even if they don’t have a direct connection to Ireland, I think people just really enjoy the joy that comes from that culture. There’s so much to be celebrated within it: the music, the dancing, the food and the community culture that they have over there. I think people just gravitate towards that because it produces so much joy.”
‘A Taste of Ireland’
April 28 – Bing Crosby Theater, Spokane
April 29 – Capitol Theater, Yakima
May 18 – Numerica Performing Arts Center
www.atasteofirelandshow.com
Dancers Brittany Pymm, right, and Mitchell O’Hara perform “Hurling” in “A Taste of Ireland.”
Dancer Ella Giammichele portrays the Vikings conquering a piece of Ireland in “A Taste of Ireland – The Irish Music & Dance Sensation”