High-Kicking Katie Hughes

By Gretchen Will Mayo

With flashing footwork and amazing straight-leg kicks, Katie Hughes makes Irish jigs and hornpipes look as easy as skipping across the sidewalk. Her spunk and love for Irish dance have made her a U.S. and world champion. “But I didn’t like dancing at first,” Katie remembers. “I began classes when I was five, and for two years I struggled. I only stuck with it because my teacher said I had talent.”

Irish dancing is particularly demanding. Whether performing in hard tap shoes or soft slippers called gillies, Irish dancers are forbidden to bend their knees to either leap or cushion a landing. It’s not easy! Judges also look for perfect posture—shoulders back, head up, and arms straight down at the sides with hands in fists.

As Katie learned more steps she began to enjoy practicing and was soon ready to compete. “My family warned me that I shouldn’t expect to win an award at my first competition, but I wanted to prove them wrong. When I got second place [in solo competition] at the 1990 Mid-America Oireachtas (ur ACK tus), I was hooked.”

In 1997, at the age of fifteen, Katie won the top overseas solo dance award in her age group at the annual Olympics of Irish dancing—the Oireachtas Rince na Cruinne (world championships)—held in Ireland. But the trophies and medals that crowd her bookshelves in Chicago, Illinois, are there because Katie Hughes was determined to dance in spite of two major health hurdles—scoliosis (curvature of the spine) and asthma.

“The exercise-induced asthma attacks started when I was nine,” says five-foot-two-inch Katie. “Medications help to control it, but sometimes during allergy season I may have to sit out for a short while during practice.” The truth is, more than once during group dance competition, called a ceili (KAY lee), Katie has pushed herself through an asthma attack. “If my lungs stop producing air, I have to make my chest push to breathe, and go on dancing. I can’t quit in the middle of a ceili. On a team we all depend on one another.” Katie tucks a strand of her long light-brown hair behind her ear and smiles. “I won’t let it get in my way because I love dancing.”

It was the director of her dance academy who first noticed signs of scoliosis when Katie was thirteen. On the Fourth of July, doctors fitted her into a body brace. “I was hot, sweaty, and very unhappy that day,” Katie recalls. In the early weeks her back had to adjust to the brace in increasing spans of time. By September, when she entered eighth grade, Katie was wearing the brace around the clock. Her only hours of freedom from it came during daily dance practice.

“I love big competitions and the excitement that builds while I wait to hear the top five scores.”

“Friends would ask, ‘How can you sleep in that thing?’ I’d tell them that my spine seems to need the brace and I barely feel anything,” Katie says. “I learned that if I acted as though the brace were nothing, others would forget about it—and in a way, I would, too.”

That fall Katie practiced every day. Her goal was to be fully competitive by Thanksgiving, when the Mid-America Oireachtas is held annually. Irish dancers must score in the top ten percent in a dance category at an annual U.S. Oireachtas to qualify for the world Oireachtas in Ireland. When Katie won first places in both her solo dance and ceili performances, she qualified to compete in the 1996 world competition in Galway, Ireland.

“In Galway, I saw the Irish do high kicks that came up to their noses,” Katie says. “They’re so good. You feel lucky just to be on the scoreboard with them.”

That year Katie placed thirtieth in the world solo performance, an exceptional achievement for an American dancer.

Katie’s training includes working with an instructor at the Trinity Academy of Irish Dance every other day and practicing at home with a stage and mirrors built by her dad. “You have to be really committed,” she says. “I can’t hang out. But my friends understand.”

The rules for competition in Irish dance also include dress and hairstyle. Women’s hair must be curled and pulled back. Katie and other dancers often wait for their turns to take the stage wearing hair rollers and smocks that protect their beautifully decorated costumes, rich with Celtic designs. The dancers give each other encouragement as they wait. “The people I compete against are my best friends,” Katie says. “We don’t think of beating each other, but just try to do our best for ourselves.”

Dance competitions and special performances have taken Katie to exciting places. She has traveled to Belgium for the International Folk Festival, danced in five of Ireland’s world competitions, and flown to New York and California to dance on national television shows.

Katie’s life is clicking along like a hard-shoe running tap, but she’s planning for the future, too. Her goal is to continue dancing while studying physical therapy in college. “It’s really cool how physical therapists have made my pain go away,” she says enthusiastically.

As Katie relaxes against a cushion, her right foot taps the floor as though it’s itching to dance. “I only have to wear this brace until I stop growing,” she says with a smile. “But I’ll be dancing all my life.”

Katie took second place in solo performance and firsts for her other team dances at the 1998 Mid-America Oireachtas.

Katie and her teammates won for team figure dancing in 1994 and ceili dancing in 1998, the first Americans ever to win world-championship gold medals in these categories.