About 20 years ago my husband and I gave up smoking. To keep off the cigarettes we decided we needed hobbies.
Independently we tried various things but nothing really appealed to us until we found ourselves at the De La Salle College in Churchtown, south Dublin, one cold, wintry night and embarked on set-dancing classes.
That night a red-haired, bearded, fast-talking Tipperary man greeted us, and not only did he teach us to be proficient dancers but he became our friend as well.
Set-dancing was Connie Ryan's life and once you became as fanatical as he was life was an endless party.
He organised weekends away and I began to discover an Ireland that I never knew existed. I would inveigle my mother to mind my young children and off I would go to Kenmare, Dingle, the Blaskets, Tory Island or Inis Oirr and dance and dance for the whole weekend.
White-faced male
An outrageous flirt with every woman who came to his class, Connie nonetheless took exceptional interest in any man who had the courage to come to his class, and he would persevere with the fellow until he was proficient.
It was quite common to see Connie in a waltz-hold with a white-faced male, pushing and propelling him around the dance floor. And when the man became a dancer Connie would give him sound advice on how to deal with the women he would encounter: "Don't let yourself be taken over by any woman. Move around."
His first love was hurling and in fact he ran his classes like a training session. "Tackle up ... you're over-trained," he would roar if you went wrong.
But even though the classes were fun he took his role as teacher seriously and went to enormous trouble to make sure sets were danced in the traditional style. If you started to get "notions" about your dancing prowess Connie would put you back on track in his own inimitable style.
For those not involved in the set-dancing scene it is hard to imagine the social leveller that Connie made it. No matter if you were a top-level decision-maker during the day, once you crossed the threshold of the Ierne Ballroom in Parnell Square, Dublin on a Thursday night, your skill as a dancer was all that mattered.
Connie was always open to new ideas and he opened up a milieu that can be narrow and rigid in outlook. He was unique, a man larger than life, full of good will, courage and generosity with a presence that could lift and transform any occasion. I often experienced a ceili in a dusty, dismal hall with a band playing forlornly being transformed into a pulsating occasion with Connie's arrival.
Piecing together sets
A word that some elderly person in a parish had a figure of a set was enough to whet his appetite and he would travel to the end of the country to see it. I watched him piecing a set together once. My husband had been eager to track down the dance of the county we live in and after many attempts had the good fortune to meet Bill Quinn of Glencree.
Visits were made to his home and efforts were made to get the set together; but it was not until Connie became involved that it took shape. He counted out bars of music and assembled a jumbled memory into figures and drove us daft in getting it right. It is now danced throughout the country and in America too.
He was a meticulous organiser. Ten years ago I went on his first trip to America. He brought 57 of us to New York, Washington and Baltimore and whipped us into line as the Slievenamon Set Dancers. We performed at The Glen Echo Festival and that first trip became the first of many for Connie.
When he became ill some years ago he approached the problem in his usual, methodical manner, accepting all the constraints it imposed. He started to raise funds for cancer research. His set-dancing classes now attracted the nurses and doctors who treated him and when he died last May his dancing partner, Betty McCoy, was able to hand over over £14,000 to St Vincent's Hospital where Connie had been a patient.
January workshop
For several years, he had organised a set-dancing workshop in January. It had become the event of the year with dancers travelling from England, America and mainland Europe. Everyone expected Connie to have found a new set and they were never disappointed. This year Betty McCoy has taken on the venture as a "celebration" of Connie's life with all the proceeds from the weekend going to cancer care and research at St Vincent's Private Hospital.
It promises to be a wonderful weekend, beginning on next Friday night at the Grand Hotel, Malahide. Six dancing masters - Aidan Vaughan, Mick Mulkerrins, Seamus O Mealoid, Pat Murphy, Donncha O Muinneachain and Padraig McEneany - will teach sets, steps, ceili and two-hand dances.
The Michael Sexton and Templehouse ceili bands will play at three ceilis over the weekend. Away we go.