Dance school that's made a few moves in its time

Trade NamesBy adapting to whatever's in vogue, the Morosini-Whelan School of Dancing has managed to stay a step ahead, writes Rose Doyle

The Morosini-Whelan School of Dancing will be up there in stars, spangles and lived-in memories when the dance history of Dublin comes to be written. Around town - north and south of the river - through the thick and thin of almost all of the 20th century, it's beenpart of what the city was, and is.

If passion, professionalism and a sheer joy in the beautiful energy of dance are guarantees of survival, the school will be around too to celebrate its centenary in 2012.

It's located these days in Parnell Square, where Trade Namesfound student dancers strutting their stuff on honey-coloured boards in a long, bright room to instruction from the doyenne of dance teachers, Mary Morosini-Whelan.

Her students say Mary Morosini-Whelan is "the best there is", lament the lack of "proper" ballrooms in today's Dublin, and talk about the addictive pleasure of dance. Pictures on walls show elegant limbs and swinging skirts, heeled shoes, and bobby socks. Dance clothes are nothing if not eclectic.

Mary's daughter, Sharon, is director of today's school but its history, and the telling, belong to Mary. It all began when her father, Joseph Whelan, opened a dance school in Harcourt Street in 1912. "He was young, in his 20s," she says, "and had been at Prof Graham's Academy of Dancing in North Great George's Street. He just developed a love of dancing - though he never spoke about his background much."

Her mother, Violetta Morosini, had no such inhibitions. "She spoke a lot about her background, which was Italian," Mary says. "She was a concert pianist and lived a few doors down the street from Joseph's school. When they married they put their names and talents together and moved to a larger premises at 41 Harcourt Street, opposite the old railway station. The Four Provinces ballroom would be built next to them in time."

The brand name and growth of the Morosini-Whelan School of Dancing moved on apace with the teaching of such dances as the military two-step, valeta, Boston two step, and old time waltz. Pupils were what Mary calls "the elite of the country, those who attended big balls. The general public didn't take dancing lessons. There were no general dancing ballrooms."

Harcourt Street, at the time, had an artistic buzz to it and Mary talks of gatherings attended by such as Michael Mac Liammoir and Harry Kernoff the painter. Her mother, she says, used tell of crawling along the floor with an apple tart at Easter 1916, avoiding gunshot through the windows.

By the 1920s other schools of dancing had opened in the city. So had ballrooms like the Rotunda Winter Gardens, the AOH in Parnell Square, the Broadway Ballroom in O'Connell Street, the Imperial in Clery's, Moran's Hotel and the La Scala in Princess Street. Customers danced to the music of such as Rourke's Novelty Band, Desmond Dingles Band, Harrisons Famous Band and, with its home in La Scala, the Gaiety Band.

Mary, who has done her homework on all of this, says dances began to change too. Joseph and Violetta Morosini-Whelan, following a trip to London to learn to tango, demonstrated the buzz dance of the time in the Mansion House and other city ballrooms. Fast on its heels came the charleston, quick time, foxtrot and hesitation.

Rearing a family on the income from dancing was hard work. The classes were seasonal and numbers plummeted in the summer so Violetta, with her Ladies Trio, would play hotels around Ireland and in the Isle of Man, sending money home to house-husband Joseph. Lent brought thin times too, with many giving up the pleasures of dancing for the period.

By the 1930s Joseph and Violetta Morosini-Whelan had moved to Henry Street, to what would be the school and family home for the next 40 years. Mary was aged eight, the third of their five children.

"Henry Street was long and narrow, even then," Mary remembers.

"The dance studios had wood panelled walls at first, and five windows. The only thing was we'd no friends since there there were no children living around us. We used hang around the roofs, playing across them down as far as Arnotts.

"We were near the buses and trams of the day and my father used bring us to Blackrock Baths or Seapoint, they were favourite places. The radio station, 2RN, was nearby, and my mother used broadcast from there. It moved to the GPO later. Woolworths was in Henry Street, and Hafners which sent sausages worldwide."

Joseph and Violetta Morosini-Whelan had five children one of whom, Raymond, died aged five of diptheria. Their first born, Frank, would in time open his own school in South King Street. Dorothy Morosini-Whelan became a ballerina and now lives in Australia; George was for a long time Mary's dance partner.

"We liked Henry Street," Mary says, "but then it was what we knew. My father would have loved a garden; he was always on the roof trying to grow flowers and even tomatoes."

Popular dances now were the quickstep, slow foxtrot, slow waltz and old-style rumba. Dancing schools and ballrooms grew in number and so did competitions but, through it all, ballroom dancing remained the thing in the Henry Street school.

Joseph Whelan took and passed the membership ballroom exam in London in 1938 and, at the school's popular social and party night, Violetta would play piano as well as trumpet, sax and drums. "There were no holidays for Joseph and Violetta," Mary says, "all their energy went into their art and their family. They gave classes for more than 50 years in Castleknock College and taught dance, too, in Clongowes and in Blackrock College."

Joseph Whelan died when he was a young 56, leaving Violetta on her own. She added ballet to the school's curriculum - "she loved ballet and playing its kind of music so this all helped her deal with the sorrow of Joseph's death", Mary says. "She died in 1970, aged 82, after a fall down the stairs in Henry Street."

Mary, before her mother died, had been running the school. She'd studied and added Latin American dancing to the curriculum, represented Ireland in dance championships at home and in London - as well as meeting and marrying Sean Brunton who "worked at sea and didn't dance at all! The eldest of our five children was 17, the youngest a year old, when he died about 30 years ago."

Asked if life was hard, rearing five children alone in Henry Street as well as running a dance school, Mary says only that it was "varied".

John Travolta and Saturday Night Feverin the 1970s brought the good times.

"It was the only really profitable time," Mary says. "People came out of the woodwork to dance, it excited them so much. But it all faded after a few years and we went back to poverty again!"

As well as Sharon, responsible for adding Argentinian tango and salsa to the school's dance classes, Mary and Sean Brunton's children were Louise, now a "successful businesswoman in London", Elana who "married at a young age and went to Canada", and John "who got into dancing and went to ballet school in London".

The school's Henry Street exit, in the late 1980s, had its quota of drama when a fire two doors down the street spread and burned the studio to a shell. For a time, into the 1990s, Mary and Sharon ran the school together by moving from one ballroom space to another around Parnell Square. When Sharon at last found a suitably refurbished premises, at today's address at 46 Parnell Square West, they moved in and set up once more.

"The school will continue under Sharon," Mary assures, "ballroom dancing is on the decline but salsa and Argentinian tango classes are very successful. After 95 years the show still goes on!"