An irish Christmas with ishna
featuring Ciaran Nagle & Tara Novak
Friday, December 20, 2024 | doors: 7pm - showtime 8pm
Seated front orchestra / Seated rear orchestra / seated balcony
A festive and joyful celebration of an Irish Christmas, weaving together dance, music and stories.
An Irish Christmas with Ishna" isn’t just a concert: it is a celebration of the holiday spirit.
Incorporating stories, ancient Irish ballads, Christmas standards, lively fiddling and award-winning step dancing, this show is sure to leave audience members with a most memorable Christmas experience.
Ishna is fronted by Irish Tenor Ciarán Nagle and fiddler/vocalist Tara Novak (both of Riverdance and the Three Irish Tenors). The husband-and-wife duo bring their humor and dynamic energy to the stage, and are accompanied by their stellar band of traditional musicians: Dan Meyers: Uilleann pipes/whistles; Bjorn Wennas - guitar; David McGrory - accordion/banjo; Brian O’Neill - bodhran/percussion. They are joined by brother-and-sister dancing team Kevin and Maureen Doyle, who will thrill and charm audiences with their championship-winning steps.
Ishna’s performance is energetic and uplifting, infusing new rhythms and harmonies into the beloved music and stories of Ireland.
For Ishna, Christmas is about community and common connections, bringing young and old together at this special time of year.
Come share in the holiday joy!
Meet the Dancers
Maureen Doyle
Maureen Doyle shares in a family tradition of Irish step dance as a duo performer with her brother Kevin Doyle, a National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellow. Maureen learned her jigs and reels from their County Roscommon-born mother Margaret Taylor Doyle, and she danced at community events and competitions typical of the Irish American experience in the 1950s and 1960s. Maureen is a performer with Roscommon Soles an ensemble that was created for the Library of Congress in 2014 and the Irish Embassy in Washington D.C.
Kevin Doyle
With six dancing decades under his feet, Kevin Doyle is a National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellow, the highest honor awarded to a traditional artist in the U.S. Irish jigs and reels learned in childhood from his County Roscommon mother, along with American tap dance, showcase his magical repertoire of historic national styles. Kevin’s hornpipe, jigs, and reels have taken his performances from the West of Ireland to stages in the American West. He has danced, choreographed, and presented at Ireland’s Willie Clancy Week and stepped to the tunes of the historic Marine Band for St. Patrick’s Day as a guest of the Obama White House!
