Doreen McFeelyDoreen McFeely, who has died at the age of 58, was a much-respected and loved teacher of dance, and a vivacious, strong-spirited adventurer with a social conscience.
Transforming her mother's Stamer Street livingroom into a hive of creative activity in the 1950s, she began to create performances there and charge her parents and neighbours admission. From those humble beginnings Doreen went on to produce large-scale shows with hundreds of children in the National Concert Hall.
It all began when her mother, Marie-Therese Barron, was inspired to send her daughters to dance classes after seeing the movie, The Red Shoes, and a circus act featuring a girl balanced on top of a horse in ballet shoes in Kilbeggan, Co Westmeath.
So Doreen was sent to Irish dancing classes with Miss Medlar in Scoil Bhríde, Ranelagh, and proceeded at the age of 12 to Jill Margey's ballet classes on St Stephen's Green. She eventually attained all the Royal Academy of Dancing exams and went on to take countless students through their RAD exams in her Stamer Street studio until May 2003.
Doreen McFeely is regarded with affection by countless generations of young girls to whom she taught ballet and Irish dancing in Palmerston School of Ballet, Scoil Bhríde in Ranelagh (where she taught for 42 years), Scoil Mobhi in Glasnevin and St Mary's in Donnybrook.
Rather ingeniously, she also came up with a strategy for teaching young boys who had no interest in dance, by identifying the ringleader and making him the star of the show. One of her students, Jenny Griffith, was recently accepted by the Northern School of Contemporary Dance in Leeds.
In her late 20s McFeely danced with Dublin Ballet Club, with which one of her most memorable roles was that of Peter Pan. Compared to Priscilla Presley in looks, she also performed in pantomimes at the Gaiety with Maureen Potter and Jimmy O'Dea.
Slogadh provided another outlet for her boundless creativity. Choreographing for the dance-drama section, her work sometimes reduced the adjudicators to tears. She garnered countless trophies for her productions with fifth- and sixth-class students, and collected 25 Gradam awards.
Her shows, like Them and Us, on the subject of prejudice were often inspired by social issues. Putting visuals, music and dance to the service of raising public awareness, her performers, including mime artists like The Diceman and her own son, Davy, sometimes walked up and down Grafton Street in agitprop mode about issues ranging from aerosol cans to the Birmingham Six.
Through her dance-drama pieces, McFeely thus was one of the first to draw attention to environmental issues in Dublin, particularly recycling, the ozone layer and litter. One of her productions, which featured a Mr Sludge, travelled as far as Belgium. The heavy porcelain toilet she brought with her for the set raised a few eyebrows at Brussels Airport customs.
As well as big ballet numbers like La Bayadère, she created numerous dance shows for children in the National Concert Hall, drawing on themes from Disney, and Hans Christian Andersen. One of her most outstanding productions was a version of The Muppets, in the John Player Theatre in 1987.
Six months after the birth of her second child in the early 1970s, McFeely was in a car accident which required more than 300 stitches to her face, and was given the last rites. But, ever the fighter, she bounced back, and her face healed.
Multifaceted, she was also a world traveller who sought inspiration for her dance pieces everywhere she went. She and her husband, David, travelled to China, South Africa, Thailand, the US and all over Europe together.
Wherever she went, she searched out local dance routines and music and visited local costume shops to find costumes for her pupils back home. Upon her return from China her next show in the National Concert Hall featured Chinese dance with authentic costumes, posted home from China by her son, Barra.
When diagnosed with terminal cancer McFeely undertook an expedition to South America, to track down the descendants of her grandfather, Ambrose Martin, an Argentine national who had long been a source of fascination. She and Barra met fourth-generation Irish there and went through graveyards as part of their research. While they were going through church records in Suipecha near Buenos Aires, a Mr Kelly dropped in, who happened to know Martins in another town, serendipitously leading to a family reunion.
McFeely's wanderlust did not exclude Ireland. In the 1980s, when her children were teenagers, she decided to walk and cycle round the entire coast of Ireland and to write a book about it, Around Ireland Under My Own Steam.
Using every spare minute she had, she headed off at weekends, doing the coastline section by section. Her diaries of the project, kept in a Samsonite case, were nearly lost once when, on she was her way to use the word-processor in a public library, the bag was stolen. After pursuing the thieves in vain on foot, much to her delight the diaries were recovered in the back of a number 77 bus the next day. More recently she went on fundraising walks for leukaemia to Lapland and to Spain and joined Toastmasters.
Everyone she met was moved and inspired by her open nature. She never let her illness diminish her positive nature and lust for life.
Open to the cultures of the world, Doreen loved Thai cooking, Ayurveda, and began every day with a yoga move, the sun-salute.
Independent of spirit, she wouldn't think twice about heading off by herself into town to participate in anti-war protests, or to a Michael Jackson concert.
A wonderful mother and wife, she was always very supportive of her children: Barra, who set up Dunbarra cheese, Orla, who is keeping her mother's dance schools going, and Davy, who works in finance.
She is survived by husband, David; children Barra, Orla and Davy; grandchild, Simon; and mother, Marie-Therese Barron.
Doreen McFeely: born December 6th, 1945; died, April 25th, 2004