Teacher Bio: Niall O’Leary TCRG, ADCRG

NIALL O’LEARY TCRG, ADCRG is a former All-Ireland and World Champion dancer from Dublin, Ireland. His teachers included Kevin Massey, proclaimed by Michael Flatley to be the greatest ever Irish dancer, and Rory O’Connor, the first man to do Irish dancing on radio, and Rory’s daughters Breda and Ann.

The Niall O’Leary School of Irish Dance has been community-building and training champions since 1995, and currently has locations in New York City, Philadelphia PA, Mississippi, Miami in Florida, and Mexico. O’Leary choreographed the first-ever multi-national team for the World Irish Dancing Championships (1996), featuring dancers from Germany, Finland, Switzerland, Belgium, Australia, Botswana, USA and Ireland.

Based in New York City for over twenty five years, O’Leary has performed regularly as a solo artist, in duet with Darrah Carr, with Mick Moloney’s Green Fields of America, and with his professional company The Niall O’Leary Irish Dance Troupe. He is in constant demand across the USA, as well as Canada, Ireland, and Asia as a performer, choreographer, master instructor and adjudicator in Irish Dance, and most recently also as a performer and instructor in a new genre that he himself has created: Celtic Tap Improv. He has choreographed three productions of ‘Dancing at Lughnasa’. He is the Artistic Director of the New York City Irish Dance Festival presented in May each year.

O’Leary was honored to be an adjudicator for the World Irish Dance Championships in Glasgow, Scotland in 2018 and again in 2024. Currently he is organizing an International Irish Dancing Feis on the Mississippi coast (Fall 2024). Previously he has taught intensive dance classes at Catskills Irish Arts Week, New York, Augusta Irish Week, West Virginia and dance and music classes at Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival, Alaska.

He recently made an interactive presentation at the Residence of the Irish Ambassador at The Hague, in The Netherlands, entitled ‘The History and Trajectory of Irish Dance, 1800 to 2050’.

He has recorded a new video: Celtic Tap Improv: Introduction, Instruction and Deconstruction. O’Leary is a regular feis adjudicator and musician, playing piano-accordion and keyboards; he also plays spoons, spoon-horn and bodhrán, and teaches Irish mouth music, Irish whistling, Irish singing, sean-nós dancing,Irish language and body percussion at workshops across America. His Irish Dance Music CD Can You Irish Dance to This??? is available exclusively from his website, also available as a digital download.

He was founding Chairperson of Úll Mór CCÉ, the first Manhattan branch of Comhaltas (1997), and served as President of the Irish Business Organization of NY Inc. (2010-11). He is founding President of the new Manhattan branch of Conradh na Gaeilge (2017). Additionally, O’Leary practices as an architect: his latest interactive design project is House for an Irish Dancer. O’Leary has been honored by Irish America Magazine as one of the ‘Top 100 Irish-Americans of the Year’, and by the Irish Echo newspaper as a ‘Community Champion’. www.nialloleary.com