Carmel began Irish dancing in Dublin at the tender age of 2½ with the Kay Moore School in Dublin. She danced her first solo show performance aged 3 in one of the weekly Sunday night variety concerts at Dublin’s Liberty Hall Theatre. Carmel went on to perform in numerous international folk-dance festivals, concerts, cabarets, theatre and television shows throughout Ireland, Europe and North America.

Carmel won her first Championship at the age of 7. Over the next 14 years, firstly as a pupil of the Cora Cadwell School and then of the Rory O’Connor School (both in Dublin), she won over 100 Championship titles in solo and figure (team) Irish dancing at local, regional, national and international levels.

Carmel began teaching Irish dance in 1979 as an assistant at the Martina McKenna School of Irish Dance, Dublin. She qualified as an Irish dance teacher with An Chomhdháil (www.irishdancingorg.com) in 1987. She also holds a Master of Business Studies in Human Resource Management (training & talent development) and a Master of Arts in Ethnochoreology (anthropology of dance), both from the University of Limerick (www.ul.ie) and both with first class honours. She was awarded the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (www.cipd.ie) ‘Outstanding Graduate’ award in 2001, 2004 and 2006 and the Kemmy Business School (https://www.ul.ie/business) ‘Outstanding Graduate of the Year’ award in 2004 and 2006.

Research

From 1987 until 1995 when she moved to Limerick, Carmel studied other dance forms including tap, jazz, lyrical, contemporary, salsa and street dance. She participated in the John Player Tops of the Town competition from 1987 to 1997 and was a cast member with national winners An Post Dublin (1992) and Dunnes Stores (1993).

Carmel is currently Principal and Creative Director of Munster Academy of Irish Dance which she founded in 1997. Aside from teaching Irish dance, she is also an Irish dance researcher, historian, archivist and memorabilia collector. She has presented on the subject of Irish dance from both a practitioner and academic perspective at numerous national and international conferences and symposia since 2008. Her research interests are varied and range from the analysis of gender in Irish dance to examination of issues such as power, politics and influence in Irish dance organisations. More recently, Carmel has acted as research co-supervisor for Masters level interdisciplinary academic research at the Technological University of the Shannon Midlands Midwest (www.tus.ie). This research stands at the intersection of dance/movement and its application in social care and wider health humanities settings.