When 12-year-old Alan Foley saw the film Flashdance in 1983, he wrote to the Royal Ballet School in London to ask if they had any classes in disco dancing.

“You can imagine the response I got,” he laughs.

It might not be Billy Elliott, but there is still something cinematic about the story of a young lad in Cork in the grim 1980s who dreamed of becoming a professional dancer. Especially as that dream came true, with Alan not only becoming one of the most celebrated Irish ballet dancers of his time, but also inspiring a whole new generation through the Alan Foley Academy of Dance in west Cork.

Meeting at the studio in Skibbereen, Alan explains that as the youngest of eight children raised in Fountainstown, ballet was not the obvious choice of career – his dad worked in the Dunlop factory, while his mother was a homemaker.

Indeed, his introduction to that world was more Saturday Night Fever than Swan Lake, after he won a disco-dancing competition in the local clubhouse aged 12.

“John Travolta et al,” he quips.

But while his disco dreams might have been shattered after the Flashdance episode, he somehow gathered the courage to approach the celebrated Irish ballet dancer, choreographer and teacher, Joan Denise Moriarty.

“She frightened the life out of me,” he admits. “She said to me: ‘Well, to become a dancer you need to study art and music and drama and the theatre and blah, blah, blah.’ And I thought, ‘Is she for real?’

“So I fled and I went back a year later and I said: ‘I promise I’ll stay if you never put me in tights.’ And she said: ‘Of course dear!’”

How long did that last? We raise a brow.

“Three months,” Alan deadpans. “She had me out on the Opera House stage in them.”

TO RUSSIA WITH LOVE

That white lie aside, Alan explains how Moriarty’s dedication was “unsurpassed” and inspired him to pursue ballet as his career, initially in the UK.

However, a major turning point came in 1989 when the celebrated Kirov Academy of Ballet in Russia (think the ballet world’s equivalent of Manchester United)opened its doors to westerners for the first time and Alan was selected as one of 60 students to take part in the summer school.

“I didn’t know what I was letting myself in for,” he says of the intense regime. “When they said, ‘Jump!’, you said, ‘How high?’ Literally and figuratively.

“When I went to Leningrad in 1989, I went 11 and a half stone. I came back 9 and a half stone… and remember, I’m 6ft 1.””

But despite the challenges, the experience “opened up so many doors” in his professional career, with leading roles in many of ballet’s greatest works.

“My favourite role throughout my career – and I’ve danced it many, many times – was that of the pirate Ali in the ballet Le Corsaire,” he says.

“That’s one of the things I love about ballet… it’s great escapism. You’re able to be a peasant or a prince or a pauper or a pirate.

“You can be anything and I loved that.”

SWAN SONG

Alan continued to dance professionally until the age of 38, when a health matter (he was born with a congenital heart murmur) began to make its presence felt. On medical advice, he decided that a gala in 2007 would be his “swan song”, but three days before the performance, collapsed and had to be rushed to hospital.

“Luckily, I did manage to get on stage,” he recalls. “It wasn’t my greatest performance ever, but it wasn’t the worst – and that was it.”

He admits that in the months following his retirement, he “grieved it terribly”.

“I always threw myself into dancing whenever something sad or bad happened in my life and here I couldn’t even do this,” he says. “That said, it was a great learning experience.”

Fortunately, early in his career, Alan had realised that there was never going to be any safety net with ballet and in 1991, set up the Alan Foley Academy of Dance.

“I didn’t want to be the one waiting for the phone to ring all the time,” he explains.

Rather than opt for a city location, he decided instead to start in Skibbereen, followed by classes in Clonakilty, Bantry and Carrigaline, having become the first Irish student to be awarded a fellowship in classical ballet from the Imperial Society of Teachers in London.

“And the reason I came down here was, growing up in Fountainstown – which would back then have been considered rural Ireland – I was always very grateful for any opportunities I got,” he explains.

“And I’m really glad that I made the decision to do that because here we are, 26 years later.”

BRINGING BALLET TO WEST CORK

Offering ballet, jazz and modern dance for children aged four to 18, the aim of Alan and his main instructor, Ciara Fitzgerald, is to make dance fun for the younger kids.

“You have to connect with them,” he says. “Basically, what you are trying to do with them is open up their imagination because they’ve seen Barbie Ballerina on television, they’ve seen some of the movies, they’ve seen all the other kids dancing in different shows and what not and you have to connect with what it is that is relevant today.”

As children move up the grades, however, he stresses that ballet is a difficult discipline to master, with genetics – and perseverance – playing a big part.

“Do you have long legs and long arms to create the beautiful lines that ballet requires? Do you have a small head on a long neck? Do you have a thing called turnout, which is the ability to rotate the legs outward from the hips, which creates flexible legs and hips? Are you flexible? Do you have a strong body? Are you musical? Are you rhythmical?” lists Alan.

“And then on top of that, do you have a very strong constitution? You need that because, when you think of it, how many other professions do you know where you stand in front of a mirror for eight hours a day?”

However, for those who are passionate enough to push through, he believes the training is second to none.

“It explores and exploits every part of a child’s development; their creative development, their emotional developmen and their intelligence, because you need to be smart to do ballet,” he says.

“There’s so much to it. And then of course it’s very beautiful.”

TUTUS, TIARAS & TEARS

Running side-by-side with the academy is Cork City Ballet: Ireland’s longest-running professional ballet company, which just celebrated its 25th anniversary with a performance of The Sleeping Beauty at Cork Opera House.

“That’s 25 years of tutus, tiaras, tempers, tears and torture,” quips Alan, explaining that meeting the running costs of a professional company is a constant struggle, between bringing in professional lead dancers from Russia to paying for custom-made costumes. “Some of the tutus are €3,000 each,” he states.

Yet, you imagine the would-be disco dancer from Fountainstown wouldn’t have it any other way.

“One minute I can be dealing with three-year-old children and then the next moment I can be dealing with a prima ballerina from the Bolshoi ballet and everything in between,” he smiles.

“And I just love that because it keeps everything in perspective.” CL

Visit www.corkcityballet.com

A dance star in the making

One of the academy’s most promising students is Kelly O’Herlihy, who attends weekly classes at both the Clonakilty and Skibbereen studios. The 14-year-old has been dancing seriously since she was eight and is very committed to her hobby, even wearing ankle weights while practising at home to perfect her kicks and turns.

“You have to do lots of stretching,” she adds, “because, like so many things, you have to be so flexible to do so many of those skills and you have to be strong as well.”

Highlights to date have included dancing the part of Clara in the studio’s production of The Nutcracker, though her dream role is the Sugar Plum Fairy. “I just love performing and I love the feeling when you do a move right,” says Kelly, who is interested in pursuing dance as a career.

Her father, Tom, is more than supportive of his daughter’s ambitions (“she lives the ballet!”) and very grateful to have classes of this calibre so close to home.

“You would expect that it’s only in Cork city that you would have a school like Alan’s with such international experience,” he says. “It’s brilliant to have that on our doorstop.”