Ella King had more than the luck of the Irish twice in a row.
The 20-year Kahurangi Irish Dance School member went back-to-back at the National Irish Dancing Championships over the final weekend in September.
The 28-year-old veterinarian was sure-fire at the Auckland spectacle, with only two opponents leaping and skipping in unison with static arms in the 22-and-over category.
“I’d been training really hard all year, and was hoping for the best, and then just to hear those results called out was quite emotional,” she says.
“You perform three dances on the day and [the judges] do all the raw scores, and they convert that into what they call Irish points, and then they add those all up, and that works out your placings.”
Ella took up residence in Westport five years prior, but her Kahurangi bond hasn’t gone banjaxed.
Her Irish dancing has progressed by leaps and bounds at the Nelson studio since she was eight.
“The friendships and the family feeling in the school, we’re just such a close-knit group, and everyone’s so supportive of each other and celebrating everyone’s achievements,” she says.
“I aim to go back to Nelson once a month for lessons, and then in between, it’s just training at a hall [in Westport] and sending videos back and forth.
“I dance three days a week, and then on other days I’ll try to do two to three days of exercise like weight training and stair sprints,” she adds.
Ella says the pot of gold in her Irish dancing pursuits was the grand stage in Glasgow and Dublin in 2024 and 2025, respectively, and she has qualified for next year’s World Irish Dancing Championship in the US city with an influential Irish heritage, Chicago.
But she may pause this upcoming jig due to the cost. Meanwhile, her classmate Tabitha Kidd also won a place at Chicago at the nationals, and four out of seven Kahurangi Irish Dance School girls were in luck to be in the top 10 of their respective age categories.
