On Tuesday afternoon, Oct. 20, five girls, ranging in age from 7 to 11, stood in the hallway in the basement of Babcock Fine Arts Center waiting for their Irish step dancing class to begin. Most wore ballet shoes. One was barefoot. All seemed anxious to get started.

Some were “old hands” in their third year of Irish dance. Others, like 7-year-old Laura Wilburn, just started taking lessons about two months ago. The class meets for one hour a week throughout the academic year, and ends the year with a recital.

Irish dance is one of several classes offered to area children through Sweet Briar’s after-school dance program. The classes, which are taught by Sweet Briar students, also include ballet, jazz, modern and circus arts, which incorporates hula hoops, tumbling and rhythmic gymnastics.

A few minutes after 4 p.m., the instructor, Sweet Briar senior Katherine Boltz, turned on her iPod Touch and Celtic music filled the room. The group then circled up for stretching exercises, during which they chatted about current events, such as swine flu and whether or not anyone had attended the recent Senior Dance Concert at Sweet Briar.

Students in Katherine Boltz's Irish dance class practice a jig, being careful to keep their toes pointed. When everyone was limber, Boltz handed out long, flat sticks that had been painted pink, purple and blue and were decorated with stick-on “bling.” They were paint stirrers, actually, repurposed as tools that would help the girls keep their arms in the right position for Irish dance — straight and by their sides.

Under Boltz’s watchful eye and with sometimes hands-on guidance, the girls held the sticks behind their backs as they practiced their steps, crisscrossing the floor one by one, their legs flicking in front of them to the sprightly music.

Boltz, 22, has been teaching Irish dance at Sweet Briar since she was a first-year student. She began taking lessons 15 years ago when her ballet studio started offering Irish dance. She was 7 at the time and had been taking ballet for two years.

She’s the only one in the family who takes Irish dancing, but described her mom as a “lifelong dancer,” who danced in college and still does ballet and flamenco. “She tried the first year of Irish,” Boltz said, smiling. “Didn’t go so well.”

In high school, Boltz started substitute teaching at studios near her hometown of Purcellville, Va. She currently trains and is a teaching assistant at the Muggivan School of Irish Dance in Richmond. She makes the trip every weekend.

Boltz competes at the championship level in both hard shoe and soft shoe, and with a ceili — pronounced “kay-lee” — team from the Muggivan School. The championship level is the highest in which you can compete, she said, and her goal is to dance at the 2010 World Championships in Glasgow, Scotland.

To get there, she must place at the regional championships, to be held in December in Dallas. In the Lone Star State, she’ll compete as a solo dancer and on Muggivan’s team for the ceili, or group dance.

Boltz spent last semester studying in Ireland at the University of Limerick, which she called a “fabulous place.” While there, she took classes in Irish culture, history and music. She also danced, participating in ceilis and impromptu pub dances.

Most people in Ireland took Irish dance in their school physical education classes, Boltz said, so they’re “very free” about it and don’t hesitate to dance if the music calls for it.

One would think then, that after studying and dancing in Ireland for half a year, Boltz could answer one of the most perplexing questions about Irish dance: Why do the dancers hold their arms stiffly by their sides?

Boltz shrugged her shoulders and offered a few theories.

Dancing is often done in pubs, she said, which can be crowded and not conducive to flailing one’s arms. Keeping your arms by your sides makes dancing easier and less dangerous. Or perhaps they started dancing that way so passing British soldiers, should they gaze through the pub window, would not know the Irish were inside having fun.

There also is a religious explanation — No dancing! — as well as the idea that people danced in doorways with wooden thresholds so they could hear the tapping sounds of their feet. “No one really knows,” she said.

After she graduates in May with a bachelor’s degree in dance, Boltz plans to send audition tapes to the famous “Riverdance” show, but her heart is leading her to teach Irish dance as a career. She’s known this for awhile. “It wasn’t until my sophomore year that I thought, ‘This is what I really want to do,’ ” Boltz said.

On Nov. 13 and 14, Boltz will perform in Sweet Briar’s Fall Dance Concert. For the event, she has choreographed a dance that she describes as having “some Irish dance elements to it.” In it, she and two other students will dance to music by the Afro Celt Sound System, a group that, as the name implies, fuses Celtic and African music.

Boltz said the dance, which she’s still fine tuning, will be “very physical” and “inspired by my time in Ireland. I will try to convey the joy and the fun. The dance is a lot of fun.”

For more information about the Fall Dance Concert, contact Mark Magruder, dance program director, at (434) 381-6150. For more information about Sweet Briar’s after-school dance program, contact Ella Magruder at (434) 381-6349.