Maggie Gallagher

I had a great fun time in Olso, Norway, in August. Special thanks to Janne for inviting me, it was great to be with you all again. Special thanks to the DJ Stefan "Bisse" Persson and to Camilla Wiik, Siw Andersen, Lene Ekelund, Anne Margrete Olaussen for all their help during the day.

The dances I taught were: Save Me Tonight, Paddy's Choir, Wandering Hearts, Open Your Eyes, Strip That Down & Love's Just a Feeling.

The theme on Saturday night was Bad Taste! (See Photo Gallery.)

I'm now taking time off to spend with my family. xx

It has been an amazing time in Germany at the Living Line Dance Magazine's Line Dance Star Awards! Personally, it was nice for me to meet with all my friends from Germany, Switzerland and Austria and lovely to see Steve Healy from Linedancer and Natalie Thurlow.

I was very honoured to host the Star Awards with Gert from Germany and really delighted to win the award for International Instructor. Thank you to everyone who voted for me, I really appreciate it.

Over the weekend I taught several of my latest dances including my new Improver choreographed with Gary O'Reilly, Wandering Hearts, and a brand new Intermediate, Open Your Eyes.

Thank you to everyone who supported the Isle of Wight Tours weekend (14-16 July) in Bournemouth at the Wessex hotel. I had a really fabulous weekend again with my good mate Gary O'Reilly! As you will see from the photos in the Photo Gallery, we had a great Irish-themed evening on Saturday night!

Thank you to Markus and all the gang from Switzerland and to Ricky from Austria for travelling over. It was great to see so many old faces again and to meet many new. Richard Palmer played a great set on Saturday night too! Thank you also to all the team at Isle of Wight Tours.

The dances I taught were Love's Just A Feeling, Strip That Down, Gary & mine's You Better Believe and a nice little easy one with my new Beginner, Save Me Tonight. Gary taught our brand new high Improver, Wandering Hearts, to the Wish I Could track by The Wandering Hearts.

I also had a great time with Gary O'Reilly at the Kingshill event in Blackpool in July. It was lovely to have Betty Drummond from Linedancer with us for the weekend (photos are on my Facebook). Linedancer have now taken over the Kingshill holidays and I send Betty and the Kingshill team my very best wishes for the future.

We had such a fun time and it was fantastic to see so many dancers from the North I haven’t seen for a while. I also had a fab time relaxing at Blackpool Pleasure beach with great friends. I hope everyone enjoyed the event as much as I did.

Dances I taught were Love's Just A Feeling, Strip That Down, You Better Believe and a brand-new Beginner called Save Me Tonight, which I choreographed for The Coppermine Kickers dancers in Sweden.

I'm looking forward to being with Daniella and Dorte of Living Line Dance Magazine, for the German Line Dance Star Awards, at the end of July. I am thrilled to have been invited to teach. I look forward to be seeing you all and will bring some brand new dances especially for you. :-)

I am also very happy to see that I am nominated in the International Teacher of the Year category! Thank you so much for that. x

We recently had such a great weekend in Coventry with my good friend Janne and some of her dancers from the Oslo Line Dance Club in Norway. We had a workshop Saturday morning and an evening social with my club. The evening ended in the Irish bar, Flannelly's, where we took over the dance floor and continued line dancing. Great fun, even my father and John joined us! We look forward to doing it again. Thanks to all the lovely Norwegian girls for visiting us that weekend. xx

Early in June, I had a brilliant afternoon workshop with Keeley in Oxford , so lovely to see everyone again.

I taught Love's Just A Feeling, You Better Believe and a brand new Intermediate one, Strip That Down, to a great funky track by One Direction's Liam Payne, which I've just choreographed with the lovely Tim Johnson. Here's a Strip That Down video taken at the event. Thank you so much for all the messages we have received about this video. Tim and I are really chuffed! The dance sheet is now on Linedancerweb and Copperknob.

Tim also taught his new Improver dance My Redemption Song to a fabulous track by Manoviski! If you're looking for an Improver dance this week, I highly recommend this one from Tim. Thank you to everyone for supporting the event.

Looking forward to my boys school gala day at the end of the week. xx

A big thank you to Chaipin & all her dancers from Hangzhou, China, & to everyone for supporting the Hangzhou event with myself and Roy Verdonk. It was so lovely to see you all!

A special thanks to those who travelled a long way to see me: Patty, Grace, Lena, Stephanie, & Gill from Taipei and Ann & Dora from Canada.

I taught You Better Believe, Scared of the Dark, Stay My Love, Nancy Mulligan & my new Intermediate dance especially choreographed for the event, Love's Just A Feeling, which is now released.

On Sunday Judy & her husband Larry took us around Shanghai City, which was an amazing experience! A BIG thank you to Judy Chen, who organised the trip on our way back to the airport. There are photos and videos of this tour on my Facebook and a selection of them are in my Photo Gallery on this website.

I went over to Ireland early in May and had a great time with Gary O'Reilly at the Celtic Connection event in Sligo. Gary and I taught our new Advanced dance, You Better Believe. I also taught Promise Me & Scared of the Dark and Gary taught his new dance Light It Up. A very big thank you to Debbie and Avril who did a grand job on the event. As you will see from the photos in my Photo Gallery the room looked amazing!

During the early hours of Saturday morning around 50 of us did the very special Darkness into Light charity walk. It started in the dark at 04:15, walking 5km finishing in light! This was a massive walk in Ireland with thousands taking part to raise money for Pieta House, a charity which supports depression and mental illness. The photo in my Gallery shows how delighted I was we had all taken part and done it!

Maggie G - News