About the show
A Podcast Celebrating the Rich Tapestry of Irish Dance
Long-form conversations with the dancers, teachers, and community makers who keep the tradition alive and create new paths for the future.
How it started
Born from the love of Irish dance
Planxty began as a simple idea: what if we sat down with the people who dedicate their lives to Irish dance and just listened? To us, the Irish dance community is our family, and this family has a lot of stories to tell.
The name comes from the Irish musical tradition; a planxty is an Irish dance tune composed in honor of another person. That spirit of tribute and celebration runs through everything we do. Dancers, musicians, teachers, adjudicators, family members all are recognized and celebrated on this podcast.
Each episode is a conversation, not an interview. On the Planxty podcast, we dig into the history, the music and movement, the joy, and the heartbreak that makes Irish dance one of the most compelling performing arts and competitive dance forms in the world.
Tradition is "creative transformation within continuity" (Jennifer Matsue). Planxty is all about this definition of tradition and Irish dance.
Meet your hosts
The Voices Behind Planxty
Kristo Sween
By day, Kristo is a law firm business development consultant and coach.
By night he is a 20-year Irish dance dad, live camera director with FEIStv, stage and production manager for Kickin’ It Irish and Celtic Holiday Hooley, a voice-over and on-camera actor, a feis audio tech and Operations Manager at the Celtic Junction Arts Center in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Julia Topper
Julia is an Irish dancer, music educator, and writer hailing from the Washington DC region. An ethnomusicologist (PhD, University of Maryland, College Park; MA, Eastman School of music), her research focuses on the transnationalization of Irish dance. She is a feature writer for the Irish Dance Globe and the Feis app and teaches classes about Irish dance history and world music through the Celtic Junction Arts Center. On the rare occasion she isn’t thinking about Irish dance, she teaches piano, early childhood music, moonlights as an adjunct professor at universities in the DMV, including American University and University of Maryland.
In the community
Our mission
Amplify the voices of the Irish dance world
Authentic conversations that focus on our guests
Put on the kettle and settle in for a good story. Our conversations make you feel like you are in the room with us and our guest.
Transnational community
Irish dance spans the globe. We bring together voices from Ireland, North America, England, Scotland, Australia, and beyond. This Irish dance podcast is for everyone.
Preserving the Irish dance tapestry
Planxty podcast contributes to ongoing work of preservation in the Irish dance community, bringing out unique stories that might otherwise not get told.
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