Early Years
Irish-born Devine followed in his mother's footsteps when he had his first dance lesson at the age of eight. Having lost the strength in her legs due to an illness, his mother (a former champion dancer) used her fingers to tap out the rhythms of a beat on the back of his hand. He repeated the patterns with his feet.
By the age of 14, he achieved the highest honour bestowed on an Irish Dancer by winning "the Grand Slam" — World, American, British, All-Ireland and Munster Titles. In a competitive career that continued until the age of sixteen he consecutively won three World, five American, three British, seven Munster and All-Ireland titles.
Between 1992 and 1995 he taught in Ireland, also giving masterclasses in Europe, Australia and North America. He also began working at the IWMC (Irish World Music Centre) at the University of Limerick, Ireland.
Read more about this topic: James Devine
Famous quotes containing the words early years, early and/or years:
“If there is a price to pay for the privilege of spending the early years of child rearing in the driver’s seat, it is our reluctance, our inability, to tolerate being demoted to the backseat. Spurred by our success in programming our children during the preschool years, we may find it difficult to forgo in later states the level of control that once afforded us so much satisfaction.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
“It is not too much to say that next after the passion to learn there is no quality so indispensable to the successful prosecution of science as imagination. Find me a people whose early medicine is not mixed up with magic and incantations, and I will find you a people devoid of all scientific ability.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)
“Neither years nor books have yet availed to extirpate a prejudice then rooted in me, that a scholar is the favorite of Heaven and earth, the excellency of his country, the happiest of men. His duties lead him directly into the holy ground where other men’s aspirations only point. His successes are occasions of the purest joy to all men. Eyes is he to the blind; feet is he to the lame. His failures, if he is worthy, are inlets to higher advantages.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)