Hannah Logar wasn’t supposed to win the Worlds — at least not according to her. “They called out third and I remember my mom and I hugging each other. I was like, ‘I got second!’” she says, laughing. “This just never occurred to me as a possibility.”
Despite podium places the previous two years, the 2024 CLRG Senior Ladies world champion was under no illusions about the competition she was entering — one packed with multiple-time world champions, podium placers, and numerous major champions. And while secretly, she hoped to repeat her success from the previous two years, she says she kept herself grounded by reminding herself why she was there in the first place.
“I kind of let go of a lot of the placing goals for this Worlds,” says Hannah, who works as a process development engineer at a biomedical device startup. “There’s so many incredible ladies, especially in this competition, that to compete with them — to place anywhere with them — is such an honour. I am really here just because I love it.”
Hannah’s deep love of Irish dance is evident throughout her career — one she says started “very much by accident” when she was four-years-old. She remembers tagging along with her older sister to classes at their local recreation centre, being instantly entranced, and begging to join in. Eventually, she began taking classes at her current school, the Whelan Academy, travelling four days a week, an hour and twenty minutes each way from her home in the Santa Cruz mountains to the school’s studio in San Francisco, where she now lives.
She began competing young but says results were not a top priority. “I always loved the competitions. It was never a nervous thing for me,” she says. “It was more just fun.” She remembers thinking, “‘I get to wear my special dress, I get to show my mom what I’ve done, I get to be with all my friends,’” adding, “It was always a social community thing for me.”
She was so unconcerned with competitive success that when she qualified for the World Championships at her first solo oireachtas, she didn’t even go. “We didn’t know what it was!” remembers Hannah, who had originally been planning to dance in the traditional set competition, and had to find a solo dress, wig, and crown at the last minute after switching to the championship.
“I am really here just because I love it”
“I was like, ‘You’re joking,’” she says of finding out she had World qualified. “I remember being blown away, but not really understanding the gravity of it.”
By the time Hannah qualified again the following autumn, however, she knew she had to go. She says her first Worlds completely changed her perspective on what Irish dance could be. “I didn’t recall, but I didn’t care,” she says. “I was like, ‘This is crazy.’ I remember just watching the dancing and being like, ‘Oh, I understand now.’”
Hannah says the standard of dancing she saw in her age group reinforced what she had seen from older dancers at her school — people she says are still her biggest role models. As inspired as she was, however, it took time to find her own path to competitive success, describing herself as “a little bit more of a late bloomer”.
“I think my first time recalling at the Worlds was maybe my fifth or sixth, so it took me a minute to get a hang of it,” says Hannah, who today, at 23, joins an illustrious line of dancers who have risen to major competitive success later in their careers. A year after that first recall, she would go on to place third at the North American Irish Dance Championships and win her first of four Western Regional Oireachtas titles.
Even in the frustrating moments, she says her love of dance kept her showing up at Worlds. “I was like, ‘I’m going to keep going because there’s the chance that I could recall’. But it was never the end of the world,” she says. “It was always like, ‘This is just amazing that I get to keep going — that my parents are willing to keep sending me, and that my teachers are continuing to prepare me…I’m just there to have fun.’”
Hannah says that after a “slow climb”, she was shocked to land in 5th place in 2022 — a jump from 18th at the previous World Championships in 2019, and only her third time placing at all. “I didn’t think this was a possibility,” she remembers thinking. “There’s part of you when you do so well that’s like, ‘Is that a fluke?’ and ‘Can I do that again? Did I dance the best I’ll ever dance and that’s it?’ But no — I came back the next year and got third and I was like, ‘Okay. I wasn’t dreaming. Clearly, there’s something here.’”
Even so, she managed her expectations coming into Worlds this year. “The competition is stacked,” she remarks of her fellow Senior Ladies. “I think I went into this just thinking, ‘If I can come home with the globe, I will be so happy,’” she says, admitting that this was a “secret wish” she barely even shared with her teachers. “I’m very superstitious,” she adds. “Even my teachers and I don’t really talk about the goal going into it.”
“My number one goal,” she affirms, “is always to make my teachers proud.”
Rather than focusing on placements, Hannah says she chose to focus on her training process — a strategy she learned when she was younger and got nervous before competitions. “It was always because of that…worry that you could have prepared more,” she says. “After a few competitions of getting nervous like that, I remember thinking ‘That is something I can control.’ If I’m going to be nervous about the amount of practise that I’ve put in…I can put in more time.”
“There’s part of you when you do so well that’s like, ‘Is that a fluke?’”
Going into this Worlds, Hannah employed an extensive cross-training regime focused on strength work, skipping, yoga, pilates, and core conditioning. Learning how to pace her strength training so she wasn’t exhausted at class was key, as was knowing when to ease up when she injured her toe a few weeks before the competition.
Focusing on the process not only kept her grounded throughout her training but also on competition day. “I remember coming off stage from my first round…and I was kind of blank,” she recalls. “I wasn’t even thinking about my feet or my arms. I was just dancing, and I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I missed it.’” She credits her teacher, Sharon MacSweeney, for reminding her that the real work had already been done. “The point is not for your best round that you’ve done…to be on stage,” she remembers her saying. “You’re just working to move your average higher.”
“I was like, ‘You’re right. The practice has been put in,’” she says. “After that, I was like, ‘Now it’s the reel; we just gotta fly.’” Sharon refers to her reel as her “moneymaker round”, even though she sees herself as “very much a slip jig dancer”. While it was an adjustment switching back to reel after spending four years on slip jig due to COVID and the double U23 age group, she would go on to handily win the soft shoe round with a performance that combined a reel’s characteristic power with a slip jig’s intricacy, elegance, and grace.
Despite the competitive standard in the Senior Ladies competition, the side-stage atmosphere transformed the competition for Hannah compared to previous years. “They’re such a welcoming group of girls,” she says. “At this point, we are just here because we all love it. We all love to dance, we all love to compete, and there’s a little bit less edge.”
Even so, she was nervous when awards came around. “It being my first Worlds in Senior Ladies, I was like, ‘I will be so lucky to come home with the globe again this year,’” she says. “I remember thinking, ‘I’ve done what I can, and I just hope that pays off.’” Hannah remembers waiting for the results with her mom, teacher Sharon, and Sharon’s son James. They were also joined by two women from Glasgow, both total strangers, who had come to watch the competition — a nun and a former Irish dancer, who offered to pray with her mom as the announcer began reading the numbers.
“What I’ve learned through this is that you can dream bigger”
“They called out sixth place and I remember being like, ‘I’m good,’” she says. “‘That’s all I can ask for. I am bringing the globe back home again, for the third time.’”
“They got to fifth and I was going through my list of the girls in the competition. I was like, ‘That’s crazy. Who?’ They feel unbeatable. Then they got to fourth, and I was like, ‘That’s getting a little weird.’”
A video posted to Hannah’s Instagram documents the rest. She is already crying as third place is read, her mom wrapping her in a hug to share in her excitement and disbelief. When, mid-hug, they realise the second place number isn’t hers, Hannah, her mother, and James – who is recording the scene – immediately start screaming. “James just dropped the camera, and we just started hugging each other, sobbing,” she recalls. “This was never a possibility — like it never even occurred to me.”
Hannah says this experience has opened her eyes to what is possible for her and for dancers who may not realise what they can achieve. “My biggest dream ever was to win a regional oireachtas — and that was kind of a far-out crazy dream that I had when I was never anywhere close,” she says. “What I’ve learned through this is that you can dream bigger.”
Ultimately, she hopes to become a TCRG, but she’s not done dancing just yet. She notes that winning Irish dance’s biggest prize does come with pressure, though. “It never occurred to me that there wouldn’t be any higher to go,” she shares. Ultimately, however, she knows the value of Irish dance goes far beyond competitive achievements.
“It’s continuous life lessons. It’s continuous team building. Trusting yourself, trusting your teammates, building deeper and deeper relationships with your coaches,” she says. “I still feel like I have even more growing as a person to do through Irish dance.”
After all these years, what keeps Hannah dancing is the same love that brought her to it in the first place. “It’s most important that you enjoy the journey to wherever you’re going, because that’s most of it, right?” she shares. “When you achieve your biggest dreams, that’s just one moment, and it’s important to think about all the little moments that led up to that.”
“The minute that it starts feeling like a burden or like I’m bored, that’s when I’ll know,” she says. “But right now, I still love it just as much as when I started.”
Follow Hannah on Instagram.
Photography: Ellen Lahey and Hannah Lahey
Design: Colleen Falco
Words: Gabrielle Siegel
Editor-In-Chief: Hollie Geraghty
