“I aim for perfection. I am the biggest perfectionist in the world,” says Liam Costello. “If something’s not right, I will go on for days to make it as perfect as it can.”
If you’ve ever had the privilege of watching the world champion perform, it’s not difficult to see the strict work ethic he’s describing to The Irish Dance Globe. From the sharp athleticism and dazzling intricacy of his hard shoe rounds, to the astonishing blend of flexibility and strength in his reel — including a mind-boggling double click that seems to exert no energy at all — if perfection exists in Irish dance, Liam is pretty close to finding it.
And that’s just Irish. Scroll through his Instagram feed and you’ll find videos of street and hip-hop classes where he’s just as limber (though he insists “I have not always been able to do the splits”), precise and explosive as he is within the strict confines of Irish dance — and not to mention, able to effortlessly exude so much personality. He’s also turning plenty of heads back home in Sydney, too, recently being described by The Guardian as “Australia’s Irish dance boy wonder”.
“I instantly fell in love with how sharp, dynamic, bouncy, and strong all the movements in Irish dancing were”
This year, the 20-year-old dancer claimed his third Irish dancing world title in Belfast, which was no easy feat for any returning champion after two years of cancellations due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Nor was it something that always felt within grasp for him.
Having achieved fourth place three times from 2014 to 2016, there was a time when it looked like that might be the highest result Liam would ever get. “Don’t get me wrong. I think that’s absolutely amazing,” he says. “But for me, wanting to strive as high as I can, getting fourth three years in a row, I was like, ‘Right. I don’t want to be getting fourth anymore.’”
Long before Liam was chasing World titles, his potential as a performer was first spotted at a childhood birthday party. “I was apparently dancing around. And then one of the parents was like, ‘He’s really good. Does he dance?’” Liam’s parents enrolled him in a jazz class soon after, before he discovered Irish dance at six-years-old when he watched it at the end of year dance concert. “I instantly fell in love with how sharp, dynamic, bouncy and strong all the movements were,” he says. “Over the school holidays I was just jumping about my living room trying to teach myself, and then I got put into lessons straight away.”
From there, Liam would continue to build upon his dance training, enrolling in classes for contemporary, hip-hop, ballet and various other styles. It was a total embrace of the dance lifestyle that, unsurprisingly, brought some stinging comments from other children growing up. “At school, everyone would kind of do the, ‘Ha ha, you dance, that’s a girl’s thing,’” he says, drly imitating the naysayers. “But thankfully I didn’t listen to them, and I just kept going.”
“I was over the moon when I won the Worlds. I couldn’t believe it”
He went on to secure several big wins in Australia, including the Regional, State and National Championships (he’s now an eight-time Australian Champion, along with Great Britain, British National, American National, and All Scotland titles), also landing 16th place at his first World Championships in 2013 in Boston, at 11-years-old.
But it was the following year in London when he realised he “had quite a bit of potential”, as he jumped 12 spots into fourth place. As incredible the podium finish was, Liam would get itchy feet being just outside the top three, achieving fourth place finishes consecutively in Montreal, 2015, and Glasgow, 2016. “I want to be as good as I can. So I found that really hard, just being like, ‘I’m so close,’” he says.
But he continued to train for the title he believed he was capable of winning, finally reaching the top of the podium at his first All Ireland Championships in 2016. “It really made me believe that I could achieve what I wanted to if I put hard work into it,” he says. As his first major international win, it allowed him to see the World title as within his grasp. “I was like, ‘Yeah, I can win the Worlds!’” he says with a hint of sarcasm at such a grand prospect. “And then two years later, I went to win the Worlds.”
“It was something that I’d strived for for so long that had just happened before my eyes,” Liam says of the first World Championships win in 2018. “I was over the moon. I couldn’t believe it, because I was like ‘I finally did it!’”
But when that moment did arrive, he wasn’t even in the room to experience it. “They did my results early, and they didn’t tell anyone,” he says. “So I was outside the hall eating a tub of ice cream, just chilling.” He walked into the hall to hear his name being read out in first place. “I was gobsmacked, because it was not the situation I thought I was going to be in. I thought I was gonna be sitting in the seat shaking as they read out the numbers.”
“It is quite an emotional rollercoaster to move away, but it all is worth it in the end”
When it came to his second title, it was all the sweeter in reaffirming why he was a world champion in the first place. “The second time definitely justified the first,” he says. “I’m quite the overthinker. And I’m like, ‘What if the first time was a fluke?’”. As for the triple, did it still feel just as good? “Because Covid had cut off so many years, it was nice to be able to come back and win it for a third time, after waiting so long to do it. Especially because I was training just as hard before 2020, and then getting sent home, it was so sad.”
But Liam’s World titles have been very hard-earned, requiring a greater level of sacrifice than most. This included spending extended periods training in England with McGahan Lees, the sister school of his Australian base Scoil Rince Creer (he now dances under McGahan Lees-Creer). It started with just a few days of practice before his first Worlds in 2013, but it increased to four months in England before his 2018 win, when he could spend up to eight hours training a day.
“It’s quite a bit more competitive internationally,” Liam says. “You’ll see like seven world champions at a feis.” He adds: “I go from Australia not having loads of feis’, to England having a feis every weekend, travelling around the country.”
Hours of daily dancing and training was intense, not to mention personally demanding in having to relocate across the world. “I work quite well under pressure as well. So that helps, and it is quite an emotional rollercoaster to move away, but it all is worth it in the end.”
“Having all the other styles of dance helps me with my performance”
But there was a time when Liam wasn’t sure if he was even going to return to Irish dance during the pandemic. “There was a period where I was like, ‘You know what, maybe I’m done?’” he says. “I just think getting older and being like, ‘I don’t know what I want to do with my life’, and, ‘We have to make a living to some extent’, I did have to question if I wanted to do it anymore.”
But then he reflected on the amount of training that had gone into the Worlds that never happened. “I was like, ‘I put so much effort into the 2020 Worlds that got cancelled’. Why would I bother not going for a third time when I’d already trained for it?”
During the pandemic months at home in Australia, Liam took up a full-time dance course in Sydney where he trained with choreographers from all over the world, dancing 9-4, five days a week in various styles, which earned him a diploma in elite performance. “That really made me fall in love with all the other opportunities and different things you can do with dance,” he says. It also gave him skills to channel into Irish dancing. “I was able to not think so much of trying to make everything the most perfect thing there is, and that there can be a bit of personality and a dynamic shift between each [movement].”
“Don’t take Irish dancing too seriously to the point where you fall out of love with it”
Liam’s now hopeful that there will be more opportunities to apply these lessons into professional Irish dancing, having already performed with a Taste of Ireland and Airborne, both in Australia. “It’s really nice to share the stage in a noncompetitive way with everyone that you’ve grown up around and admired and watched dance for years, and it makes everything you’ve trained so hard for competitively, fun,” he says. “Having all the other styles, it helps me with my performance.”
As for the future, Liam says he’s letting the year “flow” and taking things “day by day” before he makes any decisions about his competitive dance career. But outside of working in his parents’ plumbing supplies shop on his free days, he’s happy to dance in “anything and everything”, whether it might mean one day being a backup dancer for pop stars, to performing with Riverdance or Lord of the Dance. “That would be absolutely amazing,” he says of the Irish dance shows. “Because obviously I’ve looked up to it my whole life, trying to be as perfect and as good as all of them dancing together.”
Even for a dancer as detail-oriented, passionate and driven as Liam, his advice for younger dance hopefuls very much aligns with his chilled Australian mentality: “Just have fun with it. Don’t take it too seriously to the point where you fall out of love with it.”
Follow Liam on Instagram.
