Dance captain or Disney princess? For Maggie Domingo, working as a full-time Irish dancer at Raglan Road means that she gets to be a little bit of both.
Having spent most of her life in Sarasota, Florida, establishing a dance career at such a beloved spot in Maggie’s own backyard seemed like the perfect fit.
The award-winning Irish restaurant and pub located in Disney Springs – an outdoor shopping, dining, and entertainment complex at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida – features live music and Irish dance nightly. Fostering a truly interactive dinner and theatre experience, guests become fully immersed in Irish culture, from the food on their plates to the performances happening inches away from them on the intimate main stage and podium at the centre of the dining room.
The 28-year-old has called Raglan Road her home base for the past seven years, which has allowed her to develop a strong foundation with the company. “Because it’s a residency, obviously you have that familiarity, which is great. You’re not touring, you’re not spending your nights on buses. You get to set up in one place.”
A naturally rhythmic dancer during her competitive years, Maggie’s style carried over seamlessly into her professional dance career. Her performances at Raglan Road stand out for the mesmerizing footwork and incredibly rich beats. A lot of her rhythms, she says, “are like Irish versions of tap”.
Putting down roots in one place also allowed her to build relationships with regular patrons and colleagues, which included one particularly special meet cute. In your classic co-workers-to-lovers story, Maggie met her husband, Niall McIlroy, on the job.
“We just love performing together”
Niall
Niall, 29, from Belfast, Northern Ireland, is a full-time musician at Raglan Road, and plays whistles, classical and trad flute, and guitar. He first broke into the business as a musician on a couple of Irish dance shows, including a 2015 tour of Rhythm of the Dance. In fact, the connections Niall made on that tour landed him the opportunity at Raglan Road.
“Most couples head off to work in the morning, come home at night, and tell each other about their days,” Niall says, “but we’re quite unique in that we live together and work together.”
Not only has this allowed Maggie and Niall to grow in their relationship together as a couple, but also in supporting each other’s creative journeys and advancement, too. This connection has made for even stronger synchronicity when they are on the stage: “We just love performing together,” Niall says.
Maggie began her dancing journey in the Sunshine State initially in ballet and tap. It was just by what she calls “pure luck” that her studio also happened to hold Irish dance lessons. When they stopped offering her ballet class at the usual time slot, Maggie switched over to Irish dance at the age of seven and hasn’t looked back since. She started out with the Drake School of Irish Dance and stayed there until age 22, when she transferred to the Cass-Barrington Academy of Irish Dance based in Houston, Texas.
“I was that person growing up that could not get enough of dancing. I feel like there’s always that one psychotic person who is just obsessed. I did not want to take a day off, I always just wanted to dance.”
“I was that person growing up that could not get enough of dancing”
Maggie
This passion and tenacity carried her through an impressive run as a competitor. Some of Maggie’s major highlights include winning the CLRG Southern Region Oireachtas twice, once in 2014 and again in 2015 as a Senior Lady, one of the largest – and arguably most difficult – age groups. In fact, 2015 was a great competitive year for Maggie, as she placed third at both the North American National Championships and All Ireland Championships, second at the Great Britain Championships, and sixth at the World Championships.
With a laugh she says that she’s now “very much retired” from competition, official as of July 2018, but she is in the midst of an impressive professional dance career. In between contracts and before settling into her full-time position at Raglan Road, Maggie had done a few one-off gigs around Florida, including with Reel Irish Entertainment, a Central Florida-based entertainment company. She also was fortunate to land a brief two-week stint with Lord of the Dance during their 2018 Taiwan tour.
She formally joined the Raglan Road team as a swing, meaning she would fill in if another dancer in the cast couldn’t make it. After working her way up through the ranks, Maggie eventually landed her current position as a dance captain. Alongside Raglan’s production manager, Cian Flynn, Maggie helps with choreography and serves as the primary person who rehearses with new dancers. She also gives notes to the cast, ensures that everyone is prepared, and performs regularly alongside her castmates.
Niall, meanwhile, may not have grown up dancing himself, but was raised in a musical family, and started playing the tin whistle at the age of six. After playing in orchestras and eventually earning a degree in classical music, he transitioned back to Irish trad music to cultivate his full-time career.
Maggie had already been working at Raglan Road for about one year before her would-be husband arrived. “When I first started here,” Niall says, “everyone was a new person, so we were making friends with everyone. Me and Maggie were – though maybe not so much now – kind of shy people.”
Their first time getting to know each other was on a mini-road trip to see Riverdance on tour in Daytona, Florida, about an hour away from Orlando. Niall received complimentary tickets from that night’s principal dancer, Jason O’Neill. While we know him as a Riverdance lead, social media innovator, and former Irish Dance Globe cover star, Niall knows him as Jason who played the bodhrán in the childhood church group.
“We didn’t know each other very well at that point at all. My friends decided not to go and they gave me their tickets,” Maggie says. “Niall was going, and I just kind of hopped in the car with him.”
They bonded over their shared love of Irish music, and the rest is history. Maggie and Niall tied the knot in 2021 and now live together in Windermere, Florida.
During Covid lockdowns in 2020, the pair further solidified their creative partnership by teaming up to help Raglan Road guests continue to feel connected to Irish dance and music. The Raglan team pitched the idea of livestreamed “Irish dance classes” taught by Maggie, along with musical accompaniment from Niall.
The couple collaborated again recently on Maggie’s Instagram – which currently has 103K followers – to make a video as a throwback to their livestream days. “Did you miss Niall?” Maggie captioned the clip, which shows her dancing heavies on a wooden board as her husband plays a lively tin whistle tune. “I’d love to do more of those if people are interested; we’ll see,” Maggie says.
“You find yourself on the Trans-Siberian Express in Russia, near Siberia, because of Irish music”
Niall
While they both are currently under contract with Raglan Road, Niall has taken gigs with other tours and dance companies in between and over the years, opportunities that have carried him across continents to countries including, but not limited to, Germany, the Netherlands, the Middle East, Romania, Russia, Norway, Iceland, France, Portugal, and Spain. “You find yourself on the Trans-Siberian Express in Russia, near Siberia, because of Irish music. You think, ‘Wow, how could I be in this amazing place?’”
“But,” Maggie says with a sweet smile, “he always comes back to Raglan Road as well to be here with me” (cue romantic sighs). Clearly, there’s something about Raglan Road that has made it so special for the pair.
Anyone who has ever been to Raglan Road knows that it’s not your typical Irish dance show. A combination of live musicians and showcase-style dance numbers combine to create what Maggie calls a “low-key sophistication,” otherwise known as the immaculate pub vibes that everyone knows and loves. “It’s a little bit more informal than any other show,” Maggie says, “just because it’s not in theatres. It’s a little bit more relaxed, which is a great setting for something that you do every day.”
Nevertheless, this laid back atmosphere does not mean that it’s any less exciting. Raglan Road’s setup has undergone major changes throughout the last few years, and Maggie has been right at the front of it all. Compared to an established show like Riverdance or Lord of the Dance that might get a new number every now and then, Raglan Road is always changing. “Our whole show can change over the course of a year or two,” she says.
“You immediately have that extra layer of Disney magic at Raglan Road”
Maggie
However, you can’t talk about what makes Raglan Road unique while ignoring the elephant (or should we say mouse) in the room. The pub’s prime location in Walt Disney World definitely plays a special role in its success and longevity. “You immediately have that extra layer of Disney magic,” Maggie says. “Kids will immediately smile when they see you, just when you walk in the room.”
Over the years, Maggie has been able to chart a distinct evolution in her dancing. Since starting Raglan Road, she says that she has kept her signature emphasis on the sound, but has also become much looser in her carriage. All of her routines – whether solos or group choreography, soft shoe and hard shoe – involve fluid arm movements, variations in cadence, and lots of energy.
“The show pieces become about what gets a reaction from a crowd more than having perfect technique. And using my arms has changed the way I lift and what steps I do. I think more about what the whole body looks like and what coordinates the feet and the arms rather than just the strict parameters of competition.”
In addition to professional development, Niall has also experienced growth as a performing artist since working at Raglan Road – on his new contract, he both sings and plays the guitar. His Orlando connections also helped him land a gig with Disney Cruise Line (DCL) aboard the Disney Magic, where he will return to perform again this summer.
Not being tied down to one format, combined with Raglan’s integration of different tunes and tempos, breeds creativity for the dancers. Maggie describes how most of the shows are focused around the acapella numbers (both solos and duels between two dancers), which allows the performers to show off a bit. She says that this improvisation has made a noticeable impact on her dancing. “It’s great when it pays off and something really good just happens to come to your mind,” she says. “I’ve come up with some of my favourite steps on the spot, which is something you rarely get to do when you’re focused on competition. You’re never bored as a dancer, because you can always just go up and see what comes out of your feet.”
“I’ve come up with some of my favourite steps on the spot”
Maggie
Whether freestyle or choreographed, what matters most for their show is connecting with the audience. Niall recalls a particularly exciting New Year’s performance from a couple of years before COVID-19, one that was memorable not just for him and Maggie, but for the audience as well. “They had about seven or eight musicians standing on the bar, playing our instruments, and the dancers were all on stage. The room was full of people and everyone was screaming.”
As for social media, the intersection between work and personal entertainment is where Maggie says she thrives. She recounts how she has always had Instagram for personal blogging, and then downloaded TikTok mainly for fun. Currently sitting at 126K followers on the latter, she credits a lot of her success to the massive, immediate nature of the app’s audiences and algorithms.
Her motto, as Maggie describes it: low maintenance. She primarily posts videos from her performances at Raglan Road, sometimes with a trending or funny audio laid on top. For instance, one of Maggie’s recent videos shows her putting her own “spin” on the iconic Wednesday Addams “Bloody Mary” dance trend.
“I love where it’s at now where you feel like if you post something that it will be received and liked by the right crowd,” Maggie says. “TikTok is so good about putting people into the niche that they’re looking for. I would love for it to grow.”
Niall, on the other hand, has a clear vision in mind for his future on social media. He wants to develop his own page to showcase his playing and singing and promote his brand to appeal to future shows, festivals, and other gigs. He’s particularly excited about experimenting more with his loop pedal, a music mixing tool that allows him to layer his whistle and guitar, “which could turn into a really cool one-man show. That’s definitely something I want to look into and maybe get going quite soon.” Though he admits that he’s not as savvy with social media, he knows that his partner can help him with all the tricks and trends. “Maybe Maggie can feature in one of my videos,” Niall says with a laugh.
For Maggie, her intentions on social media and content production weren’t as ambitious as Irish dance groups like Cairde or the Gardiner Brothers. She also never planned on her online presence lending itself to advocacy and activism. But when issues of representation and identity make their way into her comments section, she feels a responsibility to speak.
“You need to work hard to really put something out there that is high quality”
Niall
In October 2021, Maggie posted a simple TikTok (that has now reached 7.4M views) of her dancing in Raglan Road in order to reply to another user’s ignorant comment about her Asian-American identity. When the post’s comments section erupted in debate, she created another response video to dispel assumptions and to address more misguided comments and microaggressions related to cultural appropriation versus appreciation – a debate TikTok star and Riverdance cast member Morgan Bullock too found herself at the centre of – which is something that Maggie unfortunately battles with often on her pages.
But Maggie says she likes to address those topics so that people can hear it from someone who lives it. “Somebody who actually knows that one, there are Asian people in Ireland; two, that you don’t have to be Irish to Irish dance, of course; and three, obviously you shouldn’t assume that we don’t know what we’re doing because of how we look.”
Whether these comments are born out of ignorance or insidious intentions, Maggie doesn’t let the trolls of the internet bring her down. For every negative comment, there’s someone out there complimenting the height of her clicks, the power in her sound, or the dexterity of her “rubber ankles” (“did your foot just swivel 360 degrees!?” one astounded viewer commented). Maggie takes all of it in her stride, and continues to post videos that reinforce her sheer talent, positivity, and passion for Irish dance.
These inspirational qualities are the tinder that fuels the fire of Maggie’s career. For aspiring entertainment professionals, dancers and musicians alike, Maggie and Niall agree that the most important thing is performance.
“I think in our industry, whether it be Irish music or dance shows, if you’re doing your own solo gigs, if you’re going on cruise ships, if you’re just trying to basically make a living as an Irish musician, the most important thing is obviously your show, your performance,” Niall says. “You need to work hard to really put something out there that is high quality; you need to be confident in yourself that it’s high quality.”
Above all, Maggie says the key is to keep it simple: “Try not to do any more or any less than you would in class or rehearsal.” She also says to lean into the freeing aspect of shows to help manage anxiety. “When you don’t feel the competition nerves, you’re just left with the thrill of performing.”
Follow Niall and Maggie on Instagram.
Photography: James Hand
Photo Editing/ Creative Direction: Colleen Falco
Words: Siobhan Cooney
Editor-In-Chief: Hollie Geraghty
Social Media: Kari Barile
