Zoe Talbot: “There’s Absolutely No Harm In Trying Everything”

“You’re never going to regret trying something if it didn’t work out. You’ll only regret not trying it,” says Zoe Talbot. She would know. For most people, it would be enough to be a 12-time An Chomhdháil Irish dancing world champion, but this barely scratches the surface of Zoe’s illustrious resumé. A multi-talented performer whose experience ranges from acting to modelling to singing to a broad portfolio of dance skills, it seems there’s very little she hasn’t tried at least once.

Today, the 27-year-old Dublin native dances and sings in Riverdance, this year alone completing a six-month tour through the US and Mexico, a three-month residency at Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre, and three performances at the 1900-year-old Roman Theatre in Amman, Jordan. She leads fitness and mindset training, produces a range of goal planners, and, as if that weren’t enough, has played a leading Christmas pantomime role every year since 2018. 

In a world where common wisdom often encourages people to pick their focus, Zoe is steadfast that her success is because of her diverse interests — not in spite of them. She recalls being told, “‘Oh, you haven’t found your niche yet.’ And I remember being like, ‘Do I have to find a niche?’”

One need know nothing of Zoe’s formidable background or varied skills to recognise her as a singular talent. Whether she’s filming a tap collaboration on tour with fellow Riverdance performer Dharmesh Patel, performing a playful treble reel to the Barbie soundtrack in hot pink athletic gear, or showing off her agility in a heels routine, Zoe never misses a chance to perform.

Watching her flirt with the camera or embody the lyrics of whatever song she’s dancing to, the casual observer could be fooled into thinking the steps she’s performing were easy. That’s certainly how she makes them look. Positioned at the head of the Riverdance troupe’s instantly iconic spin on Rihanna’s 2023 Super Bowl halftime performance, Zoe’s eyes sparkle with a ferocity rarely seen in Irish dance — an expression that unmistakably says, “Watch me, I’m a star.”

In many ways, the charisma that sets Zoe apart is clearly innate, born out of raw talent and an immense love for the stage. But to attribute her star quality solely to natural ability would be to discredit her hard work, her broad experience, and an intentional effort to bring together what she’s learned from each facet of her background. 

In the Irish dance world, Zoe is legendary for her titles and extensive Riverdance success. Meanwhile, every Christmas season, she can be found acting and sweetly belting out pop songs with a musical theatre twist in Dublin’s Olympia Theatre Pantomime, this year as Princess Jasmine in Olly, Polly, And The Magic Lamp, the Olympia’s version of Aladdin. Zoe’s ability to immerse herself in her performance draws immediate attention, whichever stage she graces.

But she also knows how to take the skills she’s learned from each art form and effortlessly transpose them, bringing an Irish dancer’s poise to the Pantomime’s comedic musical theatre roles and a leading lady’s magnetism to the Riverdance stage. Her grace and enthusiasm come through as readily in a ‘Day In The Life’ video for the Riverdance TikTok as they do in a sold-out theatre. From the smallest stage to the largest, Zoe is clearly something special in the performing arts world.

Zoe’s diverse career began at age two-and-a-half when she landed a role in The Package at the Guinness Theatre in Dublin. “Everyone joked the scene got longer each night as I didn’t want to leave the stage!” she remembers. At three, her parents, who themselves met through musical theatre, enrolled her in Billie Barry’s, a prestigious stage school whose famous alums include singer and actor Samantha Mumba, Westlife’s Brian McFadden, Celtic Woman’s Lisa Lambe, and Harry Potter actor Devon Murray. There, she learned acting, singing, and a wide range of dance styles while, elsewhere, she took ballet, gymnastics, and keyboard.

That same year, her parents enrolled her in Irish dancing — a tradition on her mother’s side. “They were like, ‘Look, let’s just put her into everything, and she’ll quit what she doesn’t like. And I ended up not quitting anything. I loved it all so much.”

She soon began landing modelling gigs and roles in short films and advertisements. She also joined her first Christmas pantomime, at the Gaiety, at the age of seven and continued to participate throughout her childhood. Having so many commitments outside of school kept her constantly occupied, and she says this busyness taught her the structure that makes her successful to this day. “What I try to tell my students and my clients is, ‘Keep yourself busy,’” she says. “Literally every second of my day is planned.”

From a young age, Zoe remembers going immediately from school to extracurricular activities, eating dinner in the car while heading home to finish her schoolwork. To her parents, her passion was obvious, so they followed her lead and let her pursue everything. “I think still to this day, I’m very, very lucky to have parents that have that kind of mindset,” she says. “I have come across friends that are like, ‘Oh, my mam wanted me to concentrate more on my studies, so I had to quit extracurricular activities.’ But they really encouraged me to keep them up.”

When she talks about her many accomplishments, Zoe is quick to credit her parents’ role in her success — not only in supporting her wide range of interests but in helping her diversify her approach to each one. Her dad, a football coach, gave her fitness training to strengthen everything from her power to her posture. Her mother, meanwhile, reminded her consistently how fundamental performance was to her success. “She’d be like, ‘Keep smiling, even if your knickers fall down!” Zoe recalls with a laugh. She says both her parents taught her the importance of mindset, her father reminding her to take her competitions one dance at a time to avoid overwhelm, and her mother teaching her that her dreams were all within reach.

When reflecting on what it took to become a 12-time An Chomhdháil world champion, the role of this diversified approach — fitness, performance, and mindset — is quickly evident. She is unequivocal that pushing her fitness both in and outside the studio was fundamental to her success. “I’d do the Lodge Road at 72 just to show that I can go that extra mile while still staying at the level I first started out at,” she says, noting that her gym training also helped her build explosive jumps and kicks. But this was only one piece of the puzzle. “My performance elements from such a young age helped,” she says. “I had to learn that skill very quickly.” She also drew on her broad training to push the boundaries of Irish dance, adding tap dance-inspired rhythms, knowing more traditional judges might not approve but determined to try anyway. 

But it is in talking about mindset that Zoe really lights up — both in the effect it had on her success and what she learned about it through her years of competition. Winning her first Worlds, dancing for the Lee-Byrne Academy in Under 10, Zoe says she had no sense of what a big deal it was until it had already happened. “They were like, ‘You won!’ And I was like, ‘…What?’” she says. After the dust settled and the party was over, Zoe says the pressure began to build. “God, I don’t know anyone who’s done it two years in a row,” she remembers thinking. “Is it a done thing?” 

Over time, her goals grew. Being a world champion was just the start — she was now aiming for perfect scores and repeat wins. It’s telling, then, that Zoe flags the only year she didn’t win as a fundamental mindset shift. She remembers being sick in bed with swine flu for a week before the 2010 World Championships. While she had hardly hoped to make the top 10, she was delighted to come in second. Zoe says this helped her put her results in perspective while also reaffirming her determination to come back stronger the following year. “I was like, ‘It’s okay. You know, I’m not well. I have to just give it my all, and that’s all I can do,’” she says. “But then after that, I was like, ‘That’s never going to happen again. I can’t let that happen again.’”

“I always say, ‘It’s never a failure. It’s always a learning process,’” she adds, noting that every disappointing result was an opportunity to reset and ask, “What could I do better? What did I learn from that experience?” The reset worked, and after that year, she won every consecutive Worlds until her retirement upon winning the Senior Ladies title in 2018. “Each year defending the title got so much harder,” she says, “but that just drove me to work and train as hard as I could. I never took any title for granted. There were many sacrifices made, particularly at weekends when I’d miss parties, et cetera, as I was putting in extra training in the studio, but I don’t regret a minute of it.”

“I swear to God,” Zoe adds as an aside, “if anyone’s ever hiring people for jobs, hire Irish dancers. Because the things we put ourselves through… it’s another ballgame, isn’t it?”

The freedom she felt to approach Irish dance from so many different angles — to push it further and let it push her — is what caused her to prioritise dance when it finally did begin to clash with other activities, like gymnastics. Zoe joined the Irish-freestyle performance group Prodijig around the age of 15 — an opportunity to further push the boundaries of Irish dance choreography — and joined the touring show Irish Celtic about a year later. She began touring with Riverdance in 2016, an experience she describes as “a dream come true” and one that has exceeded even her most positive expectations. “I remember doing my first Riverdance performance of ‘Reel Around the Sun’, and I started crying,” she says. “The first rally-stamp that I did on the Gaiety stage with Riverdance — a stage I started performing on when I was seven with Panto — was kind of a full-circle moment for me. The tears just streamed down my face as I did that first number, and I’ll never forget that feeling. I still get that feeling every night, and I think that’s very important — that you don’t lose sight of why you love it.” 

Zoe passed her TCRG in 2019 and, knowing her touring schedule wasn’t conducive to starting a school, qualified as a fitness coach, personal trainer, and nutritionist that same year to help dancers build the foundation that supported her through her competitive career. But true to form, her foray into fitness coaching blossomed into something bigger when COVID shut down Riverdance’s 25th Anniversary UK tour, and Zoe found herself back at home with no structure in her life for the first time. “I kind of went into a dark place,” she remembers. “As time ticked on, I was getting up later and later. And I was like, ‘I don’t know my purpose anymore’. I’d spent so much of my life being scheduled or having so much plan in place and knowing what my next move was that I had no idea what was coming next.”

Knowing she probably wasn’t alone, she began leading free Zoom classes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and before she knew it had 500 people on the stream. “It was all supposed to be just fitness,” she says, but it quickly escalated into “Mindset Mondays” and goal setting at the beginning of each class. Zoe credits this project with bringing structure back into her life. “They got me up in the morning. I maybe got them up in the morning,” she says. 

Today, she is on a mission to bring that structure to others and maintains a diversified approach in doing so. Her planners, for example, touch on gratitude, habit tracking, social media detoxes, and even simple recipes, all in the name of helping people reach their goals in the way that’s best for them. At the same time, she is more committed than ever to maintaining that structure in her own life by pursuing every passion to its fullest. 

She says she loves being able to do both Riverdance and the yearly Christmas pantomime because they each allow her to explore a different side of her training. At the same time, she’s open to wherever her future may take her. “I’d love to get back into the screen acting, develop, maybe, straight plays further,” she says, “continue to grow my skills, in any way, shape, or form and whatever direction that may take me.” She even throws around the idea of veterinary nursing — a career path she nearly pursued in university but deferred to go to performing arts school for musical theatre. 

Asked if she has any advice for dancers who may want to achieve what she has, Zoe is very clear. “No matter what age you are, I think tell yourself the world’s your oyster,” she says. “There’s absolutely no harm in trying everything.” “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life is to always go with the idea or vision that you get in the moment because you’re getting them for a reason,” she adds. Zoe may be adamant about the importance of structure, but that structure is nothing without flexibility. “Something exciting can happen at any moment of any day. You could get a phone call that could change your life. You could get an email that changes your life. How exciting is it that so much good can happen in one day if you’re just open to it?”

Photography: Prima Chroma Photography
Design: Colleen Falco
Words: Gabrielle Siegel
Editor-In-Chief: Hollie Geraghty
Social Media: Käri Barile