1 / 3

Sisters Brittanna and Adelia Roberts will be competing in the World Irish Dance Championships, held April 10-17.

Courtesy Harp Irish Dance Company

2 / 3

Adelia Roberts will be competing in the World Irish Dance Championships, held April 10-17.

Courtesy Harp Irish Dance Company

3 / 3

Brittanna Roberts will be competing in the World Irish Dance Championships, held April 10-17.

Courtesy Harp Irish Dance Company

❮ ❯

When sisters Adelia and Brittanna Roberts are dancing, they make it look effortless. Watching them rehearse at Harp Irish Dance Company in American Fork, an onlooker would get the sense that they were truly born to be Irish dancers.

The sisters, natives of Midway, began dancing when they were toddlers, making the journey to Harp Irish Dance Company three times a week with their older sister. Now, Adelia, 20, and Brittanna, 23, are headed to Belfast, Northern Ireland, to compete in the An Coimisiún le Rincí Gaelacha 50th annual Oireachtas Rince na Cruinne, World Irish Dancing Championships, from April 10-17.

The Roberts sisters never thought they would return to Ireland after taking a family trip to the country almost a decade ago, let alone return to compete in the World Irish Dancing Championships together.

“It’s been really nice to have a training partner because we push each other more than we would by ourselves,” Adelia said.

“It was never really even on my radar to qualify for worlds, even at the competition where I qualified,” she said. “I was just excited to get top half and then they started announcing all the world qualifiers and my number was on that list, and it was just a shock for me; it was so exciting.”

Although the competition is just days away, the sisters are calm and composed. The time has long passed for dramatic corrections and intense rehearsal. Now, the girls are focused on visualizing their success at the competition. For them, it’s not about winning, but rather leaving everything on the floor in Belfast in performances that have been decades of hard work and preparation in the making.

“I don’t care what my placement is because I can’t control that,” Adelia said. “My expectation is to dance my very best rounds on stage and to go off of the stage knowing that I’m happy with how I danced.”

“I don’t really have any expectations of where I expect to place. I’m just more excited to go through the experience of dancing on the world stage,” added Brittanna. “It’s made it a little less stressful going through all the training and stuff just to be going for that experience and to just dance for fun.”

Brittanna thought her career had hit its climax in 2017 after the sisters competed in the North American Irish Dance Championships together. She took a year and a half off from dancing but ultimately came back stronger.

“Honestly, I thought that was kind of my peak in 2017 as a 19-year-old,” she said. “I came back and just started going again and we’ve just been working together on improving and hitting these goals.”

Aubree Shelley, director of Harp Irish Dance Company and the girls’ teacher, believes that she got incredibly lucky when she began teaching the girls in 2006. This is the first time members of her dance company will compete on the world stage.

“This is totally new territory, and it’s super exciting and a little intimidating,” Shelley said. “I don’t know how I ended up with these two but I’m glad I did because they are self-motivated and they are hard workers.”

Whatever happens at the World Irish Dancing Championships, Irish dance has permanently become a part of the Roberts sisters’ lives. Taking after Shelley, they have even opened their own Irish dance studio in their hometown in order to pass their knowledge on to the next generation.

“We have a little studio up in Heber Valley, so it’s been fun being able to pass on our tradition of Irish dance to the kids where we grew up,” Brittanna said. “I love it so much. It would be a big part of me to go away if I stopped.