{"id":190593,"date":"2026-03-13T19:45:06","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T19:45:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/190593\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T19:45:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T19:45:06","slug":"river-goes-green-dancing-goes-irish-in-tampa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/190593\/","title":{"rendered":"River goes green, dancing goes Irish in Tampa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>TAMPA, Fla. \u2014\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.finneganacademy.org\/teachers\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Amanda Finnegan<\/a> came to the United States from Ireland in 2016, only expecting to stay here for six months as she performed in a show.<\/p>\n<p>Ten years later, she\u2019s never left.<\/p>\n<p>What You Need To Know<\/p>\n<p>Amanda Finnegan moved to the U.S. from Ireland and founded Finnegan Academy of Irish Dance in Florida<br \/>\n<br \/>Her academy has locations in Tampa, Orlando, and Lakewood Ranch<br \/>\n<br \/>Finnegan promotes Irish culture through dance, and her dancers will perform at River O\u2019Green, a St. Patrick&#8217;s Day event<\/p>\n<p>In the decade after her arrival, Finnegan opened <a href=\"https:\/\/www.finneganacademy.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Finnegan Academy of Irish Dance<\/a>. She has locations in Tampa, Orlando and Lakewood Ranch, where Finnegan and her instructors teach Irish dancing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s really important for me to promote Irish culture here in America,\u201d Finnegan told Spectrum Bay News 9. \u201cIt\u2019s the culture I grew up with. It\u2019s the culture that is so loved here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Finnegan and her dancers will share that love on Saturday at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tampasdowntown.com\/events\/river-ogreen\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">River O\u2019Green<\/a>, an annual event in Tampa celebrating St. Patrick\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n<p>Finnegan\u2019s dancers will be performing for the third time.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s just a love of the Irish culture here in America, which I really love and just gives me joy,\u201d Finnegan said.<\/p>\n<p>The dancers will perform at 12:15 p.m. on Saturday. The entire event, which includes the annual tradition of dyeing the Hillsborough River green, will run from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. at Curtis Hixon Park.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. \u2014\u00a0Amanda Finnegan came to the United States from Ireland in 2016, only expecting to stay here&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[4092,276,9073,115,4094,7149,135,137,136,106,835],"class_list":["post-190593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-app-things-to-do","tag-hillsborough-county","tag-jeff-butera","tag-news","tag-on-the-town","tag-on-the-town-app","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-things-to-do","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}