What to Have and Wear
Because if you are anything like me, you want to know everything, even if you're guaranteed a completely different experience.
With the advent of, I don't know, the whole internet, it's a lot easier to find out what your school requires for your first lesson. My Irish dance school didn't even have a website until after I left for college. (I mean, I tried to build them one several times, but no one was ever interested.)
As I prepared to start Irish dance for the first time, I relied on other Irish dance sites to tell me what to bring and what to expect. Today, the first thing I would tell a prospective Irish dancer would be: comb the school website. Expectations for appropriate attire should be listed somewhere. If not, ask when you sign up.
No teacher will expect you to show up all kitted out with softshoes and poodle socks on the first day. (You won't even need poodle socks unless you compete or your school requires them for a show.) Dancing in generic dance shoes is perfectly okay. Softshoes and hardshoes are not widely available in shops outside of Ireland and the UK, and teachers know this. Your school probably has recommendations for shoes and sizing, anyway.
So, generally speaking, nothing more than good socks, a t-shirt, shorts or leggings, jazz shoes, and a water bottle is necessary on the first day. You will not, traditionally, be learning hardshoe steps for some time. Some schools wait months, some wait over a year, and some go on a case-by-case, dance-by-dance basis. My teacher required us to know four basic softshoe steps comfortably, and my classes started hardshoe after only six or seven months (which included a summer break). Age plays a huge part. I was thirteen and in a class of teenagers and preteens, so we advanced more quickly. Younger children may have to wait years.
First Class Rundown
My situation was atypical, even for 2001.
On the first day, I was in a class of Beginners between the ages of twelve and adult. That's never going to happen at most schools.
My school was just expanding to my city from the town it started out in ten years earlier, and they were renting space in another dance studio. With no other local Irish dance schools to poach students from, every class was beginner level, divided only by age group. My own age group had two classes, one on Friday and one on Saturday. I started out on Saturdays but eventually took both classes before the adults got their own timeslot and we were placed into classes for teens and preteens. About five months in, we had beginner figure classes, too. Again, this whole scenario won't likely happen for most people.
Traditionally, schools divide their classes by age and level, keeping dancers within range of each other. My old school now has a set schedule of classes from pre-k to champions, as well as leveled figure and performance classes. She's come a long way, baby.
Rewinding to day one, the first thing we did was give our street shoe sizes and order softshoes. Nowadays you can just get them online, but back then my teachers sent in a bulk order. We had to wait a few weeks for their arrival, but it will be much faster now. Until then, we danced in socks and various flat dance shoes.
Once shoe sizes were taken, we started on basic movements, which is universal. Hops, threes, and sevens are going to be the first items tackled, and if you're really good, you'll even learn a lead round of the reel. The beginner reel is generally the same at every school, and combines a circle of eight threes and a sidestep (or side down, as we called it) of sevens.
All Irish dances take off from the hops, threes, and sevens, so mastering them is the most important step (no pun intended). Threes are perhaps the most complicated when you first learn them, but with practice they evolve into hanging leaps (birds) and define champion dancers. I still have a vivid memory of struggling to figure out the foot placement, but now it's completely natural.
In the lessons that followed, we added stretches and drills to the beginning of class, and a cool-down after. Drills consisted of crossing the room on our toes, hops, leapovers, and any new footwork we were trying (rocks, for example). We also did light conditioning, such as a series of different sit-ups. Our teacher was gently sympathetic.
The format of the class never really changed much. Light stretching and conditioning, room crossings, drills of intricate movements, then leaps across the room. As we advanced into prizewinner and towards prelim, we had to do a jog around the nearby park and leap while holding canned food above our heads. We also began to seriously pursue splits, or the nearest approximation. A lot more to ask from a group of teens than it is from young kids.
After warm-ups, we would begin reviewing or learning steps. Softshoe usually came first, hardshoe last, but sometimes we would only work on one or the other. We often learned steps as a group, dancing together, then our teacher would ask us to execute them individually, or two at a time, so she could see how we looked. She would do this without music at first, then slow speeds, then full speed. It's not nearly as terrifying as this might sound to you. After a few weeks, you'll be ready.
Again, your mileage is going to vary depending on your school. My school was in a transitional state, establishing itself in a city that had never had an Irish dance school before. We also emphasized performance over competition, with most dancers attending maybe three feiseanna a year, four at the most (also because in the Western Region feiseanna can be very far away). All of these factors contributed to my unusual first class, and indeed unusual first few years of Irish dancing. I wouldn't trade it, though.