Frequently Asked Questions
About Irish Dance.
Real questions I've seen people ask (or been asked) about Irish dance. Not that I blame anyone for having questions.
Why don't you use arms?
The number one question of all time!
There is no definitive answer. There are many myths and legends and tales that are often shared as hard fact. Everything from not wanting to raise arms in front of Queen Elizabeth I, to avoiding being noticed by British soldiers in the Eighteenth Century, to being told by the Catholics not to too saucy. There's also some history about trying to differentiate (what is now called) traditional Irish step dance from other forms of Irish folk dancing, some of which is much more relaxed in posture, akin to tap or clogging. A trip through time shows you that solo Irish dancers sometimes placed hands on the hips (something done now only in shows). Group dances have always involved arms. I'm afraid that the real answer is: don't know, and aren't going to change it now.
Do you have to be Irish?
Absolutely not. At this point, I'd wager a majority of Irish dancers aren't, or are like 5% from a great-great grandparent. Nobody asks, nobody cares.
Why does it look like that?
Why does ballet look like that? Why does tap look like that? Why does Lindy Hop look like that? Why does any dance look the way it does? It looks the way it looks because dances evolve differently. Next question.
What is it called?
Full name: Irish step dance. Usually just refered to as Irish dance. Yes, it's the stuff in Riverdance. Please don't call it Riverdancing.
Why the wigs?
Vying for probably the new number one question, at least online.
The story comes from the idea of Sunday Best being worn in competition, so the ladies would curl their hair, and the look stuck. Well, it takes about a second to see that this isn't accurate. Dancers usually wore their hair in Sunday Best, yes, but curls were not the default. It was basically whatever was trendy, and also depended on the age of the dancer.
For example, dancers in the 1920s have bobs (and not even permed ones!). Dancers in the 60s have bubble cuts and bouffants. Dancers in the 70s have long, straight hair. It's not until the 1980s that we see the look begin to standardize, and competition hair divests from what's trendy into just being curled, because curling your hair is dressing it up. I can't help but wonder if the popularity of perms in the 80s also influenced this change.
By the 1990s, the look of curled hair had taken over. So to make the process faster and to relieve the pains of sleeping in curlers, and also to make more money off the dancers, half-wigs began to show up. At first, these were quite subtle and natural in appearance, and not everyone wore them. (And yes, people found the idea of wigs to be silly even in the 90s.)
But by the early 2000's, the wigs stopped appearing natural, because they just kept getting bigger and shinier. They were still pretty simply styled on the head, though. Usually you just put your hair back in a bun and then slid on the wig. Easy.
Maybe to keep up with how ostentatious the solo dresses were becoming, the wig continued to spread up and out, and the exposed hair started to get more elaborate, and now doing up Irish dance competition hair takes longer than it ever did with a head full of curlers in 1990.
(There are no actual rules that say you have to wear a wig or even curl your hair.)
Wig defenders, though I do believe most people know in their soul that we've gone too fair, will insist that it's about looking more springy or something, but the boys don't wear big hair and they do just fine. Most wigs worn today are just ugly. They're too tall and they sit on a bunch of hair donuts and don't match the dancer's hair color. We have to make peace with that if we're going to keep making them bigger and more Marge Simpson-like. They don't look good, and they haven't looked good for a long time. People are laughing at us.
Why do the costumes look like that? Is this an American thing?
This question is only put forth regarding solo costumes, which are typically covered in rhinestones and garish patterns and colors.
The story of the solo costume is similar to the story of the wig. You have to blame the world of intense modern competition for the desire to have a flashy costume. Everyone wants to stand out the most on stage and dressmakers want the promo of being worn by a top dancer. It's a symbiotic relationship forged in a multi-million dollar industry. That's it. That's the answer to the question.
Why the dresses are shaped the way they're shaped now, with an ultra-low waist and super short skirt? No idea.
People who grew up around Irish dance and are only just seeing how it looks today seem to blame Americans for the costumes. In the old days, it was the Americans who were ruining Irish dance with more non-traditional choreography. In both cases, the changes were actually a collective effort and not the fault of one country over another. It's the winners at the top level who end up influencing popular trends, and dressmakers take advantage of it. All Irish dancers within organizations dress similarly. Irish Irish dancers look identical to American ones.
In decades gone by, the solo costume was slightly influenced by what everyday clothes looked like, with added knotwork and probably a shawl or cape to show that it was for the Irish culture. Then they got more definitively folksy. In fact, for a while in the mid-Twentieth Century, the costumes didn't radically change at all.
The modern solo dress, like the curls, was basically standardized in the 1980s with the appearance of the stiff panels (sometimes split), heavy velvet, tons (and I mean tons) of embroidery, and a fancy headband. Still, though, the dresses were noticeably and undeniably meant for an Irish folk dance, and the silhouette remained similar until the later 90s, when the skirt started getting wide and neon. That's right, non-traditional fabrics and colors started showing up. So did sequins and rhinestones. There was still a strong Irish theme and lots of knotwork, though it might not be done in embroidery, or in any combination of colors meant to be seen by human eyeballs at one time.
With Irish dance suddenly a global phenomenon, there was more money to be made. Grandma can't be hand-making these things anymore!
Why are the legs tanned?
Because people wanted to make money selling fake tans to stressed-out dance moms and teachers.
Because Irish dance costumes have lost the plot.
Because no one has seen how offensively dark (or even kind of green) these little white girl legs get and twitter hasn't canceled it.
People seem to blame Americans for this, too, but I've seen the popularity of freestyle disco in the UK and Ireland. I've seen the tanning that goes on there. That's not on the Americans! We are not nearly so tan-obsessed!
Actually, the reasons given (and they're all just coping mechanisms for a mistake it's apparently too late to back out of now) are the following:
They prevent a dancer from looking blown out under stage lights!
What stage lights! Most of the time, dancers are at little local feiseanna in gyms and hotel ballrooms. Even at major competitions, the hall is fully lit! And I don't see ballerinas smearing fake tans on their bodies under real stage lights. Also, if they're so worried about being blown-out, they wouldn't wear white poodle socks with white laces and white tape anymore. That gets blown out. Solo dancers used to wear black tights more often. Why not go back to that if you're so worried? Hmmm?
They show off our muscles!
This isn't a body-building competition. Adjudicators aren't looking at a twelve-year-old's muscles like, oh wow amazing quads I'm ranking them first. The dresses are already perilously short as it is. Let's not make it weirder.
Some nebulous and not at all insulting idea that pale legs are less healthy.
White Irish people are not known for their tans. We survived until the late 2000s without any tanning on stage. It just looks like pageantry without restraint. Now you've got girls finally remembering to match their legs to their face and hands and they look like orange splotchy hard forty-year-old bronzer monsters.
Why the white tape and white laces?
This one is truly a mystery. Truly. I haven't seen anyone even try to explain it.
The first instances were people taping over the strap of their hardshoe in, like, 2010 or so. Which is weird, but not ugly. Then, for some reason, more and more of the top of the hardshoe was taped over, so that now they often look like spats sitting on a sliver of a black sole. Or, in the case of softshoes, white laces make it look like the dancer has big white feet. And the extra silly thing is that the buckles dancers wear (sometimes on softshoes now) get totally lost in the white tape. Can't even see them. And you don't even want to know what the whole taped contraption looks like close-up. Mess.
Like wigs, solo costume trends, and tans, it's not a requirement to have white tape and laces on your shoes, but there's a fear that not doing these things will get you ranked lower in competition. Athletes can be very superstitious.
It's not traditional anymore!
Well, it is. By definition it is.
As I mention elsewhere, Irish dance is a living folk dance and an aesthetic sport. This means that it continues to evolve from its original roots. You cannot measure the whole of Irish dance by the top 1%. Worlds level competition is choreographed to win, which is usually where a lot of envelope-pushing happens. All of these dancers can treble out a traditional set. We are taught the traditional choreography throughout our time in lessons. It's the entire foundation. Sometimes a very non-traditional movement gains popularity and loses favor with judges, but that's the nature of an aesthetic sport.
Organizations like CLRG make it a mission to preserve choreography, dances, and the Irish language. The World Championships are a bilingual event, announced in both Irish and English, with Irish on the official podiums and placements. I promise you that beyond the bling, Irish dance still knows where it comes from.