Talk:Irish dance

From Academic Kids

About dance shoes for boys -- I've never seen a male wear the same style ghillies the girls wear. Even the younger and less experienced ones have shoes resembling jazz shoes, not the ghillies.

The topics that constitute Irish Dance

This article is a disgrace.  :-)

Nothing about set dancing...you'd think only step dancing existed...the article should probably live at Irish folk dance.

Set dancing is folk dance too. So is your sentence unclear, or are you confused?

To be clearer: the article should include information about set dancing and the resulting article should live on Irish folk dance. (Of course set dancing is a kind of folk dance!) The category "Irish dance" would include info about ballet and modern dance in Dublin, e.g., which is evidently not part of your subject here. --LMS

I've added some info on set dances. More needs to be written. I've also clarified the usage of irish dance to mean what some refer to as step dancing. Step dancing is more of a slang term, while irish dance is the more formal term for the style of folk dancing that is the topic here. Irish dance would mean something different than any dance that occurs in Ireland. In fact, irish dance is extremely popular in the US, Canada and Australia. 12.250.251.139 05:50, 5 Aug 2003 (UTC)

LMS is right. This article is not about Irish dance. It's about step dancing which is just as common in Scotland as Ireland. I'm moving it to that title shortly. -- Derek Ross 15:55, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I do not believe that this was the correct thing to do. The scottish dancing has hand movements that are not found in the irish version. The foot movements while perhaps begun from the same roots do not bear the same resembelence today. The organization for Dance teachers in North America is IDTNA -- the Irish Dance Teachers of North America. Not Step dance teachers. I would like to see some discussion by others on this issue because I believe that the original emphasis was correct. greybeard 04:02, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Let me take your points one-by one. The scottish dancing has hand movements that are not found in the irish version -- Hand movements aren't proscribed in Scottish step dancing but they aren't generally prescribed either. After all the emphasis in step dancing, whether Irish or Scottish, is on the feet not on the hands. So I don't see the presence or absence of hand movements as any more than variation between different dances. It just so happens that in Ireland hand movements are proscribed no matter what the dance. Are you thinking of Highland dancing perhaps ? Because it's definitely not step dancing.

The foot movements while perhaps begun from the same roots do not bear the same resemblance today. -- But that's what makes any named dance different from another. Even individual named dances within the Irish step dance tradition use different foot movements: that's what makes the dances differ from each other. Geographically different regions have different styles, which is why Sean-nos gets a mention. The different foot movements that you note, are not so different that either the Scottish and Irish variants, or even the Northern English variant, have become unrecognisable as step dancing.

The organization for Dance teachers in North America is IDTNA -- the Irish Dance Teachers of North America. Not Step dance teachers. -- Fine, but I would expect that, even in North America, Irish Dance teachers would teach not only Irish step dancing but also Irish set dancing, ceilidh dancing, etc., so I wouldn't expect them to be called Step dance teachers. After all, they teach the entire repertoire of Irish dance (I presume).

I believe that the original emphasis was correct -- Understood. Unfortunately I'm not so sure. I always feel uncomfortable when reading articles which claim that such-and-such is purely Irish when I know from my own experience that it is in fact Gaelic. I felt that this article fell very much into that category and that is why I renamed it.

I think that there is still a place for an article called Irish dance. It's just that I think that it should cover more than this article does (as LMS says above). Some effort has been made to do that and as a result there is some non-step dancing information in the article. In the meantime, I'll bow to your wishes and move the article back to Irish dance but ideally I'd like to see the step dancing elements in an article of their own. -- Derek Ross 18:19, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Great. I agree. Thank you. I would be glad to help with what I know about step dancing with the new article. greybeard 05:15, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Step dancing in Britain and Ireland

I have followed traditional dancing in Britian an Ireland for close on 40 years, and the dances are not really related. This last 10 years since Riverdance became popular we find a upsurge in the popularity of hardshoe dancing, which in my experience was the Irish tradition. Clogging recently has emulated the trad Irish style. [Ian]

Granted that 40 years is a long time and I bow to your experience but we're talking here about a dance tradition which is 140 years or more and which has risen and fallen in popularity a few times during that period. Surely it's difficult to say what's related and what's not without doing the research on the late 18th and early 19th century heyday of step dancing. I would of course agree that Riverdance has more recently led to a popularity in all types of step dancing and it doesn't surprise me that it has influenced some of the other forms as a result. -- Derek Ross | Talk 06:32, 2004 Sep 15 (UTC)

Flamenco comparison

"Irish dancing resembles Flamenco"? Both styles strike the floor with hard shoes, that's where the similarity ends; the methods, the postures, the attitude etc. are all very different. The page is named "Irish dance". Let's get some Irish dance experts to contribute. -- Kilclaren

Thought this page was about Irish Dance, what's all this discussion about Scots dance? Kit