Irish Dance
Irish Dance is a general term for a group of dances with roots in modern Irish, Celtic, and Western European cultures. The first references to a specific dancing style in Ireland are from about 400 AD, when Pagan Druids performed circular dances around sacred trees. Over the next 500 years, Celts would come in from Central Europe, convert the majority of the population to Christianity, and introduce their own dances and music, including bagpipes, harps, and less religious dances with more organized movement patterns (the origin of Céilí). The Norman conquest of Ireland in the 1100s further developed Irish folk dancing to the point where it was performed at all social and religious gatherings. Over the next centuries, three main types of group dances emerged from the general Irish dance: the Irish Hey, the Rinnce Fada, and the Trenchmore.
It is an urban legend among the modern Irish Dance community that the reason solo dancers hold their arms to their sides is that Irish peasants danced behind half-doors so that British soldiers could only see their unmoving top halves. Gaelic cultural traditions were banned in the late 1600s and early 1700s, and dancing happened behind closed doors, but arms were pulled in because of the emergence of solo performance in crowded pubs and barns. "Dance Masters" were skilled teachers who traveled between villages to help teach both solo and group dancing to populations. This resulted in the development of distinct regional styles that were later made a set of dances that we now know as jigs, reels, hornpipes, etc. This also resulted in the eventual creation of Irish Dance competitions, as Dance Masters would compete against each other solo.
Irish dancing emerged in other countries when nearly two million Irish people emigrated during the Great Famine of 1845-52. By 1893, the Gaelic League had been formed in the United States, and they formed An Coimisiun le Rinci Gaelacha (CLRG) to become a governing competitive body in 1930.
Irish Dance today resembles many other organized sports, with schools sending their teams and solo pupils to compete, but it remains unique in its connection to cultural heritage and performance. Please see the page Step Dance to learn more about how Irish Dance has evolved in recent history, including the popularity it gained in the 1990s and 2000s through the show Riverdance.
Some current styles of Irish Dance include:
