I’d like to talk about how I think about styles in Irish dance. As I wrote last week, I find Irish dance to be quite broad compared to the fairly limited view most people have of it. The differences in our niche genre of dance may be nuanced, but they are significant to those of us who are in it.
This semester, my classes have been discussing the differences between Irish dance styles. My students asked me for a simple definition, but, of course, it’s complicated, just like any tumultuous relationship. When I have to promote and differentiate my classes on my website, a small flyer, or my tiny business card, I have to decide how I am defining them, not only by level, but also by style. I need to be able to give potential students an idea of what they are getting into. But my hope is that, once they’re in my class, the lines between these definitions become blurred and ever more confusing.
I should start by saying that I love everything about Irish dance—all its styles, all the spaces it is danced in, all of us who share this vocabulary and this passion for something so odd, perhaps, but unifying. I’m not blind to the problems in various Irish dance communities but over the years, I’ve been able to carve out a path for myself that feels productive and inspiring. I choose to focus on that and avoid the rest. As I mentioned in my last essay, I want to be an advocate for Irish dance as a whole, and part of that is understanding and being able to articulate what I think Irish dance is.
The first distinction I had to make when launching my Irish dance classes was between sean nós dance and step dance. It’s very difficult for a competitive step dancer to do sean nós, and vice versa, not only because the execution of style is so different, but also because they are operating within totally different aesthetic frameworks. What is valued in sean nós dance versus competitive step dance is distinct and should be understood as such. I am aware that some would describe sean nós dance as a type of step dance because it involves “stepping,” similar to myriad other step dance cousins, like Cape Breton, Ottawa Valley, Scottish step dance, etc. But, for me, the biggest difference is that sean nós is improvisational, and step dance focuses on choreographed “steps.” In my experience, step dance almost never involves any training in improvisational methods, whereas improvisation is at the center of sean nós. Sean nós dancers also learn steps and patterns sometimes, but in its most traditional form, it is created spontaneously in dialogue with a musician or musicians.
Now let’s turn to the question of “old style” step dance versus sean nós. Sean nós means “old style” in Irish, and yet these two styles are distinct. “Old style” step dance would be the style taught by the itinerant dancing masters who traveled primarily throughout Munster, which involved, again, choreographed steps, along with lessons in etiquette and decorum. Sean nós is from Connemara and has been passed on in a less formal way (“caught, not taught,” as I have heard some of my traditional dance colleagues say). These are different lineages. I am troubled by the judgmental terms sometimes used to describe sean nós as “wild” and “untamed,” likely because of its loose, improvisational nature, but the truth is that this is a common perspective that I have heard expressed repeatedly over the years. (At the core of this judgment is a notion of “discipline” in Ireland’s colonial context, elevating one above the other for the purpose of constructing a particular national image—a topic for a future essay.) Both styles are “close to the floor” in comparison to today’s modern step dancing, but sean nós would be much closer to the floor and created spontaneously in the moment, whereas old style step dance would be repeated steps (often considered to be “traditional” steps today) with a more upright posture, higher stepping, and arms held (but relaxed!) at the sides.
What differentiates “old style” step dance from step dance today? I hesitate to call it modern step dance since Irish dance has been developing rapidly over the past couple of decades, but sometimes “modern” does seem like the best word. Modern step dance is increasingly intricate, fast, virtuosic, and athletic—the standard is being elevated all the time, to the point that even dancers who retired from competition just 10 years ago barely recognize what is being done on stages today. As impressive as it is, this style as increasingly rigid, both physically and musically, to the extent that it is largely divorced from the music. I have studied a lot of old style step dance, as well as “modern” step dance from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, which have an entirely different musicality and sense of rhythm in relation to the music compared to today’s steps, and it is extremely challenging to learn to hear the music differently after being trained to hear it one way. To be more specific, modern competitive step dancers are increasingly reliant on a metronomic grid of music—more like stomping on top of it than actually dialoguing with it. A master dancer can find dynamic musicality within that grid, but their dancing often lacks spontaneity because it has been rehearsed over and over again to the same piece of music at exactly the tempo it was choreographed for. I love watching footage from major competitions today—the dancing is so impressive, and the rhythms are incredible. I’m always inspired by the new moves and rhythms. However, outside of the context of competition and all its trappings, I find this style difficult to watch and connect to, and outsiders see it as entirely foreign.
Within the category of “modern” step dancing, we also have show style—that is, the style popularized by Riverdance and Lord of the Dance and their many offshoots. At this point, these shows are traditional in and of themselves. They are celebrating 30 years now! When I was learning “traditional” dance repertoire in the 90s, those “old style” dances were invented (or perhaps “reinvented”) just a few decades earlier. Today, the choreography from these big shows is taught all over the world and comprises an important part of Irish dance repertoire. Do kids today think of Riverdance as modern, or is it old at this point? But in terms of vocabulary, it is all the same as what has been done for over a century! Lots of heels, toes, and trebles; some drums, twists, and crosskeys; all in a particular syntax that Irish dancers recognize. The idea that these shows are “modern” is more about the style in which they are danced, which involves a combination of more balletic arms and facial expressions along with the theatricality of the shows themselves. The sexy costumes and dramatic displays of romance, strength, and despair! The idea that an Irish dance would have a story or narrative behind it does not feel very traditional—I was only vaguely told as a young dancer that my Bonaparte’s Retreat set dance finished at the back of the stage to echo the story of a military retreat, or that Kilkenny Races should have horsey movements to connect to tune’s title, but otherwise we had no story in mind. So perhaps this narrative theatricality and high production value is what makes the show styles modern.
Now, what I love about festival style dance—and the reason I think it’s such a great way to explore many aspects of Irish dance—is that it seems to resist the categories described above. I encountered festival style at a time when I was frustrated by these categories and found a way out through this new way of approaching Irish dance. It is very traditional in the sense that the festival style community has resisted the modernization of costumes (no wigs or tanner, no glittery neon dresses!) and the steps remain relatively simple. In fact, I see them as intentionally non-virtuosic (in comparison to feis style), leaving room for more elegance and expression. With the slower music, there is also a greater need for developing musicality, because the incredibly slow tempo leaves room for more dynamic stillness and silence. Plus, any off-time rhythms are immediately obvious—you can’t just fly through your set dance and hope a small mistake goes unnoticed. The “grid” I talked about earlier isn’t quite as rigid. In class, we often talk about gliding “over the grid” and not gripping into it quite the way that feis style requires us to do. We have to listen to the music in a very different way, and, truly, festival style training has opened up my ears to hearing things I wouldn’t have heard if I were only thinking about the grid I was taught to hear as a feis child. With the grid approach, every hornpipe and treble jig is the same—it doesn’t matter what the tune is. Letting go of that means opening up the dancing to a musician’s variations and dynamics, and maybe a little slip out of the grid, that might otherwise be ignored.
Festival style also leaves room for a more modern interpretation of Irish dance, at least in my experience. At least that has been my experience studying with Lauren Smyth, who also brings the show style perspective from her years with Riverdance. Festival style has different aspects; you can compare what is danced at the festivals (their version of feiseanna, a more formal competition scene) to what festival style pioneer Patricia Mulholland would have created for her “Irish folk ballets.” These ballets preceded Riverdance and were ahead of their time, not only in terms of storytelling but also in terms of the more balletic style that lent itself to narrative expression.* It was Lauren who gave me the courage to dare to create outside of what I imagined the boundaries of Irish dance to be. I had a huge fear of being called inauthentic, not a real Irish dancer, and of disrespecting tradition and being misunderstood. Discovering the potential for expression in Irish dance through festival style and being able to point to where it comes from, for me, was a revelation and, really, a relief.
I had an interesting experience this past February during the second year of learning Dancing on Dangerous Ground material from choreographers Colin Dunne and Jean Butler. Although this show would probably be considered to be “modern show style,” and ahead of its time when it debuted in 1999, I felt that the styles I was drawing on the most to learn the material were sean nós (for its grounded, close to the floor rhythms) and festival style (for its musicality and expressiveness). It wasn’t the chest-puffing show style nor the rigid, virtuosic competition style. Those who came with those sensibilities struggled to get out of them. These styles were exactly what Colin and Jean were reacting against, after excelling in and leaving their mark on both. And yet, neither of them was drawing on sean nós or festival style. Colin has told me that he would never call himself a sean nós dancer, having never trained in sean nós, even though many people describe his improvisational, free-bodied style as more aligned with sean nós than the step dance style he was known for in his competitive and Riverdance years. And, since leaving Riverdance, Jean has long resided in the modern dance world, opening up her style to being more expressive and exploratory.
This brings me to contemporary Irish dance, which I consider distinct from modern Irish dance. Contemporary dance in and of itself (not culturally defined) is hard enough to define, and I won’t get into the debate about contemporary vs. modern dance in academic circles. But in Irish dance, I feel that what is contemporary is more aligned with the style that Jean Butler showcased in her recent show, What We Hold, which deconstructs Irish dance vocabulary and takes away a lot of what makes it culturally recognizable (including, thankfully, Irish dance’s many stereotypes) in order to reveal the personal stories that our dances hold. In general, contemporary Irish dance can be hit or miss for me. I love traditional Irish music, I love our shared vocabulary, I love seeing a dancer’s posture and knowing, yes, that is an Irish dancer, like me, and not a flatfooter or a tap dancer or a clogger, or a modern dancer who borrowed a few typical Irish dance moves. The best contemporary Irish dance, in my opinion, is that which strips everything away except the elusively defined “essence” of Irish dance, which I just recognize when I see it. But other times, as with any contemporary exploration, it goes beyond what I know to be Irish dance and simply doesn’t speak to me. Too much rolling around on the floor or too much cultural fusion can make it feel like it is trying too hard to be innovative, when my point here is that there is already a ton of innovation to be found within Irish dance itself. The tricky part is defining the boundaries of this so-called Irish dance, and that is each individual dancer’s own responsibility to carve out and find meaning in.
Are you confused yet? Confusion is exactly the point. Within the world of Irish dance, we can point to so many different styles, and it really matters where we come from and what spaces we were trained in. We should be able to articulate where we learned something, who we learned it from, and why we dance it in a particular way. We are always at risk of being called inauthentic because of the power dynamics at play between these different styles. As a result, there will always be haters because of the perceived definitions that some groups use to claim ownership over another group. And yet, when you look more closely, everything blurs and we have to question everything again: is traditional actually modern, and is modern actually traditional; or, if we’re all doing steps, isn’t it all step dance; or, if a step dancer is improvising, is it actually sean nós; or, if we break the grid are we breaking tradition; or, if we use our arms, are we actually doing ballet; or, if we wear our hair down instead of in curls are we pre-dating traditional feis style or are we in postmodern theatrical mode, or, or, or? It goes on and on.
My teaching and approach to choreography aim to respect tradition and push for personal expression. We educate ourselves to liberate ourselves. We should know our roots, but also feel free to explore the possibilities that are open to us. It is crucial to promote the many ways to be an Irish dancer, in its many styles, because it only opens up our bodies to those possibilities.
* If you know me, you know that I vehemently resist the idea that Irish dance needs ballet to elevate it, and yet I do find that adding subtle spotting or body angles or an arm movement here and there really liberates the dance in pleasurable ways, for both dancers and audiences.
Céilí and set dancing are notably missing from this essay, in large part because here I am more focused on individual style and less on social spaces. But there is a lot to say about the styles that are preferred in various céilí contexts, and definitely the topic for another essay!
