In my quest to promote that “there are many ways to be an Irish dancer,” I get a lot of questions about how different styles of Irish dance relate to each other, and especially what makes something modern, traditional, contemporary, etc. There’s no one right answer, but there are a lot of perspectives and opinions!
So, I’ve been working on building a new Irish Dance Connections Map to connect those perspectives and try to understand Irish dance through a network of various lenses. It can be easy to center one Irish dance practice because it’s the most widespread, or the best resourced, or the one that you practice, but the truth is that all of these practices connect in particular ways (except when they don’t!). This map is about trying to encapsulate Irish dance as a family of practices and testing the boundaries of the definitions we’ve created for those practices.
My Irish Dance Connections Map is an interactive tool for exploring how Irish dance practices, movement, music, footwear, geography, terminology, settings, and systems connect. It’s not a hierarchy, it’s not linear, and it’s not a single definition of Irish dance. It is a way to follow relationships: where practices overlap, where they differ, and where familiar words can mean different things in different contexts.
The whole thing started because I was getting multiple questions about certain terms that cut across Irish dance styles—what is the difference between set dancing (as in country set dancing in groups) and a set dance (a solo step dance choreography danced to a particular tune)? What is the difference between a figure dance and a céilí dance, and are figure dances the same as figures in country set dances? Is festival style in a category of its own, or is it another style of modern competitive step dance? In the process of creating this map (which started with the messy sketch you see below), I encountered a bunch of interesting sticking points, some in surprising places. For example, I included “hop jig” as an afterthought, since it’s not super common in Irish dance, but I thought it would be nice to make a quick mention of it. However, when I asked for feedback from some friends, it turns out that the ways we define hop jigs—especially from musician vs. dancer perspectives—are really complex. So, rather than avoid terms like these, I want to use this map to examine them further and inspire a some friendly debate. I think these little investigations can actually teach us a lot about how different types of Irish dancers relate to each other, and also how they relate to musicians.
The map isn’t meant to show every single detail of every style (like the intricacies of CLRG feiseanna rules, or every costume piece, or the regional origins of every step, or every possible movement), but I want to show where things intersect, where there are similarities, and where there are differences.
I created this prototype based on what I know from my 35+ years of Irish dancing in various styles, but I know I’m missing a lot. There are surely more terms, more details, more connections, and more nuances. I’m especially interested in the debates around these details. That’s where you come in—what would you add to this map? What doesn’t look right to you, and what would you disagree with? What could be further clarified, or maybe further complicated?
Explore the map at katespanosirishdance.com/map and let me know what you think.
The map is built with Javascript, HTML, and CSS.
