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Irish dance contains multiple styles, each shaped by different histories, regions, and communities, and those differences matter to how we learn, teach, and perform today. I reflect on how festival, competitive, and “old style” forms have been defined and policed, and how dancers navigate expectations about what “counts” as real Irish dance. I ask what it might look like to honor these lineages while also making space for experimentation, hybridity, and dancers’ own evolving relationships with the tradition.

When I came up with my new mini-slogan, “There are many ways to be an Irish dancer,” it came from many, many years of trying to figure out where I want to position myself in this wonderful, complex world of Irish dance. A slogan is one thing, but explaining the decades of experience and lessons that led to it is another.