Get A Hobby! - Irish Dance
Author: Kyla Sterling
“You sweat. You bleed. You sometimes cry, and you sometimes swear. You forget to breathe. And then you fix your smile and you do it all over again, but better this time. That’s Irish dancing.”
Kyla Sterling is a competitive Irish dancer, and she wants to share her hobby with us.
Irish dance is a traditional style of dance that generally conjures up a specific image with people – usually a line of dancers all jumping and tapping in rhythm, or occasionally a man in a puffy shirt tapping across a stage as quickly as possible. It dates back in its current form only to the later part of the 19th century, although legends abound as to its actual roots.
“I’ve heard so many stories,” Kyla Sedai says. “From Catholics meeting in secret who posted lookouts to tap on the floor if they saw soldiers coming, to pre-Christian rituals ... everybody has their legend of how Irish dancing started.” The truth isn’t quite as dramatic – French quadrilles were a big hit in Continental Europe in the early 1700s, and Irish people wanted to learn the fashionable dances. But the Irish are nothing if not stubborn, so they kept their traditional music and added some elements of Sean-Nós dancing (a much less formal style of Irish dance) and came up with a unique hybrid. By the 1750s, there were traveling “dancing masters” all over Ireland, and by the 1890s many dances had become standardized – or “set” – enough for the rise of competitive Irish dancing. It’s this kind of dancing that Kyla Sedai does.
Irish dancing is surprisingly widespread, says Kyla Sedai. “When I went to the World Championships this past April, there were dancers from everywhere. The Russians had a heavy presence, as well as a lot of the former Soviet states – Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia. There were a lot of German schools, since the competition was in Germany, as well as all of the Irish and Scottish schools. There was also a school from Hong Kong, a handful of Americans, and one Australian who didn’t seem to know how he got there.”
It should be noted, she says, that Kyla Sedai doesn’t dance with the “famous” Irish dance federation, An Coimisiún le Rincí Gaelacha (abbreviated CLRG). They are the premier Irish Dance body, and rules for competing at their World Championships are very strict. Kyla Sedai dances for the World Irish Dance Association (WIDA) because they were much more welcoming of adult dancers.
Most Irish dancers begin taking lessons as children; Kyla Sedai was twenty-seven when she attended her first class. At first, she just wanted to learn the movements, and then she wanted to perform, and then… “I went to my first competition – we call it a feis, pronounced “fesh” – and it was all over for me. I found out there was a whole world of competing I’d had no idea about, and I never looked back.” She says she upped her practice time considerably, entered every competition she could, and eventually switched to a school an hour and a half’s drive away to be challenged at a higher level. She sent inquiries to a few CLRG schools in her state, but none of them would accept an adult as a new student. WIDA has no such qualms about welcoming older dancers as well as small children. Anything she didn't do? "I haven't bought a dress yet," she laughs, "and I stopped wearing the big curly wig when I changed schools." So no big sparkly dress? "Those dresses cost about $3,000 USD. No way am I buying one of those every year!" Wow!
So what’s it like? Kyla Sedai says she’s in class for about two and a half hours once a week – this is where she learns new steps for her dances and works on techniques and polishing them with her teacher. She also practices outside of class, but not as often as she should. “The goal is a five-to-one ratio,” she says. “Five hours of practice for every hour spent in class. It never happens, but someday I’ll get there.” She also works on her stamina and endurance. A solo dance in competition is usually about two minutes long, depending on the speed of the music, and it needs to be two minutes of perfection. “You have to be up as high on your toes as you can – you lose points if your heel hits the ground. You also have to keep your feet turned out, but your legs are also crossed over each other. Your arms have to be straight down at your sides, but your hands can’t be clenched in fists or hanging open. You have to make good use of the stage, and not just stay in one place. And of course, you’ve got to be smiling like it’s the easiest thing in the world you’re doing.” Um…Kyla Sedai? Did you forget something? “Breathing is the first thing to go,” she laughs. “I’ll finish my dance and get back in line while the judge writes, and have to try to breathe like the quietest moose there is because I was holding my breath the entire time.”
What about competitions? A feis is divided up by skill level and age group – Kyla Sedai is officially an Under-35 Intermediate dancer. “WIDA goes all the way up to Under 40 and then Over 40 for the ‘Senior’ group. In CLRG you’re a Senior dancer when you turn 21,” she says. However, at a smaller competition, one with only 5-10 schools competing, she’s found herself dancing in the “Senior” group with college freshmen. The competition is ordered by dance – first the soft shoe competition, which includes reel, slip jig, single jig, and light jig, and then the hard shoe competition, which covers treble jig, hornpipe, and traditional set dances. (Traditional sets are dances to certain songs that are always done the same way.) Often there will be a “premiership” competition between soft and hard shoes, which gives awards for the best overall in that age group and skill level, in addition to the awards for best individual dances. At a Championship, though, there are no skill divisions and only four rounds – and you’re only guaranteed to be in three. The first round is a soft shoe dance, the second round is a hard shoe dance, and the third round is a traditional set. If your scores are high enough after those rounds (generally the top half), you get “recalled” to dance your modern set in the fourth round. “The modern set is your signature piece,” Kyla Sedai says. “Your school might have the same reel steps and treble jig steps that all students at that level do, but the set is yours.” Dancers just have to be careful, she warns, that they don’t spend all their time practicing their set at the expense of their other dances. “It doesn’t matter how awesome your set is if you don’t do well in your other rounds. Nobody’s going to see it if you don’t recall.”
Is there anything you want to clear up about Irish dancing? “It’s not Riverdance!” Kyla Sedai says. “That’s the name of a show that brought a lot of recognition to Irish dance, but that’s not what it’s called!” Anything else? “A lot of people are very dismissive. They say it isn’t a sport, or they jump up and down and kick their feet a little and say they’re Irish dancing, and that’s just really rude. You wouldn’t tell a ballerina that anybody can do what she does, or a gymnast, or an elite hockey or football player. But people think it’s totally fine to make fun of the Irish dancers who work just as hard.”
For more information about the world of competitive Irish dancing, you can look up the TLC short documentary “The Big Jig” on YouTube, where it is available in its entirety. There is also a full-length documentary, Jig that is available on DVD but also turns up occasionally on Netflix or Amazon streaming. Irish dance shows that can be found on DVD include Riverdance, The Lord of the Dance, and Dancing on Dangerous Ground. Kyla Sedai also says that most Championships – both CLRG and WIDA – will have their “parade of champions,” where the winners of each age group get to show off, on YouTube.
Do you have a hobby you’d like to see featured in the Tar Valon Times? Send a PM to Kyla Sterling and you could be the next subject of “Get A Hobby!”
