News 2. 10. 2012
What’s Up With Those Irish Dancing Costumes?
Left: Archives of Irish America, New York University. Right: Kenneth O Halloran.
When did Irish dancing originate?
Step dancing goes back to approximately 1750. The major milestone was in the 1890s, when we had the formation of the Gaelic League. In West Cork, in a town called Macroom, the Gaelic League decided to have a Sunday afternoon of competition in Irish language, in Irish literature and in Irish dancing. About six people competed in the first dancing competition, called a feis.
What’s Irish about the contemporary Irish dancing costumes?
Well, there’s nothing Irish about them. In fact, some of the boys’ costumes that they’re wearing now are a cross between Michael Jackson and a hotel porter. Some of them do have Celtic embroidery on their costumes.
For girls’ costumes, there were certain things that constituted the early Irish dancing costume: the shawl, the use of the Tara brooch as an Irish national emblem, a lot of Celtic embroidery and Celtic lace. Now you look at some of the contemporary creations. They are fashion creations — lovely colorful designs, etc. — and not a scrap of identity to say that they’re Irish. Also, the costumes nowadays are designed to facilitate a very elevated kind of dancing. The dancers appear to float about three feet off the floor. That wasn’t the case in my time, in the 1960s. So the dancing style has changed enormously, and so too then has the costume.
When were the wigs introduced?
The wigs didn’t come into being until about the 1980s. Beginning around the 1960s, the girls wanted to have their hair in natural ringlets when they were dancing in their competition. It meant that the poor dancers had to sleep with their heads in rollers and curling devices of all sorts, which was torturous. So someone came up with the idea of using wigs instead. The wigs became bigger and more elaborate, and some now have the tiaras and other paraphernalia.
And the makeup?
Competitions are held in huge auditoriums, on stages that measure about 40 feet wide, and the lighting required to light those stages is tremendous. Irish dancers, like all performers, get made up. So there’s nothing unusual about making up the dancers. But the extent to which it’s done is surprising, particularly with the young children.
We do have competitions in which children at the early ages are not allowed to wear makeup and must wear simple dresses. We try to control it, but it is a very parent-driven thing.
And the spray tan?
It developed in the last 15 years. I remember an occasional dancer would have very tan legs, but that didn’t mean that everyone wanted to be like her. But in the last decade or two, you wouldn’t be going on stage at a major championship unless you were completely made up and sprayed up. It’s part of the global aspect and the intensity of the competition now. We are in something like 28 countries with over 2,500 qualified Irish dancing teachers from South Africa to Norway, Germany, Japan and Argentina.
Some people ask me if I cringe when I see the modern Irish dancing. But the opposite is true. Riverdance and Lord of the Dance raised the profile of Irish dancing culture around the world in a way that’s unparalleled in the history of any other dancing that I know of. That is definitely a positive side to it. So sometimes we take the little side issues like the large wigs and the excessive makeup as part of the deed.
Left: The Irish Examiner. Right: Kenneth O Halloran.
Left: The Irish Examiner. Right: Kenneth O Halloran.
Left: The Irish Examiner. Right: Kenneth O Halloran.
By STACEY BAKER
Václav Bernard
