History of Irish Step Dancing

Video Transcript

"Irish dancing has been around for hundreds of years. It's been a form of art for the Celtic people for a long time and they traveled across Western Europe and spread Irish dancing. It began in pubs, barns, fields, anywhere you can dance, and it was basically a collective thing where groups of people would come together and have a lot of fun. They would play their fiddles, their harps, whatever they had, tin whistles, and the ladies and gentlemen would dance together formally in groups of eight known as a set. And there would be say, twenty groups of eight dancing these same numbers and it was known as a Kayley. The Kayley's were very popular but in the twentieth century, solo Irish dancing became increasingly popular. People started paying instructors to teach them the steps and they started getting these elaborate dresses and costumes and hair and it became very competitive. And my school is one of the competitive schools too. I'm a Festful Irish Dancer. The other kind is a Fesh Irish Dancer. Fesh dancers concentrate on fast rhythms, high jumps, very big dresses and big hair. And Festful Dancers prefer to interpret the music and express yourself through the dance. It's more lyrical, smoother sometimes, softer too, but they're both forms of Irish dancing and both, both are important to each other."