Dance lesson project #1 - Irish dance

Irish Dance shoes - Azzurra Ambrosi CC BY NC ND 2.0

Technically, this post is about traditional and modern dance associated with Ireland, as I am aware there are folk, competition, and tap dance styles. As this dance genre is not something I have researched extensively, I appreciate any critical commentary and offers to fix any errors or assumptions I make in the following post!

Starting with Irish dance as a follow on from ballet was a no-brainer, given the similarities in technique. I was therefore prepared for my inevitable wobbling, and once again painfully reminded of my lack of practice space.

Kicking the solid jarrah bed mid-Irish hop is not recommended.

The first videos I found on YouTube in my search for learning to Irish dance were Diddlyi Irish Dance's videos, which I noted were posted a very long time ago, around about the time of the Riverdance phase we all went through if we're honest with ourselves. The videos were reasonable in quality and instruction, however, I struggled to follow even after replaying several times. And the slow-motion focused on the wrong aspects, to my mind.

Klara Kulikova - courtesy of Unsplash

Next stop - Jean Butler's masterclass videos!

Jean Butler came to fame in the wider world when she first took the stage at one of the Eurovision Song Contest's interval entertainments called 'Riverdance', as the lead female soloist. Her videos had to be worth a look considering the caliber of dancer and years of experience, right? Most definitely.

The first video is a look into the steps and techniques of soft and hard shoe Irish dancing. The other three are actually meant to be viewed as one - it's an actual dance lesson split into three videos, for reasons I will leave to you to figure out *wink*.

Oh my goodness, do I have tight calves or what?!

I recommend just practicing a little bit at a time and always using the warm-up at the beginning of the first video each time before trying something different or picking up where you left off.

Finally, I searched one last time on YouTube and found The New York Studio of Irish Step Dance. While the video I reviewed was not set up to impress visually, the instructor was clear in her instruction and provides a full class and not just a quick 'how-to-do this step' video as seems to be common for Irish dance on YouTube.

Other notable mentions include:

Howcast series - this is short videos of different steps, not classes. Still worth a look if you need a different perspective on a tricky step.

Tyler Teachings series - Tyler is active on YouTube and has even released a quarantine home routine video, but it is listed as 'Advanced', so I didn't check it out. However, I did look at another but it definitely wasn't for beginners. Perhaps these videos would be best for getting the general gist and an idea of technical terms.

Final notes:

I did source a few Irish social, or folk, dance videos, which seemed fine for beginners too. I feel these would be better learned in a local pub before, or after a few Guinness, and therefore recommend you wait till we're free to learn properly again!

And that wraps up the first post in the Dance Lesson Project!

Let me know what you think of the videos featured, and if you have some gems of your own, please share the links in the comments.

Happy dancing!

Click here to visit my NEW YouTube playlist, created especially to share some of the dance videos I have encountered in my research that I found interesting or helpful.