Annie's Irish Dancing

Most of you know by now about Annie's latest obsession: Irish Step Dancing. She goes to Tir Conaill Academy of Irish Dance and her main teachers are Christopher McGrory and Michael Patrick Gallagher.
Here she is in her ghillies (soft shoes) and "school jumper." This is the costume the girls wear to compete in a feis (an Irish Step Dance competition). When they reach a certain level in competition, the girls can get their own unique solo dress, which is a very flashy, very expensive dress.

Here's the back of the jumper. They all wear capes. I have no idea why.


Here Annie is in her hard shoes which are a lot like tap shoes, although the "taps" are made of fiber glass.

Annie recently competed in her first feis, which is considered a rite of passage in the Irish dance world. Everyone has to be very quiet and respectful when the first feis students are performing. The rest of the time, the audience is loud and raucous because it mostly consists of other contestants getting ready to perform their own dances and their families. There are usually dancers in various stages of undress in the audience as well as families eating lunches and talking on cell phones.



This is a video of Annie's First Feis Beginner Reel


And this is her light jig.

I realize that those videos are not particularly good, so we dressed Annie up in her finery today and took videos of her doing all of her dances.



I think Jay and I need to work a little on our technique, but you get the idea. The hard shoe dancing needs to happen in the garage, so the lighting is a bit dicey for that.

Another tradition is that the girls must curl their hair before a feis. Most girls wear curly wigs now, but, as always, Annie and I decided to go the more traditional route and curl her hair ourselves.

I put her hair in a high ponytail and then use these soft curlers invented by the mom of an Irish dancer.

I think I used over 40 for Annie. Putting the curlers in her ponytail only allows her to sleep well. It takes a long time for the curls to dry (I use a special curling spray on Annie's dry hair), so it needs to be done pretty early the day before the feis in order for her hair to be ready on feis day.

But here are the results. It looks SO much better than a wig.

I use a ton of hairspray (organic, non-toxic, of course), so her hair is a little crunchy.

I think she looks very Irish, though!