Buy Irish Dance Dresses Online
Irish dancing dresses have evolved over the years. Several generations ago it was customary for dancers to turn up for competitions wearing their ‘Sunday best’, i.e. their best and neatest clothes.
In the 1970’ and the 1980’s ornate embroidered dresses became popular.
To-day, the sky is the limit in regards Irish Dancing dresses and it is not uncommon for these dresses to have elaborate embroidered designs intermingled with mirrors, lace, sequins, silk, feathers and even faux fur.
Irish Dancing schools have, ‘school dresses’, where the girls will wear the same design. This is usually to show what level the dancer has reached. If the girl is new she will wear the ‘beginner’s’ dress, then move on to the ‘novice’ and so on until she reaches a certain standard where she gets to choose her own style and colour for her ‘solo’ dress.
The skirts of the dresses used to be floppy, then they were lined with a special cardboard to make them stiff and sit out, now they come in puffy, puffballs, double puffballs, frilly and feathered.
To-day girls will have their hair curled into ringlets or will wear a wig sometimes with an ornate tiara when competing in a Feis (meaning festival and pronounced fesh).
Their male counterparts will wear a vest, shirt and school tie over a pair of black trousers and as with the girls as he reaches a certain standard he will choose his own tie and shirt.
There are two types of shoe worn by Irish dancers, the first being a ‘hard’ shoe.
The hard shoe is similar to a tap shoe except the tips and heels are made with fibreglass instead of metal and they are bulkier. The first hard shoes had wooden or leather taps with metal nails but were replaced with resin or fibreglass to reduce the weight and increase footwork sounds.
The other type of shoe is called a soft shoe or ‘ghillies’. Ghillies resemble a ballet shoe with a few differences. The ghillie does not have the hard toe like the ballet shoe and is tied with laces instead of ribbon and are black instead of the traditional pink for the ballet shoe.
Only girls’ wear ghillies, the boys wear a black leather shoe not unlike a jazz shoe. Boys soft dance shoe also features audible heel clicks.
Irish dancing has become so popular there is now a World Championship and this is usually hosted in Ireland, Northern Ireland or Scotland. The first one was held in Colaiste Mhuire in Dublin.
This year, 2009, for the first time the Irish Dancing World Championship will be held in Philadelphia in the United States. It will, however, return to Glasgow in Scotland in 2010.
