Figure 1.--

One Irish dancer is disturbed by the increasing popularity of loud banging the hard shoe on the dancing boards.

I have observed this growth and evolution of this continual hopping style of dance, even with continual battering by some dancers, over the more than decade and half that I've been doing Irish set dancing. This style seems to be basically spontaneous among todays dancers as I also don't know anyone who actually teaches it. If anyone on the list has actually been taught this style please tell us of the process. I'd love to hear how it was taught.

I don't think it really ever was or is taught to today's dancers. Instead this seems to me to be simply a style that agrees with the faster, more hyperactive urban (or urbanized) lifestyle. People do it because they enjoy it, having picked it up merely from watching others, and these same people are the current revival of set dancing. Whether or not someone personally likes the style or not (and I don't for myself) I think we must acknowledge its existence as a style of dancing, not just bad dancing in itself. Of course I will hasten to add that anyone who kicks another or runs into another is dancing badly no matter what style they're using. That's a different matter from style.

I first was aware of an early form of this style in 1985. I saw a group doing the Caledonian at the One Mile Inn outside Ennis. They were a competition set and they all danced exactly the same with the early lighter version of the hopping (no battering with it). At the Willie Clancy Summer School that year a video tape was made during the school. It was titled "Willie Week". Have any of you seen it? The only dancing shown in the tape was by some becostumed children doing the Caledonian in a very competion style and form, i.e. 1) the girls backed into the center and danced forward out, 2) the couples 'danced at home' mostly pivoting around as Chris described above, and 3) they did the hopping style, no battering. Their dancing was not demented or frenetic, but very controlled as would be expected of a disciplined competion group.

A couple of years later I was back at Willie Clancy week taking the class from Martin and Bridie Byrnes and other Clare dancers. They were teaching the Clare style of dancing for their sets, but quite a few in the class, mostly Dubliners I believe but maybe some others also, were doing the continual hopping style. One of the teachers, Pat Moroney, upon seeing this, pointed to them and said, "Now we'll have none of that East Coast Style here." Of course that didn't stop them; it was their style, and they didn't seem to really want to learn or do the old Clare style.

So while the origins of the continual hopping style seem to be from a competition style that some one or group created to impress the adjudicators, I don't know exactly when (likely in the late 1970s or early '80s) or by whom. If anyone has any more specific info on this I'd love to hear it. Despite this origin it seems to have been taken on by urban dance revivers everywhere to such an extent that its origin is irrelevant to its current popularity. Also I think that the sets danced today in most places, with the style in which most (I think) people dance them, should no longer be refered to as 'country sets', but now as 'urban sets', because they're just different from the old sets and style, whether Clare style, Cork/Kerry style, or other regional styles.

I really enjoy the smooth old style in Clare dancing. Dancing through a Clare set with someone who does the same style is one of the most intense enjoyments in life. I can still enjoy dancing with a hopper, so long as the hopping is not too wild, but it's just not the same. This problem with the clash of styles, sometimes serious as Chris indicates, is not new. I remember Joe O'Donovan back in mid '80s sometime noting that you may have to dance a bit more loosely and with a looser hold if your dancing with a hopper. I wonder if those who do the hopping style feel the same way about dancing with those of us who like to dance the smoother way. Sla/n anois, Michael

Created: February 2, 2002
Last updated: February 2, 2002