Chapter Eight

MEANINGS OF GENDER AND AGE IN IRISH STEP DANCING COSTUMING

Irish step dancers learn to navigate a wide variety of social codes and expectations

through their interactions with costuming. Not all of these meanings are based in

economics. For example, Irish step dancing dresses can be viewed as expressing a variety

of notions concerning gender. Some observers might characterize Irish step dancing

dresses as allowing dancers to convey cheerful aspects of their personalities and as

empowering. Other viewers, however might note the ways in which Irish costume

standards reinforce conventional norms of femininity. Irish step dancing dresses, I

suggest, offer portrayals of a girl-child ideal, which is solidified both through rules and

constraints on costumes worn by both children and adults.

GENDER AND THE MEANINGS OF COMMODITIES

My scrutiny of this girl-child ideal draws from recent considerations of the nature

of gender. In her 1996 book, Gender: The Pain and Pleasure of Difference, Betsy Waring

provides a historiography of feminist and gender philosophies. According to Waring,

structuralist philosophers such as Ferdinand de Sauserre, Roland Barthes and Jacques

Lacan were concerned with the existence of fundamental systems of knowledge such as a

pre-existing unified structure of language that is conveyed by signs and signifiers of

meaning. Similarly, although not identically, structuralist feminists (including Marxist,

socialist, anarchist, radical, and liberal feminists—who may also incorporate post-

structuralist views into their repertoire) are interested in “patriarchy” as a system of

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control in which women and feminine gender expressions are subjugated to men and

masculinity.

However, Waring also details ways in which many feminist scholars have

embraced postmodern and post-structuralist theory as a means of understanding gender as

a malleable and socially constructed system, as opposed to a fixed biological one, or one

which is completely determined by overarching systems of control. Post-structuralist

gender philosophies are influenced by the work of postmodern philosophers such as Jean-

François Lyotard, Jacques Derrida, and Julia Kristeva, who criticize ideas of overarching

narratives, binary oppositions, essential human nature, and universals in general. Post-

structuralists are often concerned with meaning as something that is relative to the

observer, unstable and transitory, and thus malleable. In these philosophies, women and

others can engage in resistance through the remaking of meaning relating to their

genders, their bodies, their lives, and other subjectivities.

In The Gender and Consumer Culture Reader (2000), Jennifer Scanlon applies an

approach to the ways in which scholarship relating to products and marketing campaigns,

as well as acts of consuming and relating to goods, can be influenced by postmodernist

and post-structuralist analyses of gender. This is particularly relevant to my studies as I

am trying to combine a study of a consumer good—Irish step dancing dresses—and the

way it relates to gendered norms and practices. Scanlon notes that early scholarly

approaches tended to portray consumer cultures in negative terms, for example, as

dictating the choices of actors in society. She argues that analysis of products and

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consumption practices has (and should) become more multifaceted, moving beyond

untroubled condemnations of consumer culture. Scanlon writes:

Historians now fruitfully explore the complex relationships between those

who produce and those who consume. Contemporary sociologists explore
the ways in which consumption meets individual needs for both social
identity and personal distinction. Anthropologists see consumption not as
social control but as a cultural and psychological construct, arrived at
through the active engagement of everyday people with the goods they
purchase and indicative of cultural values” (4).

In addition, Scanlon notes that feminist scholars, some of whom had previously

condemned commodity cultures for reinforcing stereotypical roles for women, have

expanded their viewpoints and critiques of consumer culture to acknowledge the agency

of women and others who participate in building identity through consumption. These

scholars explore the ways that women may even be using consumption to contest

patriarchal norms of gender and to assert power in the home, among other spaces.

Scanlon writes:

Feminists have been among those who have objected most strongly to
women’s participation in the culture of consumption, viewing women as
victims of male capitalism and male family members. Yet recent feminist
scholarship, particularly that of historians and cultural theorists, has
looked at the ways in which women play with the images thrust at them
and, by so doing, disrupt dominant notions of femininity” (7).

According to Scanlon, consumers are agents who may choose to utilize their purchasing

power to construct new identities as women and as individuals. Scanlon views

consumption as an active process, “rather than simply an act,” in which consumers

“continually make choices” (6).

Some scholars critique overly positive portrayals of the abilities of women to

make agentive decisions. Susan J. Douglas’s “Narcissism as Liberation,” an article in

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Scanlon’s book, takes an often-sarcastic look at the contradictions many women feel

between urges to follow feminist ideals and desires to improve their body according to

industry standards. Douglas addresses the ways in which marketers made attempts,

specifically in the 1980s, to merge these drives in the minds of American women. She

critiques the manner in which marketers attempted to connect the promotion of women’s

wishes for beauty with those for “liberation and equality” and “collapse” these broader

goals into “distinctly personal, private desires.” Douglas states that marketers, who

wished to shill luxury products, suggested that “the ability to spend more time and money

on one’s appearance was a sign of personal success and of breaking away from the old

roles and rules that had held women down in the past” and liberate themselves (p. 268).

Douglas does not entirely discount the ability of women to actively make these

choices and lean towards acceptance of “narcissism” on their own. However, she argues

that the idea of “narcissism as liberation gutted many of the underlying principles of the

women’s movement.” The persuasiveness of these messages, through the “[relentless]

deployment of perfect faces and bodies” may ultimately be based in response to fear of

exclusion and “economic pun[ishment]” (281). While women may be responding to these

messages by making active choices with regards to their content, they may also be

reacting to the coerciveness of their intent: to enable companies to sell products that

might otherwise not be considered.

In my view, analysts of gender would be remiss to exclude both an appreciation

of the pleasures of agency and the constraints of structure or coercion. The following two

sections pose interpretations of Irish step dancing costumes that diverge along these lines.

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Irish Step Dancing Dresses as an Expression of Dancers’ Agency and Positive Self-

Perceptions

Commodities such as Irish step dancing dresses are distinct from mass-marketed

goods such as Lucky Charms cereal or Irish Spring soap, or even Riverdance, because

they are not offered to the general public. In addition, Irish step dancing dresses can be

distinguished from many other commodities because although they are made to fit certain

market expectations, such as expectations relating to style, they are usually manufactured

one by one, and not en masse. Consumers of products sold in Wal-Mart or Target, to list

only two examples, cannot generally interact with the owners of the stores, the

contractors, or the workers who produce the goods they buy. Usually, consumers do not

as individuals impact the manufacture of items—although their consumption patterns as a

community do sometimes have effects to which retailers and marketers respond. In

contrast, some Irish step dancers have the opportunity to interact with the people who

make their dresses, either online, through the phone, in person, or through paper ordering

forms, wherein they may discuss not only their measurements but other details about

themselves as individuals or their preferences. Dancers are sometimes consulted as to

their preferences in terms of design, color, fabrics and other features. Dancers agentively

express creative aspects of their personalities when they help to design Irish step dancing

costumes. Often dancers, commenting in messageboards and in articles in or letters to

dancing magazines, suggest that aspects of the design of their dresses represent aspects of

their personalities. The meanings suggested by Irish step dancing costumes may be very

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specific to their owners’ conceptions of self, or to their perceptions of Irish step dancing

as a whole.

Furthermore, Irish step dancing dresses are almost unquestionably “girly.” Indeed,

the expanses of pink, ruffles, and sequins seen on Irish step dancing dresses practically

scream “femininity”—a normative middle class white femininity that I unpack in the next

section. The silhouettes, colors, and designs of Irish step dancing costumes work together

to depict a type of femininity that stresses pliancy, if not compliancy, as well as a

cheerful, bouncy energy. Irish step dancing costumes feature a cylindrical body clad with

curvy ruffles and curls, as well as sparkling sequins and fantasy tiaras. In fact, if the

unconventional patterns and fabrics, wigs, and loud makeup are taken into account, these

garbings are not far from drag queen territory. However, unlike the joys that the

aforementioned queens take in similar feminine delights, the interpretations of

femaleness proposed by Irish step dancing dresses lack any sense of irony. Irish step

dancing dresses are like pure squeals of deadpan little-girl joy—or in any case, the joy

that little girls are encouraged by many marketers to enjoy. All humor aside, many girls

in Irish step dancing genuinely seem to enjoy the ability to perform a normative

femininity so unabashedly.

As discussed in the previous chapter, Irish step dancing dresses have become

increasingly colorful, shiny, and bright in the late 1990s and the 2000s. Some dancers

suggest that these changes have been made in an attempt to catch the attention of

adjudicators. While dancers who comment on dresses generally assert the argument that

dancing technique, and not just the dress, should be the basis of adjudicators’ judgments,

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they often view dresses as enhancing both their performances and viewers’ perceptions of

those performances. These dancers, and their dresses alike, seem to respond

enthusiastically to the pressures of competition, willing to shine their best to beat the rest.

Dancers glisten with the glitter of their effort, and project their performance, with the

help of their garb, directly to the dancing judge’s eye and throughout the hall. Irish step

dancing dresses may be an expression of qualities of self that dancers imagine for

themselves—those qualities that dancers wish the judges to perceive. Perhaps, even in

addition to dressing to please adjudicators, however, it is possible to interpret Irish step

dancing dresses as providing a forum for girls to empower themselves, to play with

femininity, and to express their personalities.

Irish Step Dancing Dresses and Conceptions of “Normative Femininity”

Natalie Adams and Pamela Bettis explore constructions of a type of normative

femininity, as well as opportunities for girls’ agency in their article, “Commanding the

Room in Short Skirts: Cheering as the Embodiment of Ideal Girlhood” (2003). These to

me help situate what seems to be afoot in Irish step dancing. Adams and Bettis “discuss

cheerleading as [a] discursive practice that operates as a socially sanctioned space for a

few girls to create multiple gendered subject positions that accommodate the shifting and

often contradictory meanings of normative adolescent femininity” (74). The authors

argue that “there is no fixed meaning of the ideal girl; rather, the meaning of ideal

girlhood is always in flux and constantly subject to dispersal” (75). One way in which

“normative” United States femininities for girls have changed is that they have

incorporated “new theme[s] of independence and assertiveness” to complement formerly

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more prominent signifying “markers” such as “passivity, quietness, and acquiescence”

(74). Adams and Bettis also cite the rising prominence of concepts like “determination,

individualism, self-efficacy… and sexual subjectivity” as “desirable traits of the new

ideal girl” (74). However, the authors argue that although some markers of femininity

have shifted and changed, some elements of this construction remain “nonnegotiable”—

for example, physical “attractiveness” (75). The requirements of cheerleaders to conform

to heteronormative standards of femininity such as being physically, and femininely,

attractive, work to constrain their behavior. Alternately, however, the authors argue that

as participants of cheerleading, some teenage girls are able to “take risks, to try on

different personas, to delight in the physicality of their bodies, and to control and revel in

their own power and desire” (87). Some of these same contradictions in the ways that

cheerleaders explore gender in the authors’ study may also be present in the ways that

Irish dancers interact with their own practice.

Costume precedents in Irish step dancing divide dancers into two basic and

relatively immutable genders. In almost all cases, Irish step dancing costumes reinforce a

strict dichotomy between “male” and “female” costumes. Men and boys wear a shirt and

pants, and perhaps an accessory, with a total cost of perhaps $150, and almost no style

expiration date. Women and girls, in contrast, wear elaborate dresses costing between

$1000 and $3000, wigs costing up to $150, and numerous extra accessories such as tiaras

and specialized socks. The number of years after a female costume is made in which it

will still be considered “new” is perhaps limited to two. Boys in Irish step dancing

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absolutely do not wear solo dresses in regular competition, and girls do not have the

option of wearing pants.

Costumes for boys sometimes represent an ambiguous sexuality, which is

especially demonstrated by the case of brightly colored fabrics for shirts, cummerbunds

and ties, and even the use of colors such as pink for these garments. Although most boys

in Irish step dancing competition adopt a relatively unified style of black, these deviations

from the norm suggest other gendered or sexualized possibilities for male dancers.

Female dancers, and, occasionally, male dancers, engage in cross-dressing to

enhance their portrayal of characters. These cross-dressings occur in special

choreography competitions, known as “dance dramas,” which are generally only

performed at the highest level of competition, such as the regional Oireachtas

championships, the Nationals, or the World Championships. Cross-dressed costumes are

either used on female dancers as a result of a lack of male dancers in the school, or to

humorous effect in the case of male dancers (the feminization of male dancers perhaps

being a sorer or less acceptable point—and thus more amusing—than the masculinization

of female dancers). While there is an allowance for variation in gendered presentation in

these special cases, such variation is not accepted in general competition or performance.

Dresses conceal elements of the female body that are perceived as sexual. There

is little emphasis on bust line or other sexualized body parts. Indeed, these parts are

prohibited from being revealed, either by cutting down necklines or by using fabrics that

are not of sufficient weight to conceal them. Dancers are not allowed to show more than

four inches of thigh. These expectations are specifically stated in the rules governing

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Irish step dancing dresses. Irish step dancers are not encouraged to question or defy

these very strict norms, which set definite parameters for appropriate femaleness and

maleness.

However, the embodied practice of Irish step dancing does, in a sense, allow

girls to defy some gendered expectations. For example, dancers are encouraged to be

loud and aggressive in hard shoe dancing, when they beat out precise rhythms on the

floor. They are encouraged to compete as individuals, and find satisfaction in their

performances. In this light, Irish step dancing practice is portrayed as an activity that can

teach girls confidence and enable them to express themselves. In terms of dancing skill,

girls are valued equally to boys. There are thus elements of Irish step dancing practices

that allow girls to transform normative expressions of femininity. These elements may

or may not be in contradiction with the gendered meanings promoted by Irish step

dancing dresses, a complexity that should not surprise given the intersectionality of

gender with other components of subjectivity. 1

CONSTRUCTIONS OF AGE IN IRELAND AND AMERICA

Dancers interacting with Irish step dancing dresses construct and interact with not

only images of femininity, but with certain kinds of femininities that are strictly bounded

by a dual construction of age, and a division between adult female and girl child. Some

scholars studying constructions of age and childhood provide useful theorization for this

idea.

In their 2001 article, “Childhood: Toward a Theory of Continuity and Change, ”

Allison James and Adrian L. James examine childhood as a “structural space” that is

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shaped by the influence of law and social policy (25). The authors argue that the

construction of childhood changed significantly in Europe and America from the

medieval period to the present. While children were “not granted a special or distinctive

social status,” from the fifteenth century onward, an awareness of childhood as a separate

category of the human life span began to develop (26). According to the authors,

“seventeenth-century Puritanical regimes that controlled and ordered the evil child were

gradually replaced by less strict regimes designed to foster the child's natural innocence”

in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (33). These ideals about childhood, the authors

suggest, “that become concretized and made ‘fact’ through the different ways in which

children's lives are ordered and controlled” through laws, but also through social

structures and institutions, as well as family relations (32).

Mary Shine Thompson analyzes ways in which childhood has been constructed

legally and socially throughout the modern history of the Republic of Ireland in her 2003

article, “Republicanism and Childhood in Twentieth-Century Ireland.” Thompson notes

ways in which childhood was deployed as a metaphor for an “embryonic Irish republic”

and for “incipient citizenship” in the 1916 Proclamation of the Provisional Government

(94). However, she details ways in which children’s rights are neglected or limited in the

constitution of the Republic of Ireland. According to Thompson, in the constitution,

children are portrayed as being “conduits for the rights of parents rather than as a well-

defined group of citizens” (96). Furthermore, the constitution explicitly limited the types

of parent status and families that were supported by the state, and implicitly marginalized

those families, parents and children that did not conform to a “bourgeois,” nuclear,

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heterosexual model, which “revealed an intolerance of difference” (97). Children thus

have served a variety of conceptual roles in the construction of family that has been

idealized by the Irish state.

First, the constitution specifically emphasized the “dominion” of parents over

children. Certain Irish families historically expected children to perform tasks such as

“arduous chores on small farms and childminding in a society of large families” (93).

Children were also addressed by Irish Catholic intellectual figure Timothy Corcoran SJ

(Society of Jesus), “whose philosophies dominated Irish education for the first two

decades of Irish statehood” (93). According to Thompson, Corcoran portrayed children as

being naturally “corrupt” and as requiring “strict authoritarian teaching” (93). The

Catholic perception of children as being sinful and in need of restriction and guidance

flavors constructions of childhood in the predominantly Catholic Republic of Ireland.

However, Irish conceptions of childhood were also contemporaneously flavored

by British tendencies to idolize or “sacralize” childhood “during the years between 1870

and 1930” (93). One British Victorian model of childhood that inflected Irish

constructions was the “cult of the child beautiful,” in which “children were recast as

emotional and affective assets and confined to the domestic arena" (93). This model also

valued what Thompson refers to as “bourgeois child-centredness” (93). These

contradictory impulses—child as domestic versus child as productive labor, childhood

impulses as sinful versus childhood as something to be promoted and valued—which

combine with a “complex of concealment, love, distrust, authoritarianism and class

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prejudice,” Thompson argues, were defining elements of early twentieth century Irish

attitudes towards children.

Thomson argues that some elements of this spectrum have changed over time.

Contemporary versions of Irish childhoods also include “hallmarks” such as “eclecticism,

transgression of boundaries, polyphony, disintegration, and the need for self-reflexivity”

(107). Questions might be raised as to whether Irish step dancing costumes are more

representative of earlier or later modes of Irish childhood. Perhaps they are a combination

of both—an interest in desexualizing the child is mixed with an emphasis on child-

centeredness.

Commodities and Childhood

Through their purchases, children do have some power in consuming—the power

to create profit and drive spending. Some authors argue that childrens’ understanding of

the identities and realities they navigate through consuming may be limited by their

(lower) analytic and critical thinking abilities. Some of these authors also question

whether interaction with commodities has negative effects on childres. Juliet B. Schor, an

economist and author of Born to Buy (2004), and Susan Linn, a psychologist and author

of Consuming Kids (2004), both describe ways in which children interact with the

market, but more often, are responsive to market imperatives. The world they describe is

not one in which children demonstrate active control over the commercial environment,

although the children in their studies may perceive themselves as active agents. Rather,

children, according to Schor and Linn, are the subjects of extensive, pervasive, and

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pernicious marketing strategies that are offered through media and through advertizing in

the public sphere.

In Schor’s work, as in Linn’s work, children are courted as a means by which to

coerce parents to spend in ways they might otherwise loathe. Marketers, according to

both Schor and Linn, cultivate the “nag factor,” in which children repeatedly request

products they have been exposed to advertisements for repeatedly. In addition, both

authors depict the rationale of marketing and industry executives, who are “the

architects” of the new consumer culture (according to Schor, 9), as being driven by the

permeability of children, by the inability of children to withstand assaults of consumer

culture. Marketers, according to the authors, make specific use of developmental

psychology to penetrate the minds of children (Schor, 43-44, Linn, 23-26). Interestingly

enough, Schor in particular depicts marketers as reaching children by depicting children

as active agents, as oppositional and as being more aware than their adult counterparts.

Schor does not discount the desirability to children of these images, and children’s desire

for control over their lives, but rather questions the effects of the promotion of children

attaining such control.

Each of the authors is uncomfortable with the messages that reach children,

specifically because of childrens’ lack of ability to comprehend and critique the images

and meanings at hand. Both authors condemn the depictions of sexuality and violence, as

well as material culture, which are offered through media such as television. In many

ways, the authors depict a battlefield of values, some of which are offered through the

home, and are theoretically appropriate, and some of which are marketed to children, and

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are percieved by the authors to be less appropriate and often detrimental. According to

Schor, “cool,” as currently marketed, is “social exclusive, that is, expensive,” as “older

than one’s age” and as defiant (47-49).

Some authors offer information that counters the portrayal offered by Linn and

Schor of children as lacking agency and as being negatively influenced by practices of

consumption. Both Mary Shine Thompson and Alison and Adrian James assert that prior

research into the cognitive and perceptual skills of children may have underestimated

their abilities. Thompson describes the research of influential developmental psychologist

Jean Piaget as emphasizing a “gap between children’s and adults’ capacities for formal

operations and abstract reasoning” that is “now considered not to be as wide as his

research suggested” (108). Allison James and Adrian James also assert that “children are

competent social actors who may have a particular perspective on the social world that

we, as adults, might find worth listening to” (26). They further state, “children

themselves, in and through their own social relationships, actively construct a child's

world, distinctive and unique in its form and content” (29). These findings offer a greater

emphasis on the ability of children to control their own world.

Lydia Martens, Dale Southerton and Sue Scott apply these types of ideas to

linkages between childhood and consumption practices. They note the sometimes

“patronizing” nature of texts relating to the “child consumer,” which, they argue, suggest

the child is “easily manipulated and in need of guidance” (159). This sort of guidance is

offered as a counterpoint to the perceived “negative impact of the products of production

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on the consumers of those products (i.e. children)” (160). However, they argue that these

“effects” may be overstated or difficult to be substantiated.

While it is not within the scope of this thesis to make a final decision on the

amount of agency with which child dancers engage dresses and other commodities, there

is a debate within Irish step dancing culture as to whether the costumes that are worn

have negative or positive effects on dancing children. A feis musician, Ryan Duns, from

New York, raises some concerns about the presumed effects of Irish step dancing

costumes in his 2007 writing “A Letter to the Irish Dancing Community”:

Is it that in order to win, to be sucessful [sic], they must have "the look"?
Are small fortunes are spent on the latest costumes, garrish [sic] make-up,
wigs, fake tans, in order to achieve this purpose? I fully understand the
desire of people to look beautiful, but I do not see anything beautiful or
comely in all of this. What I see is a message that says, "If you want to be
a success, you must conform to an established norm. You will win only if
you cease being you as an individual and step into the figure of a
champion." In an era of image-consciousness when anorexia and bulemia
[sic] are plaguing teens, I just have to pause to wonder whether this is a
healthy message to send to children.
(http://ryandunssj.blogspot.com/2007/06/letter-to-irish-dancing-
community.html).

There is not enough evidence available to necessarily refute or justify this sentiment.

However, it seems remiss to discuss Irish step dancing costumes and children without

making reference to the debate of what “effects” dancing dress cultures might have on

dancers.

Irish Step Dancing Dresses and Marginalization of Adult Dancers

Competitive Irish dancers operate within an age framework that clearly separates

and differentiates adults from children. Adults and children are accorded specific social

positions within the structure of the practice. The majority of Irish dancers who compete

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do so in “child” competitions. These competitions reinforce specific constructs and

conceptions of childhood.

It is important to note that the term “adult dancer” has a very specialized

meaning in Irish step dancing. Only dancers who never competed as children, or who

have not competed for at least five years, can be considered “adult” dancers. Acceptable

positions for (chronological or legal) adults in competitive Irish step dancing are as

authority figures, such as teachers, and as parents. It is generally not considered realistic

for dancers who begin their training late in life to compete alongside children, youth, or

teens, and thus they are entered into entirely separate categories. It is technically

possible for “older” dancers who begin their careers as teenagers or even later to be

entered into competitions intended for youth. However, teachers do not always present

these opportunities to older dancers, and older dancers often must assert their interest in

competing in such a category. This is something the significance of which is difficult for

dancers with a limited knowledge of the competition structure to grasp. The line which

maintains the division between child and “adult” is manifest in the segregation of adult

dancers from younger dances, and in rules which constrain adults’ ability to compete

and achieve esteem.

“Adult” Irish dancers are allowed in small numbers in adult ceílí competitions in

some regional Oireachtaisí (generally in ceílí dances only), and are allowed to compete

in special solo and ceílí competitions in local feiseanna—but only where competitions

are designated for “adults.” However, “adults” are barred from competition (because of

the complete absence of competitions for “adults”) in the World Championships. In

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addition, according to North American Feis Commission rules, adult dancers are banned

from competing with more difficult, “slow,” hardshoe dances, and must compete at

“traditional” speeds, regardless of their ability or level of achievement. For reference,

the only other groups that are required to dance at “traditional” speeds are beginners,

advanced beginners, and “first feis special” competitors.

Some dancers who are over the age of 21—the United States standard for legal

adulthood—compete in youth competitions as “Ladies” or “Men.” However, the oldest

age category available is 21 and over, and so all dancers older than this, no matter what

their age, who wish to compete in what is considered “serious” or “legitimate”

competition, must compete with dancers who are often several yeas younger than

themselves. This is especially the case in local competitions, where dancers over the age

of 21 are included in “16 and over” competitions.

Adult dancing competitions are generally performed in by parents, new entrants

to dancing, and dancers who competed as children but did not continuously practice the

art form. These dancers are generally not accorded a high degree of respect and are also

usually afforded little time or attention from a teacher, especially as many teachers do

not offer more than one “adult” class per week. In addition, some adult classes are

taught by assistant teachers who may or may not be registered with An Coimisiún.

Although the practice of having uncertified teacher run classes is technically banned, it

is nevertheless widespread, especially where classes for beginners and adults are

concerned.

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 In some cases, new, well meaning, and enthusiastic adult dancers are

discouraged by teachers from believing they can reach a high standard of dancing. In

addition, some teachers do not even offer classes for adults. There is a definite social

stigma attached to adult dancing in competitive Irish step dancing practice.

Many dancers end their careers either at the completion of high school or at the

end of their college careers. Dancers who have reached the highest levels of competition

as children are more often encouraged to become teachers, and, for some dancers, the

acquisition of a Teasgicoir Choimisiuin Le Rinci Gaelacha (TCRG ) certification marks

a transition out of competition and into adulthood. Teachers themselves are barred from

competition by An Coimisiún. This rule further delineates the difference between

authority figure and dancer. Although some dancing teachers maintain their physical

skills, many do not perform and some have discontinued much of their own dancing.

Another option for older dancers who have had successful competition careers is

to audition for a touring show such as Riverdance, Lord of the Dance, or Celtic Tiger.

Some dancers in these shows are active competitors, but others may view entrance into a

touring show as a finishing point for their competitive careers.

Thus, age can be seen as a definite limiting factor to the maintenance of

competitive Irish step dancing technique. Competitive Irish step dancing standards do

not accommodate deviations from the overall standard according to age. Thus,

expectations for performance are largely the same for older dancers as they are for

students. The youthful standard of Irish step dancing is quite aerobic; Irish step dancing

contains high and powerful leaps and other difficult maneuvers that are set to a quick

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pace. Indeed, Irish step dancing can be hazardous in some cases; knee, ankle and leg

injuries are especially common.

Dancers who are at the highest levels of competition routinely take class multiple

times a week, and practice on their own. Such a schedule may be difficult to maintain in

tandem with other “adult” obligations, such as work, college, or parenting. Until the

twenty-first century, it has not been possible to obtain a university degree in Irish

dancing. This has recently been changed by the introduction of Bachelors and Masters

degree programs at the University of Limerick’s Irish World Academy of Music and

Dance. Until the late 1990s, well-paying performing positions were not prevalent, and

only a small number of dancers pursued them. Until recent years, therefore, there have

been few paying adult occupations in Irish dancing aside from teaching—and even that

very profession has only become lucrative for some in light of increases in numbers of

pupils.

Adult Irish Step Dancing Costumes after Riverdance

Adult dancers generally compete in specialized and simplified versions of the

class costumes worn by their younger “schoolmates,” often in the colors of the school

they represent. Adult female dancers generally eschew the highly ornamented costumes

of younger dancers in favor of “Riverdance-style” dresses (dresses in the mold of the

show, often in black or navy loosely flowing stretch velvet) or more “traditional” dresses

(e.g. less stiffened, less decorated outfits that resemble competition dresses from the

1970s and 1980s). These dresses allow for interpretations of womanhood aside from

“princess” or “beauty queen” (or, frankly, “little-girl”). Similarly stripped-down costumes

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are sometimes worn by dancers of all ages in public (non-competition) performances and

figure choreography in competitions. Although some adult women do wear wigs in

competition, they do so with a far lower frequency. The same applies to metal tiaras, leg

tanning, and bright makeup: while adult dancers can and do wear and do such things,

they do so far less frequently. Adult dancers (and older “child” dancers such as dancers in

the Senior Ladies 21 and Over competitions) are currently still allowed to wear “poodle”

socks; many choose to wear black or darkly colored tights instead.

Adult male dancers typically compete in a less specialized version of their

younger counterparts’ costumes, that is, pants and a button front shirt, often with a tie.

The shirts in question are more likely to be plain white (-collar) work shirts. Although

adult male dancers did wear kilts during the heyday of that garment, it has been far more

historically acceptable for adult men to simply compete in pants, and this has been even

more consistently the norm since the advent of Riverdance.

Adult Irish Dancers and the “Black Tights” Rule

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, An Coimisiún slowly issued new rules

constraining the ways in which Irish step dancing dresses have been made. In 2008,

information has been informally released by teachers that a new rule will be instituted to

prohibit dancers who are eighteen and older from wearing socks and bare legs during

competition. Instead, “older” dancers will be required to wear black tights. Theoretically,

the ruling is supposed to combat short hemlines—thus limiting the amount of suggestive

adult thigh on display. It might be the case that the coming ruling on black tights works

also simply to marginalize senior or adult dancers (by creating a more hostile

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environment of specific rules for those dancers alone), as well as to make sure that adult

sexuality is fully constrained in Irish step dancing. Adult dancers are subject to specific

rules that limit them from performing “slow” (more difficult) hardshoe dances—the

rationale being that they simply cannot perform them well enough. The new tights rule

may follow these same lines of thought. One commentator on Dance.net in January of

2008 noted:

It's just crossed my mind that there might be another reason for the
adjudicators wanting to impose tights on senior age groups - I was at the
feis where in the older age groups there were numerous ladies wearing
socks (they must have been over 35, up to 50 I'd say). The three adjs [sic]
present at the feis were all very displeased with this fact and addressed the
teachers present to make sure that their senior dancers wear "proper
attire", in the future. They commented that adults should not wear
"chldren's [sic] socks" and that the skirts seem shorter with socks. Now
while I'm not a teen myself anymore I must say that the visual result was
not the best - not everybody has the firmness to pull off bare legs, also the
contrast between maturity and socks was quite striking
(http://www.dance.net/topic/6800144/5/Irish/black-tights-for-
18.html&replies=110).

Regardless of the rationale, these kinds of rulings send a message that is unfriendly to

senior and adult Irish dancers—by singling out aspects of their bodies as particularly

offensive and as needing to be restrained. This rule illustrates the idea that adults are not

the intended participants for competitive Irish step dancing.

Children and Constructions of Age in Irish Step Dancing

Children are designated as the target market for Irish step dancing, and are

encouraged to be pupils. Children may begin as young as four years of age (or possibly

younger, although some teachers prefer not to teach toddlers). Local feiseanna offer

competitions for a wide variety of age ranges, even accommodating the very young. The

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lowest age category at the local Oireachtas level, and the North American Nationals

level, is under eight years of age. However, pupils are not able to qualify for the World

Championships until they have reached the age of ten.

Costumes for Irish competitive Irish step dancing, at least in the case of the

“ladies” or girls, seem to be clearly aimed at the maintenance of and promotion of a

specific image of childhood. Often, solo costumes are designed to take into account the

will of the child and the expectations of the child, and the child may be involved in the

design and selection process. The wide assortment of bright colors, cartoon-like prints

such as fish on underskirts, ruffles, sequins, and tiaras all seem coded to appeal to a girl-

child market. Children in some cases may be more aware of current trends than are their

parents, and may be very influential in terms of purchase, although parents (and, more

realistically, teachers) hold ultimate control over what will be bought.

Dancing dresses shaped for the pre-pubescent bodies of children are also worn

by older dancers, even in the 21 and over age categories. These dresses often seem ill-

suited to the reinforcement of a strong role for older dancers—they seem rather to push

the bodies of older dancers into the same little-girl-model dresses, wigs and tiaras. Older

dancers often appear to be caught trying to emulate their younger peers. The bright

colors and stiffened silhouette of solo dresses, when worn by older dancers, often seem

to exaggerate the plumpness sometimes acquired with age, making older dancers look

hefty. However, tiaras, wigs, the color pink, and sequins are worn by all dancers in an

attempt to look legitimate and, in this case, legitimately child-like.

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 The ideal of childhood offered by Irish step dancing costumes and Irish step

dancing competition is one that emphasizes the construction of skilled and appropriately

attired competitors who demonstrate deference and decorum. There appears to be a

tension between demonstrating one’s precision and advanced knowledge of dancing,

while also portraying themselves as perpetually being “little-girl-ish.” Children and

teens in Irish step dancing mediate their advanced skills by emphasizing infantile

qualities in their dress. Irish step dancing dresses signal that for all their technical

virtuosity, it is their gendered age status that defines their eligibility to occupy center

stage and claim attention, evaluation and worth. Costume rules and practices contain

their dancing power and limit its extension.

The conceptualization promoted by Irish step dancing dresses is one in which

dancers are individualized, pampered, and maintained as an image of an ideal girlhood.

Arrayed in their bright and shiny dresses, set with wigs and tiaras, female Irish dancers

often look like they are performing child dress-up play. It is my contention that both the

overwhelmingly girlish and childish images promoted by these dresses serve in some

ways to create a space of idyllic childhood, but also to counteract the performance of

physical power of female Irish dancers.

Although dancers do have agency in the ways they represent themselves, they are

also constrained by a variety of factors, including relations with authority. Perhaps it is

the imperative for An Coimisiún to maintain its authority that makes the system

encourage dancers to dress as children, and which marginalizes adult dancers, who may

be better able to question their instructors. Regardless of the final conclusion, however, it

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seems clear that Irish step dancing costumes work to delineate male and female binaries,

as well as binaries of young and “old” age.

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 ENDNOTES

1 Kimberlé Crenshaw analyses the complexity of black women’s experiences, using the
term intersectionality. In her 1989 paper, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and
Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and
Antiracist Politics,” she details the ways in which law, feminist theory, and anti-racist
political theories tend to treat race and gender as mutually exclusive categories, when, in
a more satisfactory model, black women’s experiences would be viewed as
“multidimensional” (140). She also suggests that the tendency to treat black women as
falling into one or the other of these dynamics indeed marginalizes their struggles and
experiences. Extrapolating from this analysis, I might say that no person’s relation to the
world is fixed by any one dynamic of race, class, gender, or sexuality, but, rather, these
dynamics are mutually implicated. Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the
Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine,
Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics,” Chicago Legal Forum, 139 (1989): 140.

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