this blog almost had a video.

Another day of awkward times and Irish dancing.

Today there was a step dancing workshop, (yesterday was SET dancing, today was STEP dancing). Step dancing is like...the kind of dancing I've been doing for all these years...what Michael Flatley does, that kind of Irish dancing... This was older more traditional style though, that is to say, very very simple. What happened was basically in the 1920s and 30s people started having step dancing competitions (like the ones I go to) and with the competitions the style of dancing really began to change and become more regulated and a lot more complicated as people had more incentive to be flashy, so what I learned today was a really simple step that has been around since before all of that. I could have learned the step just by watching it a few times because it was so basic, but most of the people there had never step-danced before so they took a long time to learn it. It was pretty interesting to dance the more traditional style though.

The smelly old French man was back again with his group of French people. I should actually say French-speakers because they are actually from Corsica. I guess folk dancing in Corsica is actually very similar to Irish Set Dancing so they enjoy coming to these kinds of events. Anyways, the smelly old French man came up to me today and in very broken English said "I have a gift for you to thank you for dancing with me yesterday." And then he gave me a Corsica souvenir key chain. Smelly as he is, I guess that was pretty sweet. I think I'm actually pretty famous in Birr now. Everyone involved in the festival weekend pretty much knows who I am at this point and they all want to talk to me about my research and stuff. A very nice old lady was very sad to see me go and said "We'll be seeing you on the dance floor again some day!"

In the afternoon there was a Ceili (pronounced kay-lee) dance. That's like a barn-dance where people actually dance the Sets. They've had two already this weekend but I didn't go to the other ones. I had not expected them to be very well attended and I assumed, like the workshop that it would be a much older crowd. I was surprised to see that the hall was packed, there were tons of people dancing and it was a huge age range from teens up to retirees. Apparently, the ceilis on Friday and Saturday were even bigger. I didn't do any dancing myself since I don't really know any of the Set dances...I tried to upload a video but it just didn't work out.