Classes will last an hour, students are to come prepared wearing their hair up and bring a water bottle because you will sweat! I have no problem with students wearing shorts and at-shirt, whatever is comfortable as long as I can see their feet. I recommend wearing clothing that is light and allows you to stretch for the movements of Irish Dance will require lots of leaps, jumps, etc. For your first class it is fine to wear socks with sneakers or if you have jazz shoes or ballet shoes even better, until you can purchase ghillies which are the soft shoes worn for Irish Dance.
Classes will consist of the first ten minutes being dedicated to stretching, followed by a run through of steps already learned through the previous class and then students will learn the next step in the dance, and continue to run through those steps through the end of class. We on occasion do drills to improve skills and areas that need work in each dance. These are particular to Irish dance and each drill is different depending on what movement needs perfecting. Students are expected to practice for at least a half hour to an hour each day at home so they are ready for the next class and to be able to move on to learn their next steps in either the Reel, Slip Jig, or Light Jig.
Music can be purchased online or you can come to me and purchase the CDs we use in class. The music we dance to is traditional Irish music that consists of for Soft shoe-(Reels, Slip Jigs, and Light Jig). Music for the hard shoe is made up of; (Hornpipes, Treble Jig, and Set dances.) Although, before you purchase CDs online it is best to talk to me first since there are all different speeds of dances, and you need to know the right speed of music we practice to at class.
Lastly, after a year any students that show full competency and confidence in all of their soft shoe dances will be able to advance to the next class as well as progress to obtaining hard shoes and learning the heavy shoe dances. Irish Step-dancing is a dance that is athletic, lively, and fun it is great for all ages and open to both girls and boys! So thank you for joining us and I can’t wait to start this new journey with all of you!
Miss Cathleen
