ANGELINE KING
  • Books
  • Blog
  • Writing
  • About
  • Books
  • Blog
  • Writing
  • About

Arms in Irish Dancing

30/7/2017

3 Comments

 
The decommissioning of arms

Sean O’Togda complained in 1924 of the ignorance of youth as a result of the decline of the old dance masters. Mr O’Togda had a teacher of the traditional style who taught dancing to women in the following way:

“To add grace and variety to the dance, he showed them how to dance with arms akimbo and to place the hands gracefully on the hips…He also showed the girls how to hold their skirts lightly at the side with thumb and index finger of both hands, and slightly and gracefully keep them out from the sides.” 

​In a 1904 photograph of an Irish dancer, “Cassie” in Victorian attire at the Feis na Gleann, the dancer has both hands on her hips.

Miss Patricia Mulholland, a Belfast dance mistress, who began teaching in the 1930s, was also an exponent of the use of arms. “As far as I was concerned, arms poker-rigid beneath an expressionless face had little attraction. I wanted to inject more feeling, and, in the process, let Irish dancing come into contact with the widest possible audience.”

Arms were, however, discouraged by some dance teachers in the nineteenth century. Mr Trench, a dance master operating in the south of Ireland in the early 1800s instructed that arms should hang gracefully to the side. He actively discouraged the flinging of these limbs about, or flourishing them on the level with the head; an indication that the dancers either had a tendency to naturally liberate their limbs in ethereal motion, or that in some previous time, the arms had moved freely. Another reflection on pre-dance master times is this: “During the rapid exercise, Nancy occasionally clapped one hand on her well-developed hip.” 
​
The white collar scholars of the Gaelic League and the country dancers went head to head in a great national and nationalistic debate about what exactly Irish dancing was, and the Gaelic League turned to the south-west for inspiration, applying the Munster style found in areas of counties Kerry, Cork and Limerick to step dancing in the rest of the country. Dances were to be controlled, hip slapping and flings thereby excluded.



Read More
3 Comments

    Prose

    The Children of Latharna
    The Band Stick

    The Bully up the Brae

    History & folklore

    Jean Park of Ballygally 
    Fiddles and Melodeons
    Martha Taylor's diary
    Jean McCullagh at 104
    Ballymena & the McConnells
    Arms in Irish Dancing
    Catholics & Protestants in Irish dancing
    Dancing in Victorian Ulster

    Essays

    Irish Times:
    Irish Dancing: The Festival Story
    ​The Protestant in Irish Fiction.
    ​The Protestant in Irish fiction II
    ​Ulster-Scots in Irish Fiction
    ​An author in Wonderland


    Belfast Telegraph:
    Irish Dancing
    ​

    Archives

    March 2020
    September 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    December 2017
    October 2017
    July 2017
    May 2017
    April 2016
    February 2016
    September 2015


    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly