Irish dance, from the dancing masters to Riverdance

There is very little evidence of dancing in Ireland before the 7th century. The Irish words for dance, rince and damhsa, only appear in the 16th century. The first native record is from 1413, when a Mayor of Waterford visited Baltimore, Co. Cork, and people "took to the floor" on Christmas Eve. In 1569 Sir Henry Sydney wrote to Queen Elizabeth about Irish jigs. By the late 17th century the rinnce fada, the "long dance", was how balls in Ireland usually ended (Irish dance).

Travelling dancing masters taught across Ireland from about the 1750s into the early 1900s, according to the stepdance article. The Irish dance article gives the 17th and 18th centuries, and says they taught "as late as the 18th and early 19th centuries". The sources don't agree on the span. Venues were small, so dances were often shown on tabletops or even barrel tops. That, the article says, is where the arms held stiffly at the sides and the lack of sideways movement come from.

The masters set rules for the body, arms and feet, and had every step danced first on the right foot, then the left. They also set particular steps to particular tunes. Those are the solo "set dances", such as the Blackbird, St Patrick's Day and the Job of Journeywork, which competitive dancers still learn. Old-style step dancers today can trace their steps back to 18th-century dancers (source).

The Gaelic League was founded in 1893 and held its first organised feis in 1897. Frank Hall, quoted in the stepdance article, calls this the moment when "step-dancing in Ireland became 'Irish dancing'". The League codified and promoted the step dance of the southern areas. From the early 1920s that codification "greatly narrowed" the range of dances accepted (Irish stepdance), and the League disliked dances it saw as "too English or French" (Irish dance). The term "céilí dance" was itself a late-19th-century League invention.

An Coimisiún Le Rincí Gaelacha (CLRG, the Irish Dancing Commission) is the oldest and largest body for competitive step dancing. Its own article says the League set up a Commission of Enquiry in 1927, which reported in 1930, when An Coimisiún became permanent (CLRG). It began with 3 delegates from Dublin dance teachers, 3 from the Irish Music Society and 18 from the League. The article says that under-representation of teachers caused trouble later. In 1939 it published Ár Rince Foirne, its handbook of céilí dances. In 1969 teachers broke away to form An Comhdháil. In 1970 it held the first World Championships, at Coláiste Mhuire in Dublin.

Date dispute: Wikipedia gives three founding dates. The CLRG and Gaelic League articles say "founded in 1927", the stepdance article says "set up" in 1927, and the Irish dance article says "formed" in 1929. The CLRG article's own history explains the 1927/1930 split (enquiry first, then a permanent body), and that is what this page uses. No source read here supports 1929.

• Céilí first meant simply a visit, a social gathering of stories, songs and talk. Only recently has the dancing taken over the word (Cèilidh). Céilí dances are for two to sixteen people, or long lines and circles, with simple footwork. What matters is the figures. At a social céilí the dance may be "called" (Irish dance).
• Set dancing comes from the quadrille, a court dance that Irish rural communities made their own. It is danced in squares of four couples, in figures, to reels, jigs, polkas and hornpipes, and the sets are named for where they come from: the Clare, the North Kerry, the South Galway. Distinct regional sets grew up in the 19th century as house dances. The League discouraged sets as foreign and promoted céilí dances instead. Sets faded with rock and roll in the 1950s and revived from the 1980s (Irish set dancing).
• Sean-nós ("old style") dancing is solo, improvised and low to the ground, with free arms and a "batter" on the beat. It comes from the west of Ireland and was traditionally danced on small surfaces: a door laid flat, a table, a barrel. Sources disagree on whether it is a regional style of step dancing or a separate tradition that was hardly known outside small areas until the late 20th century (Irish dance, Sean-nós dance). The sean-nós article also notes that competitions and stage shows have produced "standard" sean-nós steps, which goes against the idea of the dance.

The set dancing article says the League "was formed in 1897". That is the year of the first feis; the League itself dates from 1893 (source).

The Act's long title is "to make provision for the licensing, control, and supervision of places used for public dancing". It is dated 19 February 1935, and it defines public dancing as dancing "open to the public and in which persons present are entitled to participate actively" (Irish Statute Book). It brought in licences, granted by the District Court, and a tax on tickets.

It came out of the 1932 Carrigan Report into juvenile sex crimes, which blamed unlicensed dances "more persistently" than any other abuse. Fianna Fáil brought it in, Fine Gael and Labour supported it, and so did the Catholic hierarchy. The League saw it as protecting Irish culture against foreign influence (Wikipedia).

What it did: judges were less tolerant of styles seen as foreign, set dancing and jazz among them. It also hurt house dances and crossroads dances, pushing music and dancing into licensed, commercial halls. That suited the céilí, with its big, loud bands, while older traditional music declined for decades until Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann and the folk revival (Wikipedia). The Act is still in force, with amendments.

A claim not supported: the Irish dance article says the Act "tried to ban private dancing". The Act's text regulates public dancing, open to the public. Its effect on house dances is a matter of how it was enforced and how people responded. The wording of the Act does not show a ban on private dancing.

Riverdance was first performed in the seven-minute interval of the Eurovision Song Contest at the Point Theatre, Dublin, on 30 April 1994, with music by Bill Whelan, the dancers Jean Butler and Michael Flatley, and the choir Anúna. It was seen by an estimated 300 million viewers. John McColgan and Moya Doherty expanded it into a full show, which opened at the Point on 9 February 1995 (Riverdance). Its roots go back to Timedance, the 1981 Eurovision interval piece by Whelan, Dónal Lunny and Planxty.

Its effect on the competitive world was large. Over the next 20 years entries at the World Championships rose sharply, and the share of dancers from outside Ireland and the UK reached nearly half. By 2004 CLRG had its first president living outside Ireland. The same period brought rows over wigs, fake tan, crystals and borrowings from flamenco and ballet (CLRG).

• No named dancing masters are given. The articles read don't name any with sources, and the folklore about individual masters wasn't checked.
• The often-repeated idea that the English banned Irish dancing is not supported. The Irish dance article says dancing "was never banned by the English" but that gatherings of Irish people were. Neither half was checked against a primary source here.
• Only Wikipedia and the Act itself were read. Books such as Brendan Breathnach's Folk Music and Dances of Ireland (quoted in the sean-nós article) were not.

For the tunes these dances are danced to, see Irish traditional music.