Liz left a comment on my recent photo of Dancergirl asking about the hair. I always forget that people who aren’t used to seeing Irish dancers don’t know about the hair. 
Here’s what her hair usually looks like — long with wonderful waves top to bottom.
But when she dances, she wears what we fondly refer to as “the animal” — a wig of many ringlets. It’s a heavy thing and a pain to get on, but it’s more convenient than the alternative. When she first started dancing, we curled her hair before competitions with gel and tiny foam spikes — over 100. It took hours to do and 2 days to dry, which meant going to school with pink, blue, green and orange spikes sticking out of her head.
No one really has an explanation for the tradition of ringlets on Irish dancers beyond this: The “bounce” of the curls offsets the straight rigidity of their upper bodies, giving a visual balance to the dancing. In my experience, this is actually true. I’ve seen her dance with and without the wig — during the summer we’ve just done a bun with braids on top of her head — and it gives an entirely different look to her performance.
And because Liz also asked for some video, here’s a short one from the same performance that I shot the photo of her in the air. We aren’t allowed to videotape competitions, so the only chances we get for video are shows, and this is the first clip that doesn’t either announce her name or others’ names. She’s dancing an Irish jig in hard shoes — this was one of her competition dances last year. This year it’s the hornpipe, which is much longer, but jig is her favorite dance and she gave a nice performance at this show.
Update: I figured out how to make it streaming Flash video and embed it.
Technorati Tags: irish dance, video
