For this week’s inquiry post, I decided to focus on Irish dance. More specifically, I wanted to learn about the history of Irish dance, it’s presence on Vancouver Island, and what Irish dance competitions look like. I chose to do a video interview with my fellow classmate, Bridget, because our lecture content from this week focused on video editing. I have attached my video below, which I edited on both iMovie and CapCut. The file was too large to add as a video, so I uploaded it as unlisted on YouTube and embedded it.

I have listed below some of the most interesting things I learned, as well as some connections I made to other styles of dance:

• I found it very interesting to learn about the history of colonialism in Ireland and how that connected to the creation of Irish dance. More specifically, how Irish dancers dance with their arms at their sides because in history this was to avoid being spotted dancing through their windows.
• We talked about the connection to tap dancing. How Irish hard shoes are similar to tap shoes and make similar sounds, but are made of different materials.
• We also talked about the connection to ballet. Irish dancers dance on pointe, just like ballet dancers. Also, Irish soft shoes are made with similar materials to ballet shoes. The technique may be different, but some elements are similar.

I was super excited to learn more about Irish dance, because in the scene of more Western styles of dance, Irish dance is not really seen as a serious style of dance. However, after learning about the history as well as the competitions, I think that Irish dance should be taken more seriously, and should be recognized as just as challenging and important as other styles of dance. I would like to thank Bridget for discussing this with me, and would like to add that I have her consent to upload this video and use the photo of her that is present in the video.