Learn About Irish Dancing - Shoes

So Irish dancing uses two types of shoes. The first shoe we are going to look at is the soft shoe. The soft shoe is kind of like a ballet slipper except that it's made of leather, and we use laces instead of ribbons. There is also no hard toe, it's completely soft all the way through and is really flexible to dance in. So when you are starting to learn Irish dancing, you are always going to start by learning in your soft shoe.

Dances that are performed with the soft shoe are Reels, Jigs, Slip Jigs, which are just dances at different tempos.

So the next shoe we are going to look at is the hard shoe. These shoes are usually performed when dancing treble jigs, hornpipes, treble reels and traditional sets. So the hard shoe consists of two tips. There is your heel tip and the front tip. It's made of fiberglass and originally it was made with wood and nails, but as you can imagine that's really not too comfortable. So now they have also changed the sole, and it makes it a lot more easier to go up on your toes and more flexible.

Again, the treble jigs, hornpipes, traditional sets are just different tempos and the treble reel is actually mostly performed in Lord of the Dance and River Dance, that's usually when they are in their line formation and all doing the big clicks in the front and the fast trebles. That's usually where you will see a treble reel.


Transcription by: Scribe4you Transcription Services