So, if you're currently in the Mather Orchestra and would like to play some Irish Music with me when school starts up again in August, this is what we will learn first. This is the Connaughtman's Rambles (from an earlier post) in action in a Pub in Limerick. You might spot me on the left. If you look and listen you'll see guitars, concertina, fiddles, flutes and bodrahn. Near the end of the clip you can see the guy in the middle with glasses on turn around and call the next tune to the folks around him. This was his "set", he started it off with a different tune and was leading.
By the way, I'm sorry for the abrupt edit. I don't know why my camera did this. The jig comes in at the 17 second mark. I spend the first 16 seconds filming the feet of a dancer who was sitting next to me. There are a couple of different types of Irish dancing. The one that most everyone associates with Ireland is set dancing or step dancing. This is similar to what you might see in Riverdance. Everything is highly choreographed and is often performed with multiple people. There is also Ceili dancing. I spoke of this in an earlier post. You might think of Ceili dancing as similar to square dancing. It is group dancing, often very complex, that is performed at social events.
My favorite type of dancing is Sean-nós dancing. Sean-nos means "old style" in Gaelic and reminds me of tap dancing. You can see sean-nos dancers with hard or soft shoes, but it is a much more improvised form with free arm movements. It is just as rhythmic as the other styles but much more individualized. This is what the girl sitting next to me was practicing.
No comments:
Post a Comment