The jig is up

October 7, 2022 11:16 AM

An Coimisiun Le Rinci Gaelacha (CLRG) is dealing with its largest ever alleged cheating scandal, which has seen some of the most successful and well regarded Irish dance teachers and schools accused of fixing competitions for their own students. (post title courtesy of Prof. Kieran Healy)
posted by Etrigan (24 comments total)

"In one case, a dance teacher and a competition judge appeared to be exchanging sexual favours for higher scores."

Reeling at this allegation.
posted by roolya_boolya at 11:43 AM on October 7, 2022 [17 favorites]

Of course they flatley deny the allegations.
posted by mubba at 11:49 AM on October 7, 2022 [38 favorites]

APPLAUSE FOR TITLE AND COMMENTS
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 12:15 PM on October 7, 2022 [10 favorites]

I’m glad it’s coming to light, and hope it means better things for the scene moving forward.

I’m a big-dork lindy-hopper (swing dance), and it took until about ten years ago for scenes to even begin reckoning with sexual abuse, assault, and predation, much less racism, ableism, and other blind spots. I haven’t heard of comp fixing in swing dance per se, but the conversation about racism in particular has highlighted how judging often was limited to a small number of elite teachers, almost all white, almost all with a similar dance style, almost all who seemed to prefer vintage aesthetics in dress and gender presentation, etc. Critique and conversation has led to some awesome changes - a wider variety of folks asked to judge, as well as some comps with audience participation; a wider variety of dance styles and dress aesthetics; more diversity among competitors; more AMAB follows and AFAB leads, as well as same-sex couples… good stuff.
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 12:27 PM on October 7, 2022 [5 favorites]

Man what a time for Kalyn Kahler to have moved away from the Defector to the Athletic. I would have loved to have read her take on this as I believe she spent a lot of time in that world, and might even still teach.
posted by Carillon at 12:39 PM on October 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

I bet it took some fancy footwork to cheat at those competitions.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:58 PM on October 7, 2022 [4 favorites]

"In one case, a dance teacher and a competition judge appeared to be exchanging sexual favours for higher scores."

Nah, it was just a fling
posted by The otter lady at 1:20 PM on October 7, 2022 [14 favorites]

That video where they cut the dancer open and he's stuffed with lead weights is bad, for sure, but at least it wasn't filets of other dancers.
posted by The Bellman at 1:27 PM on October 7, 2022 [60 favorites]

No pun in this comment, sorry.

My partner's nieces have been competitive in Irish dancing. I was amazed to learn that in competition, they all must wear standard dresses but also standard WIGS lest an unusually attractive hairstyle bias a judge. The ambition is strong and the strictures to avoid judging irregularity seemingly matchingly strong... until I read this.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 1:31 PM on October 7, 2022 [4 favorites]

Thanks Etrigan for posting this. There's a lot that's wonk with competitive Irish dancing: the fake hair, the fake tan, the bling of sequins on electric-coloured synthetic costumes, the bleeding toe-nails, the money it all costs . . . poor folks. When this blew up a couple of days ago, it seemed equivalent to the fishing fixing [MeFi] or chess cheating [peripherally in MeFi] and I was all set to post it. Even had a title: Something rotten in the state of Dance-mark. But that " exchanging sexual favours for higher scores" sounded like teachers whoring out their pupils and radio chat-show host Joe Duffy had a segment where the father a dead dancer called in to say that the culture of competitive Irish dancing didn't help his daughter's mental health. Today for tears.
posted by BobTheScientist at 1:50 PM on October 7, 2022 [10 favorites]

that " exchanging sexual favours for higher scores" sounded like teachers whoring out their pupils

Is it the teachers, or the students, providing the sexual "favors"? Because, yeah, I'd feel differently about the story depending on the answer to that one.
posted by praemunire at 2:25 PM on October 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

I'm sure we have only scratched the surface on this. It reminds me a lot of the ongoing fiasco over the monopolization of competitive cheerleading in the US. Monopoly, sexual abuse, scandal after scandal in the last year by a company named Varsity Brands. Oh, owned by Bain Capital.
https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/antitrust-and-the-fall-of-a-cheerleading
Another article:
https://www.sportico.com/law/news/2022/varsity-brands-sex-abuse-claims-1234687582/
posted by pthomas745 at 2:31 PM on October 7, 2022

There’s a whoooole culture of Irish dancing or rather, at least two cultures, where stateside it has crossovers with pageantry competitions imho and the weirdness that comes with that. This can be inferred somewhat from the article taking pains to note that this also involved people “on the island of Ireland” which could mean various things depending you read it, and I suspect the correct reading needs you to be more in the dance culture than I am.
posted by Iteki at 3:07 PM on October 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

Why does competition seem to keep bringing out the worst in humanity instead of the best in almost every realm I can think of whether it's chess, sports, fishing, or dancing? Is it the money or tiny bit of fame? This is ridiculous.

Thanks Etrigan for posting this. There's a lot that's wonk with competitive Irish dancing: the fake hair, the fake tan, the bling of sequins on electric-coloured synthetic costumes, the bleeding toe-nails, the money it all costs . . . poor folks.

So I'm only vaguely familiar with modern Irish dancing but more vaguely or relatively familiar with fiddle music and casual Irish dancing, so I did a quick YouTube of a modern Irish dancing competition and with all sincerity and gentleness what in the fuck did I just watch?

From over here on the outside it's like a very unsettling and uncomfortable combination of a super creepy child beauty pageant mixed with Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks. It's like they took everything I've ever known or seen about casual Irish dancing and stripped all the life out of it and turned it into something joyless, toxic and utterly plastic.

How in the hell does something like traditional or casual Irish dancing turn into that? Where all of the costumes basically have the same shape, short skirts and gaudy excess of sequins and all of the women (well, girls as in children, ugh) have the same huge hair, spray tans and there is way too much uncomfortable focus on high kicks and showing what's underneath their short costumes?

What the even is that and why? Why is that considered to not be weird or even abusively objectifying even in itself? What kind of messed up parent puts their children through this kind of thing and think it's even remotely wholesome, normal or *not* super weird, creepy and objectifying?

Why is so much of the world so seemingly totally insane and entirely unable to examine and reflect on themselves and what they're actually doing?
posted by loquacious at 5:15 PM on October 7, 2022 [9 favorites]

It's like they took everything I've ever known or seen about [THING] and stripped all the life out of it and turned it into something joyless, toxic and utterly plastic.

What?? Naw! People never do that sort of stuff!
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:23 PM on October 7, 2022 [2 favorites]

Ooof. So I checked out the Irish dancing message boards, and they post a link to what they claim are the text messages. Assuming they're legit, the adult doing the negotiating offered to provide the sexual favors themselves. Which is still super gross, but not as gross as if they were offering students. Also, this is not an American thing. One of them is based in the US, but the other ones appear to be in the Republic, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and England. I wouldn't be surprised if there are similar shenanigans going on elsewhere, though.

Man what a time for Kalyn Kahler to have moved away from the Defector to the Athletic. I would have loved to have read her take on this as I believe she spent a lot of time in that world, and might even still teach.

She appears to be working on it. She does seem to be absolutely the most qualified person in the world to cover this. Like, what are the chances that there would be a former-world-class Irish dancer who was also a sports investigative journalist?
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:48 PM on October 7, 2022 [2 favorites]

My best friend's kids spent many years in competitive Irish dance. I was BOGGLED by the costuming and appearance expectations for girls. It was especially contrasted by the (minimal) expectations for her son - just pants, shirt and decorative vest with no expectations of spray tanning or wigs.

The whole thing was a magnet for more conservative, especially Catholic families, and I think the aggressive gender norms are a part of the appeal.
posted by jeoc at 6:19 PM on October 7, 2022 [7 favorites]

a dance teacher and a competition judge appeared to be exchanging sexual favours for higher scores

... with each other? That seems inefficient.
posted by Saxon Kane at 8:27 PM on October 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

> How in the hell does something like traditional or casual Irish dancing turn into that? Where all of the costumes basically have the same shape, short skirts and gaudy excess of sequins and all of the women (well, girls as in children, ugh) have the same huge hair, spray tans and there is way too much uncomfortable focus on high kicks and showing what's underneath their short costumes?

Slowly, then all at once? Just like lots of weird social shit? I mean, you start off with the fact that there have been feiseanna - dancing competitions - for decades. People end up establishing norms of dress for all kinds of sports, hobbies, and events. In the '60s and '70s, for Irish dancing, that meant dresses or blouses and skirts for girls, pants or kilts for boys, not unlike a less plaid version of the school uniforms many were wearing at their local Catholic elementary school. Jackets and capes were also common, but they were eventually lost in both boys' and girls' costumes, beyond somewhat vestigial sash/cape things on girls' costumes. There was often some embroidery - Celtic knots, most commonly. As dancing schools (and competitions) grew, schools began to use costuming to stand out a little, and schools often standardized costuming, at least for group dances. As recently as 30 years ago the costumes were relatively plain: a solid color, with embroidery inspired by the Book of Kells, and a hand-crocheted collar.* Boys still often wore kilts, and had embroidered belts or occasionally vests. That eventually evolved to girls - when they got beyond a certain level - wearing bespoke costumes when performing solo (boys got to wear pants more, and they might have custom embroidery, but the overall look changed less.) (Though in its own way, the shift to pants and lack of ornament also represented a concession to gendered norms.) These wool or velvet dresses had more colors and fancier embroidery, but were still generally hand-made by random local (grand)mothers. The skirts were and are short-ish because of all the kicking and leaping (though they certainly have gotten shorter); by the mid-90s, this also meant stiffened pleats that emphasize high kicking. (Think ballet skirts: also short, not drape-y, for similar reasons. Even for something simple like a céilí - a trad group dance you can find in pubs - if I couldn't do it in pants, a skirt longer than my knees would be my last choice - a bunch of the moves that aren't high kicks and leaps still require a lot of motion. That'd be doubly the case when doing a hardshoe dance, where the heels could catch in something longer and drapier!) Higher kicks looked cool, but meant wearing bloomers underneath the skirt - better than the alternative. People started curling their hair in part for similar reasons to the kickpleats: ringlets that bounce a bunch when you jump emphasize the jump in a performance. I personally felt like the weirdo faux tans started creeping in from the group dances, where you want the dancers all to be dressed similar** (think chorus members in a musical or non-star dancers in ballet: you don't necessarily want individuals to stand out, vs. the patterns they they are all making in a choreographed dance.) It might well have also trickled in from trendsetting schools (e.g. Trinity, the dominant school in the Midwest in the mid-90s).

But all of this started spiraling out of control after Riverdance and Lord of the Dance became prominent and people started to have ambitions regarding professional dance careers, rather than lingering on as one of the handful of (amateur) dedicated adult competitive dancers or teaching: schools grew, competition ramped up, and people really wanted to stand out. The non-traditional aspects of Riverdance and Lord of the Dance costuming seem to have given people license to move beyond the more trad elements of dancing costumes, but the minimalism was lost - possibly because the starting point was already very much not minimalist? Either way, the costumes got more and more gaudy, and further from hand-embroidered designs cribbed directly from medieval manuscripts: silk applique and lace and sequins and patterned synthetics. The curlers were definitively replaced by wigs, which meant that people were no longer constrained by what actual hair does. (Though on the plus side, wigs meant not sleeping in curlers, which made the night before a feis suck less.) The faux tans hit Trump levels. The steps got more extreme - think of ice skating emphasis on ridiculous spins (and of course ice skating has its own weird costume trends), of the emphasis in gymnastics on increasingly complicated flips. And it all became very self-reinforcing: to compete in a given sport, most people will conform to its norms. But, I mean, that's what humans at high levels of competition do with a lot of things: "strip all the life out of it and turn it into something joyless, toxic, and utterly plastic."

That said, figure skating or gymnastics (or ballet) are much better comparisons than a beauty pageant. Don't let the weirdass wigs and makeup mislead you: Irish dancing is a sport, and you absolutely need a very high level of athleticism and technique to do well at your regional Oireachtas, let alone perform well on a national or international level. The gendered difference in costumes is, of course, horribly sexist, but the ballet and figure skating analogies remain true here too: if you're competing in a role that's seen as female, you are judged not just on your skill but on your ability to conform to the weirdass gendered standards of appearance in your sport.

* This reflection on the evolution of Irish dancing costuming has a good example of the Trinity school costume from the mid-90s at the bottom.
** In this discussion of costume evolution, in the gallery right above "Culture Meets Competition" you can see a set of girls and boys in green vests/jackets who were in some group dance (note that costumes are matched, though the boys' styles are kilts/jackets not dresses/more stylized jackets). You can also see a bunch of girls in matching white costumes who're probably a winning choreography team (maybe in the early 2000s?) - their dresses are simpler and more traditional than the gaudier solo costumes behind them, though still more ornate than the Trinity costumes from 5-10 years earlier.
posted by ASF Tod und Schwerkraft at 9:33 PM on October 7, 2022 [35 favorites]

I clicked on a link that showed a stock photo of Irish dancers' legs in the air without their faces, and I honest to God thought: oh, interesting, there are more POC in the sport than I realized. Then I read some more of this thread. That is too much spray tan. The last time I paid attention to Irish dancers, they had no wigs, or at least they could have passed for perms. Googling wigs for Irish dancers turns up a lot of terrifying girl models from the child pageant circuit.

None of this needed to happen, except for the reasons ASF notes: "if you're competing in a role that's seen as female, you are judged not just on your skill but on your ability to conform to the weirdass gendered standards of appearance in your sport."
posted by Countess Elena at 7:50 AM on October 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

I actually think the wigs may have been a concession to practicality. The old hairstyles were a pain in the ass: you had to wash your hair and put it in foam curlers the night before a competition, and then you had to style it the morning of. It was a big hassle, and wigs are a lot simpler to deal with. I can't justify any of the other changes, because the new-style dresses and spray tans are pretty hideous. (Incidentally, one of the people involved in this scandal is a major dress designer and manufacturer, who I think was really involved in the hideous innovations in Irish dancing costumes.)
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:19 AM on October 8, 2022 [2 favorites]

The Irish Times seems to blame it on Riverdance.
posted by aleph at 11:43 AM on October 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

Riverdance? Lord of the Dance is on [tix €50-€100] in the Meistersingerhalle Nürnberg on 19th October 2022. Just 88 years and 880m from where Leni Riefenstahl shot Triumph des Willens.
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:53 PM on October 8, 2022

> The old hairstyles were a pain in the ass: you had to wash your hair and put it in foam curlers the night before a competition, and then you had to style it the morning of.

Yeah, wigs specifically are the least of the sins in modern Irish dancing costuming. Once you've decided that curled hair is the standard (and while that is weird/dumb, that was like 3 decades ago, and gendered hair norms aren't unique to this particular sport), wigs are definitely the less shitty option for people without naturally curly hair. The switch to wigs was the first time I ever got a good night's sleep before a competition - and the first time the curls weren't gone halfway through the day. Plus you could no longer sense the small hole in the ozone layer forming above the hotel/convention center/whatever due to all the hairspray use. (And perms? Goodness, at least the night-before curlers and wigs were temporary and gone the next day - perms would not have been an improvement as a de facto requirement to compete.)
posted by ASF Tod und Schwerkraft at 2:25 PM on October 8, 2022 [3 favorites]