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A traditional Irish art form built around fast, precise footwork — danced solo or in teams, competitively or just for fun. Here's a quick guide to the styles, levels, and events you'll hear about.
A Feis (pronounced “fesh”) is a competitive Irish dancing event where dancers of all ages and levels compete in front of qualified adjudicators. Dancers are grouped into “sections” by age, level, and dance style, and each section is judged and placed independently. A Feis can be a single afternoon or run across a full weekend, and usually combines serious competition with a genuinely festive, community atmosphere — most feiseanna also feature Irish music, food, and stalls alongside the competition floor.
Light, flexible pumps (called “ghillies” for girls, “reel shoes” for boys) worn for quick, quiet, graceful movement — the first shoe every dancer learns in.
Fitted with fibreglass tips and heels that click and thump against the floor — used for the percussive, rhythmic styles like treble jig and hornpipe.
Every dance is named after the type of tune it's danced to. Here are the styles you'll see at a Feis:
Light, fast footwork in 4/4 time — often the first style a beginner learns.
A bouncy, springy style danced in 6/8 time.
A lighter, hopping style also danced in 6/8 time, distinct from the Light Jig.
Graceful and flowing, danced in 9/8 time — usually only for girls, seen as the most balletic style.
A slower, rhythmic hard-shoe style in 6/8 time, full of percussive beats — also called the Heavy Jig.
A hard-shoe style in 4/4 (or cut) time with a distinctive strong accent and rocking motion.
A hard-shoe reel danced at speed — often run as its own event alongside the main Championship rounds.
A hard-shoe set piece danced to one of a fixed list of traditional tunes, each with its own set number of bars.
An own-choice set piece danced solo to a specific tune, used at the more competitive levels.
Team dances such as the Walls of Limerick or an Antrim Reel, danced in 2s, 4s, 6s or 8s to traditional figures.
Dancers move up through levels based on how they place — everyone starts at Novice, and levels get more competitive from there:
Novice
Everyone starts here — a single dance for dancers new to competition.
Beginner
The first full graded level, dancing a wider range of soft and hard shoe styles.
Primary
A step up again, including the Traditional Set for the first time.
Intermediate
A serious competitive level, one step below Open Championship.
Open Championship
The highest level — dancers compete against the best in their age group across hard shoe, soft shoe and set.
See every style and level above in action at a real example event — browse a sample Feis's results.
Find a dance school near you and get in touch — most schools are happy to have you try a class before committing.
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