Beyond the Bling
Don’t let the high hair and tans fool you- the world of Irish dance is shaped by discipline and legacy, where years of training build towards a performance that lasts only minutes. We go backstage at the CLRG World Irish Dance Championships in Dublin.
By Glorious
Photography by Joe Hart
A group of dancers move through the glass atrium, dresses swaying, wigs perfectly anchored, expressions caught somewhere between focus and excitement. One pauses to check her socks, another to re-pin a teammate’s hair. Around them, the noise of the event hums. Heels clack. Parents chat. Organisers check people in. The sequins catch the light as they pass, glittering against the red carpet and grey Dublin sky. Their tan is flawless. Their lashes are thick. But it’s not just for show. That shine is only the surface of something far more demanding.
At first glance, it’s easy to focus on the sparkle. The smiles, the sculpted hair, the head-to-toe coordination that feels almost theatrical. But look a little closer and the picture shifts. Behind the styling is something far more serious. Irish dance is a sport. It’s a cultural artform. And for thousands of dancers around the world, it’s a lifelong commitment, shaped by repetition, ambition and discipline. What you don’t see in the photograph are the late nights in the studio. The drills, the injuries, the nerves and the breath held just before the music starts.
Held at the Convention Centre Dublin, the CLRG World Irish Dance Championships returned to their roots in April 2025. The venue, with its glass walls and sharp lines, juts out over the River Liffey like a ship mid-launch, forming an impressive backdrop for the competition. Over the course of eight days, approximately 4,000 dancers, taking part in over thirty solo and team competitions, stepped onto the stage, each carrying years of training, and for many, generations of family legacy. The city of Dublin welcomed the event, greeting over 10,000 visitors, leading to near-full hotel occupancy and hard-to-get restaurant reservations, providing a substantial boost to the local economy.
Among those navigating the busy city was photographer Joe Hart, who flew to Dublin to document a few days at the Championships for Glorious. Known for his colourful work capturing people and the spaces they move through, Joe wasn’t interested in photographing the stage itself. “I was drawn to everything happening around the dancing. The nerves, the prep, the waiting, and the sense of community. I’ve always been interested in niche sports, especially when culture and sport collide, and Irish dancing really sits in that space,” he says. “I arrived not knowing too much on purpose because I wanted to respond naturally, without chasing what I thought I was supposed to capture.”
Since Joe shoots primarily with flash, he couldn’t photograph inside the main arenas. “I spent my time doing laps of the Convention Centre, finding dancers rehearsing in corridors, resting on steps, chatting with friends or having quiet moments with their families. The atmosphere was intense, but full of warmth. The whole ritual of getting ready: the wigs, makeup, tan, sparkle, felt like a performance in itself!” What he captured in Dublin shows the parts that usually stay hidden: final checks, warm-ups, waiting, chatter. These moments aren’t the headline, but they’re everywhere. They reveal just how much time and effort surrounds each performance, and how years of work, weeks of prep, days of travel and hours of glamming all come down to just a few minutes on stage.
Claire Johnston understands the magnitude of those minutes. She’s the Communications & Marketing Manager for An Coimisiún le Rincí Gaelacha (CLRG), the global governing body for Irish dance, and a former competitive dancer herself. “These top dancers spend multiple days a week in the studio, practice at home, and strength train to reach a world-class standard,” she says. “Irish dance, at its heart, is a cultural artform tied to the foundation of the Irish state. As of 2025, it has become a high-intensity, competitive activity that attracts people from all around the world, regardless of background.”
The World Championships, officially known as Oireachtas Rince na Cruinne, have been running since 1970. The organisation that oversees the event was formed in 1932 with the goal of preserving Irish dance while allowing it to grow. That’s a difficult line to walk, honouring tradition whilst embracing evolution, but the sport has managed to do both.
To follow what’s happening on stage, you need to understand how competitive Irish dance works. Events fall into two main categories: solo and team. Solo dancers compete in three rounds. First, the hard shoe, where movement is rhythmic and powerful, drawing on the percussive origins of the dance. Then the soft shoe, which demands speed, control and lightness. The final is a set piece, a choreographed solo performed to a fixed piece of music, often tailored to the dancer’s strengths. Each round is judged on timing, posture, rhythm and execution.
Team events are structured around ceili dances. These group routines, performed by four, eight or sixteen dancers, follow set choreography laid out in Ar Rince Foirne, the official book of ceilis. That means every dancer, teacher and judge is working from the same shared reference, whether they’re based in Dublin, Dallas, or Doha. “Since its inception, our organisation has standardised the way Irish dance is judged and executed through competitions like the World Championships,” says Claire. “The traditional dances were created decades prior. Now, schools train their teams to perform the same dances that were done by the generations before them.”
That continuity carries weight- a routine first danced in a rural hall more than a century ago now plays out on an international stage. What began as community entertainment has become a precise performance, but the steps remain the same. Beneath the symmetry and polish, the cultural identity is still visible.
opportunitY
Competitors range in age and background. While most dancers are girls and young women, boys and men compete too, and are present in every category with steadily growing numbers. Some are just ten years old, taking part in the under-11 events. Others are in the over-23s, with more than a decade of experience behind them, often years of shared training with the same teammates. This kind of familiarity builds trust, especially in the senior ceili events, where precision and unity are everything. Knowing exactly where your partner will land, without needing to look, can be what turns a good performance into a great one.
Claire understands that instinct well. “I spent most of my competitive career dancing on a Ceili team with the same seven girls from the time we were about nine or ten to eighteen years old,” she explains. “We still keep in touch with each other – in fact, in November I’m due to go to a wedding for one of those very girls!”
Reaching the World Championships isn’t easy. Dancers qualify through a series of regional and national competitions held across six continents. In 2025 participants came from as far afield as South Africa, Romania, Hong Kong and Canada, as well as every corner of Ireland and the UK. “The diversity is incredible,” says Claire. “And the level of commitment is something I think people outside the dance world don’t always see.”
While the technical side of Irish dance is vital, there’s a constant buzz in every corridor and a tension before every round. Backstage, you’ll find teams stretching in sync, soloists listening to music to stay calm, teachers giving whispering last-minute advice and hairspray- always hairspray! Families congregate in groups near the side entrances, ready with water bottles, extra safety pins and back-up shoe buckles.
Claire saw it for herself this year, while trying to grab a few quiet minutes backstage to catch up on work emails, she found herself watching the Girls Under 11 Ceili Competition. “Each team made their way off stage to the area I was sitting in, and I watched as the excitement and awe of what they had just accomplished hit them. They were hugging, high-fiving, grabbing each other’s hands and jumping up and down and saying, ‘We just danced at the World Championships!’ It makes me emotional just remembering now!” That moment has stayed with her, not just for the joy it held, but because it summed up exactly why the event matters. “From my past experience dancing on the World stage, I am acutely aware of the level of work that goes into preparing for a competition of this magnitude,” she says. “It’s an intense atmosphere, as are most high-level competitions. But watching those girls celebrate their time on the stage reaffirmed the purpose of what we do, and the role I hope CLRG can play in the future.”
Irish dance, at this level, wraps itself around families and lives. Parents sit cross-legged in corridors fixing costume hems, teachers who once competed now guide nervous dancers through final drills. Younger siblings can list warm-up tracks by heart. Most dancers started lessons before they lost their baby teeth, and by the time they enter the senior categories, the sport has already dictated how they spend their weekends, what cities they’ve travelled to, and who they’ve grown up alongside. “Community and family are foundational blocks for the world of Irish dance,” Claire says. “Without the parents to take their children to and from class, without the support and guidance from the teachers, and without the friendships made in the studio and at competitions, Irish dance would not have been able to grow to the level it is currently at.”
It’s not only the people that get passed down through generations, but the steps, the movements and the spirit of the thing itself.
“The organisation is multi-generational,” Claire notes. “Some current members participated at the very first World Championships in 1970. You have siblings, parents and grandparents all involved at some point in their lives, passing their love for Irish dance down through each generation.”
That level of discipline hasn’t weakened the tradition. It’s what has kept it alive. The roots remain in Ireland, but growth has come from dancers across the world, each bringing their own style and pace. “Our overseas committee has done tremendous work in bolstering Irish dance in regions outside of Ireland and the UK in the past ten years,” says Claire. For judges, that means measuring performances against both technical consistency and cultural context. For audiences, it means watching something shared globally but shaped by different experiences.
SURPRISE!
And that growth doesn’t just come through travel. It spreads through screens. Competitions are streamed live, but most everyday visibility comes from the dancers themselves. Training clips, slow motion drills, costume reveals and make-up tutorials fill social media feeds. A teenager in Bogotá or Berlin can watch a toe stand in detail, join a local class and start their own version of the journey. They might not live anywhere near a dance school, but they can still belong. And belonging matters. Claire believes this kind of access is key. “Making Irish dance accessible to audiences outside of competitions would be a great first step,” she says. “We have regional councils in over 20 different countries across six continents. That gives us the opportunity to keep promoting Irish dance through social gatherings, sponsorships, and by engaging with other cultural organisations throughout the year.”
None of this is about turning the tradition into something else. It’s about showing what’s already there, just more clearly. The repetition, the knockbacks, the prep and everyday discipline that underpins every round. Claire sees this not as reinvention, but as evolution. “As teachers and dancers push their steps to the next level, they are building on what has been done before them,” she says. “The same is true of any artform. At the end of the day, change to tradition is a reflection of the world we live in.”
That reflection is visible in the final moments on stage. The dresses might shimmer and the hair might stay in place, but the performance is built on years of practice. The young women and men you see in the photos didn’t arrive by accident. They’ve been through qualifying rounds, hours of rehearsal, and every high and low that Irish dance can deliver.
Some will stay in the world of Irish dance for years to come, becoming teachers, judges or pinning wigs backstage.
Others will pack up their shoes, put their dresses into storage, and move on. But whatever direction they go, the time spent here doesn’t just evaporate. It shows up in how they work, how they speak up, how they handle pressure, and how they deal with other people. Because, as it turns out, learning how to move in time, with other people, in a high-stakes, sequin-covered environment is surprisingly good preparation for the real world!
Roll on Chicago 2026!
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