The Evolution of the Solo

I've been involved in the world of feiseanna and Irish Dancing in general for about 12 years, after having been taken to a new class starting in our area when I was 7 in order to better connect with my Irish roots. As I'd already spent pretty much every holiday there for as long as I could remember and considered myself more Irish than English anyway, I thought this was superfluous. However, as I loved dance anyway to class I went and from then on I was hooked. Having been dancing for a good 12 years I've watched the solo transform from a comparatively simple velvet dress with embroidery inspired by the Book of Kells (if you ever get the chance, go to Trinity College in Dublin to see it - it's awesome!) to the be-glitzed, be-dazzled and be-garish numbers you see flitting about the stage today. So, for those of you who are relatively new dancers or just simply are interested to see what a feis was like when I started I have put together this article, complete with pictures, on how dress styles and crazes have developed in the time I've been dancing.

So, here it is. My first feis.

I'm the one in the middle with the shiny silk-style shirt. Age 7/8 approx.

This photo was taken circa. 1999/2000 so as you can see things were a bit different back then.  For a start only one girl is wearing a wig, and that was fairly normal. Wigs weren't as big (pardon the pun) back then as they are now. For a long time I spent every night before a feis with my mum drenching my hair in setting lotion before skewering bendy rollers into my head to make some half-frizzy curls which were then wrenched back into a half ponytail with ribbons and inevitably fell out halfway through the day. After going through that for a while, well, it's not surprising that I was very grateful to get my first wig. You'll also notice that the two girls in school dresses are wearing a velvet three-panel dress with celtic-style embroidery and a lace collar. This was still the norm even for solo dresses and many a girl in my class' first dress was a velvet solo number.

The Early Noughties (00s)

This is a typical example of a dress worn in the early noughties when girls began to get a bit more creative with the fabrics used and adopted a more lightweight fabric base, usually a shiny silk. Dresses still had the 3 panel design, which didn't change much until about 2005/6 ish as I remember (but please correct me if I'm wrong!) when Elevation design came on the scene with their new multi-panelled dresses. Of course these were the first dresses I saw of such a design and this is my memory - some other designer may have done it first. The embroidery on this dress is still largely celtic in nature and there is a simple colourway with a black centre panel and red sides - a typical design feature of many dresses at the time including my own in different shades of blue. What you can't see really in this picture is that the design is made out of cut-out swatches of glittered fabric, another common design feature that you can still see today. Not many are now made with shiny squares on a mesh-type base nowadays though. They were wide, the skirt was voluminous. They're the reason why girls started sitting on stools so as not to crush the boards. They're also a reason why it was common to see a girl vainly hitting the back of her skirt in order to kick her bum properly - it's really hard to get your foot up under the dress!

The Wrap-Around Skirt

The wrap around skirt was one in many a craze that started around the mid-noughties. Admittedly it was one I could never explain - it wasn't the most flattering style of skirt and I'm one of those people who isn't particularly enamoured with asymmetric shapes. However it proved pretty popular with younger dancers and so you saw plenty of tiny little girls in shocking pink wrap-around style dresses tripping around on stage.

The 4 Panel Skirt

This is a picture of my old dress (btw, if you want it, I'm selling it) which has the 4 panel-esque skirt. This and the 5 panel were often commonly referred to as "gladiator skirts" and were very much en vogue in 2005/6 when this dress was, coincidentally, made. I actually still love this style myself, but have to admit that the new soft-style skirts make it a LOT easier to kick your leg etc. I also like being able to sit on a chair without having to worry over much about my giant and stiff skirt.

The 5 Panel Skirt

We started getting crazy with the panels here - 5 panels! I have to say though, kudos to the 5 panel skirt. It did look rather elegant and had the other benefit of preserving the Irish tradition because on most of these dresses the panels had a celtic design on them to a very pleasing and eye-catching effect. You'll notice on this dress too that the fabrics have evolved - there's not nearly so much glitterball and the fabric looks like a white silk with a silver-dotted clear overlay on it. As well as some red lace-style material. I personally like the use of pretty and less-tacky looking fabrics for dresses, so I'm quite a fan of this dress.


The Tutu Skirt

So here it is! The beginning of a craze that's going to take us straight down the path to the sorts of dresses we see today; the Tutu skirt. Shown here underneath a 4 panel skirt, as it was usually incorporated when it started out, having a tutu style or frill underneath your skirt was very much the fashion a few years back. Even if you had a panelled skirt you put a tutu underneath it irregardless of whether you could see it or not - that's how popular these were. I did however witness the development of one particular dress over several feises that was adapted to the incorporate the skirt which went from a fairly ok, if a little too clashing, 3 panel dress to a 5 panel which had huge gaps between each panel so that the cupcake tutu could show through and a hanging part of the original main panel on the front. Let's just say that the less said about that dress the better - I don't think I'm ever going to be able to erase that image from my mind. That said, the tutu skirt is wonderfully practical as well as pretty and feminine so I was happy to watch (slightly jealously) as girls bought new dresses with this great new feature to parade in on stage.


The Puffball Skirt

Admittedly, the first time I saw this style of skirt around 2008 I was seriously unimpressed. I felt that the puffball looked awkward, lumpish and unflattering and as a choice of skirt for Irish Dancing highly impractical - it doesn't kick so much as crush. However, it has grown on me since I've seen more elegant examples such as this dress from Elevation Design, so although it would not be my choice of skirt I can now see why other girls would.

The Ra-Ra Skirt

It's flippy, it's frilly and it's fun. Oh, and it has tiers. The ra-ra skirt is a bit of a point of contention - some people think it looks too much like an ordinary skirt to be a real Irish Dancing skirt. However, I think that it can look very pretty on a dress so long as the bodice is fairly plain. It didn't really catch on as a skirt on it's own though, so lo and behold...

The Puffball Ra-Ra Skirt

...The cross between the two. Still quite current this is what I would call the puffball ra-ra skirt as it combines the tiers of a ra-ra with the fullness and "puff" of a puffball skirt. I've been trawling the internet recently (as you know) for a new dress for myself and this style of skirt popped up again and again. Whilst I eventually chose something a little different (See the Dress Quest Part 2) I have to say I quite like the general effect of the skirt with a plain coloured bodice and embroidery. Whether this'll still be here in another year only time will tell...