Ballet and Irish dancing?

[DeteValley]

Sorry, it looks like there's a spate of Irish Dancing posts this morning, but I didn't want to hijack.

My daughter is almost 6. We'd considered a local Irish dancing class. She does lots of ballet and other dance, but was told that it doesn't complement ballet well at all, so we're now unsure. I wonder if this is actually the case, and if so, why not?

Hi there, to be honest I would say no, they aren't all that compatible really. My dd is 15 and has done ballet since she was 3. She dabbled in Irish for a while, but decided herself to give up when her ballet teacher kept correcting her in class and pointing out things that were starting to creep into her ballet and negatively affect her technique. By this time she was 11 and taking her ballet seriously, and had to make a decision one way or another.

I would say that although both styles use turnout, the line and placement of head and shoulders is totally different as Irish dance has the arms straight at the side; the feet are used differently - in Irish you tend to stay up on the balls of your feet, particularly in jumping, whereas in ballet you need to bring your heels down and plie on landing from a jump. I'm convinced that doing Irish tightened my dd's achilles tendons, (which is a complete no-no for ballet!) and she still has trouble with it now.

At your dd's age, I'd let her have a go at any style of dance she wants, although if her ballet teacher starts to notice a difference and points it out to you, then you could maybe think again.

Ah, thank you for shedding some light on it. That sounds about right. I think we'll ponder this a little longer.

If there's somewhere local that does Scottish Highland dancing, that might be a good alternative. Highland and ballet do mix well.