I was busking today and two little redheaded
girls came up, accompanied by their parents,
and began to dance. Kids occasionally
dance, but these two were trained
and looked like they were in Riverdance.
I played Soldier’s Joy, we had a crowd.
It was grand.
It occurs to me how very nice, and
probably helpful, it would be
to play for Celtic dancers.
For me, this was a first. Best
I played for flamenco dancers for almost 10 years, from beginner classes to professional performances. It’s a real gas. To see dancer and guitarist respond to each other’s slightest nuance and then to realize that I was the one doing it! It’s like winning the World cup.
Mike
My band loves to play for dancers. Frequently at concerts, someone will come up at intermission and announce that they do Irish step dancing. Inevitably, we play for them to dance. We have had wonderful moments with dancers of all ages.
It is amazing to me how many ‘Irish’ CD’s, these days, contain dance tunes that are played at blinding speed. No dancers could ever dance at these tempos. This is a trend I find unrealistic and harmful to the genre, at large… I will admit my band does do a few ‘show’ tunes at quick and increasing tempos. The majority of the time, we fight the urge…
Best.
Byll
I love playing for the Morris dancers! They seem to bring out the best in my playing, and it’s cool to think that they’re relying on my whistle to tell them what to do when.
Redwolf
Oh yeah ?
Pfftt …
A good dancer can spin at any speed
And, sometimes,
Stillness is fast
The Great God of ITM has spoken. Amen.
Well put indeed! That is
a masterful art in itself!
Az, you need to contemplate
on what talsigia has just said maybe
20 years later you’ll comprehend
the profundity what he
is saying.
As a past dancer of both Flamenco and Irish, it is a wonderful feeling to dance with musicians-nothing like it really. Now that I am learning the whistle, we’ll see if I can the other side. 
I used to irish dance when i was little. David Shultz played for us on occasion, we were the Haren dancers, i believe they’re still doing it back in Colville Washington. but ive been out of that town for 3 years now, so im not sure.
Yeah, his words were racing in my head all night, and my vision of life has changed since then. To heck with dancers, if they can’t keep up, they should take more lessons!
It was a profound experience for me the first time I played with dancer(s). An individual that now regularly plays at our local hoolie has a girlfriend that dances soft and hardshoe and it was infinatley cool to me to experience how the tempo on any given song would change accordingly.
Whistle related, as in: you can play a tune that seems so super fast to keep up with on a whistle, but still the tempo seems rather slow as far as the dancer is concerned, yet you can play a tune that seems very easy and lumber along, yet the tempo is lightning fast for the dancer AND the bodhran player… it’s so interesting to see the effects.
Some that come to mind are like Morrison’s Jig which to me is relatively a lot of fingering on the whistle, but not too fast for the feet, whereas Britches Full Of Stitches isn’t a whole lot on the fingers and pretty fast for the feet .. that is when you take into account for the speed at which your fingers have to fly to get the same speed for the dance.
On the flip side you can also have a tune that is lightning fast in tempo and keeping up on the whistle, but the dancer can simply change their tempo if they get tired or simply change their step every so often.. it’s really fun to participate in.
As I said before… it was and is really enjoyable. I play for the local Scottish Country Dance group sometimes too. It’s just plain fun, not to mention forces you to be pretty darned consistent!! (at least tempo-wise) 
Take care,
John
Mike and Jenaceae,
Please, tell me more. I love flemenco. Do you think there is any room for tin whistle or wood flute playing in flemenco? Like, i’m thinking perhaps the flute could melodically play what one of the cantadors sings or something like it. At minimum, it seems like it could be a great way to pick up the latin chicks 
Feadog,
You just stuck your hand into a big can of worms. Up until about 20 years ago flamenco was VERY resistant to the use of any instrument other than the guitar. Since around the late 70s the flute (silver) and a percussion instrument called the cajon (box) have gradually slipped in. The cajon is almost a fixture now but flute is still controversial. Recently people have started limited use of dombek, a N African drum. There is still a large and dedicated faction who see flamenco as one singer (or dancer) with one guitarist at a time. Nothing else. Nada!! I think whistle and simple flute would not be able to play the scales used in flamenco without some modification or lots of half holing. That’s the easy part. Getting the Flamencos to accept these foreign instruments will be more dificult. If they are inclined to adopt any foreign instruments they would probably look to N Africa where the Moors who ruled Spain originated and retreated to when they left Spain in 1492.
Mike
Playing for dances is hard work for little pay, but great fun.
You mean you’re supposed to get paid? 
Redwolf
I learned at St.Pat’s gig, that when you play a reel, you are supposed to play AAABB so the dancers can get going after first A. Is that true for jigs and other types or just reels??? And what about repeats? I assume its just AABB, right?
Thanks for the info. Had no idea. Those dang flemenco purists. Ya think they could loosen up a bit. I will soon have my hands on a very good keyed irish flute at which point i will try to learn 'flemenco wood flute" playing for my own amusement. It strikes me that that husky irish flute sound would be great provided you could hit the accidentals. I figured the whistle would be too limited. Have any flemenco CDs you’d recommend?
i donno, perhpas you, me and jenaceae could incite a little ole flemenco revolt?
It depends upon the dance that you are playing for.
Some Irish sets have fixed tunes (mostly) for the sets they are dancing and I think the set dancing always has the A part an extra turn the first time around and normally AABB after.
We have only played for contra dances and they want a four beat fiddle shuffle to start, so we yell one-two-three-four and take off when the tunes we picked don’t start with the fiddler.
How would you do the shuffle on the whistle or pipes, I wonder.
Thanks, yeah, I meant just Irish dances. The WhiskyTones has declared no more contradances after muckin up our nicely-prepared sets with the square count-off and go…You lose your subtle reel phrasing I think. We discussed just coming up with a whole separate set of tunes, the more American-y kind, but for now are stickin’ with pubs. With more confidence and time, I am sure we could do both…But life is short and we like pubs better. And, sometimes, someone will want to get up and dance, thus my query…
You cannot even keep up
With my meaning
No lesson can fix this …