Since we bagan Irish dance in 2014, there’s been a phrase constantly poppin out: “friends who dance together stay together“. After all those years, I can confirm that’s totally true. Irish dance gives you a second family (in my case, it gave me my first one!).
We do a lot of things together: we dance, of course, travel, attend events, spend our free time together. And yes, most of the time it’s about Irish dance, even when we don’t practise our steps.
There’s an aspect I really enjoy, and I’m sure you can figure it out: crafting our own costumes for our shows! Mainly for the end of year recital, we use all our creativity to create the best performance we can, and to increase the fun along the way.
Usually, we go cheap, we use what we have at hand and we come out with good costumes and scene items, even on a budget. Cheap doesn’t mean ugly! Among the shows we crafted, there was the Star Wars themed one for which we all built our custom laser swords! Supplies: a hollow transparent PVC pipe, colored translucent vellum paper and a torch. Total cost: less than 5€ each.
Here I show you a few examples of the costumes we made for our shows, and how funny it was each time!
The Aurora Borealis and the rainbow after the thunderstorm (2022)
For the 2022 recital, my husband’s group had to dance the Aurora Borealis.
One of our most creative friends came with the perfect costume idea. We gathered in our garage with black dresses and t-shirts and glitter. Loads of glitter… Months after the end of the performance, we still found them all over our dance shoes, bags, clothes, not to mention our floor!
It was worth the inconvenience, though. Spraying glitter together was super fun!
For my part, I was in the group dancing the thunderstorm. Easy costumes this time: black skirt and grey hoodies suggesting the clouds. We just added reflective adhesives to fake lightnings. Our crafty addition was a circlet with cotton wool as clouds and paper lightnings.
Our surprise on stage? After the storm comes the rainbow: we removed our grey hoodies to reveal brightly colored t-shirts. Simple but effective!
The children of Lyr (2018)
Not everyone at the dance academy is into sewing, and I was among them at the beginning of my dancing journey. Even though having to make your own costumes for a recital could seem hard, we’ve always been able to turn our work into fun.
For a dance about the Children of Lyr legend, we had to be swans. Well, for that show we managed to craft all together in a tiny flat. Among tulle, fabric and deep laughs, what seemed a boring task at first became a good excuse for fun, friendship, laughter and shared happyness.
We made easy tulle skirts with no sewing at all, just tulle stripes attached to an elastic band. To fake the swan wings, we opted for a thin floating white fabric that we attached to the shoulders of our white t-shirts on one end and to an elastic bracelet on the other.
The Samhain fire (2018)
The same year, we had to dance another piece about the Samhain tradition, from which we’ve been devided into three groups: fire, dead ancestors, villagers.
For the villagers, it was pretty easy: anyone collected clothes they already owned. Just a mix-match.
The ancestors were skeletons: a full black outfit with white adhesives to simulate the bones. Creativity can make cost-effective but impressive costumes!
As for the fire, which I was part of, we used the same technique tested for the swan skirt: strips of yellow, red, orange tulle to make a tutu skirt to wear with a black t-shirt. The best part of this were the LED lights: we added a Christmas LED garland under the skirt, attaching a black pocket for the batteries on the back, so we could light up our fire when needed.
Ulysses and the mermaids (2017)
For the recital about Dante’s Divine Comedy, we brought on stage a scene from the 26th canto: Ulysses and the mermaids.
That dance was special because it was the first time my husband and I got a major role together: he was Ulysses and I was one of the two mermaids.
The mermaids costume was pretty easy: just a blue dress to which we added a seashell necklace. Nothing fancy nor complicated.
For Ulysses and his mariners, we crafted simple tunics, in different colors. The one for Ulysses was red with a white strip, the others had various natural colors: cream, brown, green…
A trip to the DIY store and we had paddles in the form of shovels. The best crafting part were the headphones to help the mariners block the mermaids songs. We chose them over the wax ear plugs of the original story just to make them more visible for the audience. To make them, we used circlets withbig seashells to make the ear cups.
What’s to be noted about that show is the participation of my mum: as she’s a soprano, she gave her voice to the mermaids during the show. The best part is when friends and family mix, don’t you agree?
Star Wars (2016)
One of our best recitals so far is the one dedicated to Star Wars. For that, we crafted the custom laser swords I mentioned earlier and we got really creative, both with choreographies and costumes.
My part in one dance was BB8, and that was special because for the intro I entered the stage on my rollerblades! I then had to switch to my dance shoes quickly to dance with the others!
For that costume back in 2016, I got a second-hand white dress at a thrift market, to which I added a tulle skirt for “roundness”. I wasn’t into sewing yet, but I had no troubles in cutting a few decorations and stitch them on the dress. I was also able to take in the dress a little, all by hand and all by myself! I didn’t expect at that time I would one day make my own solo dress…
Another dance in that recital soon became the audience’s favourite: we danced a parody of the stormtroopers! When Darth Vader was present on stage, all perfect like good soldiers; when he went out, party time!
Our costumes were the simplest ever made: white clothes with black tape on. Not the best ones we made, but the show was indeed memorable!
And this is just a selection of our dances and costumes. Not the greatest crafts ever, but an example of how creativity and friendship work together, even with non-crafters.
In years, we’ll not remember how brilliant the costumes were, how perfect the steps, how amazing the choreographies. What we’ll remember for sure to tell our children will be the laughs we had, how we solved problems together, the fun and the joy of sharing our passion.
There’s one main thing our dance recitals have sculpted in us all: our friendship.
“There are no strangers here;
Only friends you haven’t yet met.”
(William Butler Yeats)
Watch the videos of our dances
Here’s a playlist where we collected our Irish dance recital performances. Enjoy!
