Young Academy at the Oireachtas

This week-end I went to the Oireachtas for the first time. In Irish Dancing, Oireachtas are championship competition at the regional level. Since the next step up if you place is the World’s Irish Dance Championship, you could say it is a big deal. Now, I’m nowhere near good enough to dance as a soloist at this competition, but I did enter the Mini-Feis, which was more my calibre and just for fun. I was also a member of a Céilí team, in our case an 8 person group dancing one of the traditional choreographies for 8 people.

Since this is a costuming blog and not a dance blog, I know what you really want to see is my dress. I received my school dress last week, just in time for the competition.

Gwenyver in he Young Academy of Irish Dance School Dress

Our school dresses were made by a seamstress in New York. We sent her the school logo and the colours we wanted and she designed the rest. It is really beautiful. We all love how our dresses look.

Young Academy of Irish Dance Céilí team and Coach

I don’t know if I lost that much weight since sending the dress maker my measurements, but, my teacher had to tighten my dress with safety pins and try to make it look good (yet she refuses to let me take it in, I guess due to the cost of the dress and the fact that the school paid for half and therefore owns half of it – trust me dear, I’ll do a good job).

About the competition, we didn’t win anything, but hey, at least we had fun!

Young Academy of Irish Dance Céilí team - Charlie's Angels style

And next year, we’ll be more experienced and will do much better; I am confident of that!