My main sport is not a that well known type of dance in the US.

Irish Dancing

But guess what?

I'm a guy. -gasp-

Irish Dancing may be a sport dominated mainly be females, but males are present, just in smaller amounts.

In Irish Dance, there are 8 different dance "sets":

Reel
Light Jig
Single Jig
Slip Jig (guys do not do this one)
Treble Reel (you design the dance)
Treble Jig
Hornpipe
Traditional Set

You start out in a set of levels for each individual dance:

Beginner 1
Beginner 2
Novice
PrizeWinner (Where I currently am)

Next you move in to Prelim, where you only do three of your set dances.

After that Open.

Open Champion
And so on.

Only a fraction of dancers actually make it to Prelim.

Dancers compete in a large compettition called a Feis (fesh).

At these comettitions, you compete against other dancers to rank up. Takes 1st, 2nd, or 3rd in B1 to go to B2. Takes 1st or Second in B2 to go to Novice. Take a 1st in Novice to progress to Prizewinner.

Your dances are judged based on:

You start w/ 100 points.
They are marked down for lack of:

Timing
Step Accuracy
Feet Position
Hands Firmly By Side
Overall excecution

There are two different shoe types as well:

Soft Shoe (soft soles)

And Hardshoe (equivalent of tap shoes except MUCH MUCH louder.

I hope you found this blog interesting and thanks for reading.