How Irish Dancing Took Over TikTok

Taken from Issue 001 of The Irish Dance Globe. Purchase any remaining copies here while stocks last.

It’s not everyday you see Irish dancers donning blue jeans, athleisure wear, and the occasional bright green suit while stepping about to Taylor Swift, Doja Cat, and the Bee Gees. Yet these are precisely the kinds of videos that have flooded TikTok For You pages around the world over the past four years. The video sharing platform has triggered a resurgence in the visibility and popularity of Irish dancing, as Irish dancers have become content creators while reaching new audiences and redefining the art form through an innovative blend of trend and tradition.

Though the Chinese-based app originally launched in September 2016 under the name Douyin, it soon expanded worldwide and started gaining major traction in 2019, skyrocketing during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. With lockdowns shutting theatres and studios across the globe, Irish dancers were forced to find alternative ways to keep in step with their passion.

One of the earliest viral videos that helped put Irish dance on the social media map was Mary Papageorge’s sassy, tap-tastic dance to Fergie’s 2006 track ‘Fergalicious’. She recalls how this was the hardest choreography she had crafted at the time. “I remember being so sore and I hoped I would see some return for my efforts in the analytical performance of the video,” she says.

Sure enough, the video exploded, garnering over 4 million likes on TikTok and sparking a hilarious trend in which users duetted the video, pairing their flailing upper bodies with Mary’s precise footwork. A few celebrities even hopped on the split-screen bandwagon, including Will Smith, Jason Derulo, and Derek Hough.

Like Mary, other Irish dance content creators embraced the pandemic as an opportunity to experiment with creativity. One of the biggest Irish dancing accounts on TikTok is Cairde (Irish for “friends”), a group of six dancers and best friends from the west of Ireland made up of Brian Culligan, Francis Fallon, Ronan O’Connell, Stephen McGuinness, Seamus Morrison, and Dara Kelly. At 3.3 million followers, the group tells us they love looking back on their lockdown videos not only for nostalgia, but to remind them just how much their creative process has evolved. After all, TikTok was a bit of a learning curve for all involved — from the technical production, transitioning from horizontal to vertical orientation, and the sheer consistency needed for viewership — including the time and effort it took to develop their creative “formula”.

“I think in some of our earlier videos, everything was kind of accidental,” Brian says. “Nothing was ever really that planned. Whereas now we actively look for what sounds will do well. We think about what we wear, we think about locations a lot more. Sound quality, picture quality, everything is just a little bit more planned and structured.”

Thinking back to their biggest viral video, featuring four of the lads dancing on boards set to the popular ‘Banjo Beat’ tune — which currently has 91 million views on TikTok alone — Seamus describes how they were lucky to have caught the audio at just the right time. Since then, they’ve gotten better at sussing out trends and envisioning corresponding choreography. Some of their other standouts include their a cappella videos, Times Square takeovers, and their routine to ‘Lights’ by Ellie Goulding, which has evolved into countless tongue-in-cheek memes, a phenomenon which the lads have embraced wholeheartedly.

The Gardiner Brothers, the Irish dancing duo of Galway-based brothers Michael and Matthew Gardiner, also have an incredibly vast repertoire of TikToks that encompasses a range of musical styles and dance influences. Some of their recent highlights include a collaboration with artist, dancer, and photographer Mathieu Forget, as well as steps set to Queen’s ‘Another One Bites The Dust’, and a rapid fire routine to Eminem’s ‘Rap God’.

This willingness to try everything is a fundamental component of their social media strategy. “You have a little influence from music, a little influence from different styles of dance, and obviously your influence of Irish dancing. But then you also want to add the final touch of being yourself,” Michael says.

This captures the essence of the adaptation process that these content creators have navigated in what is still a very new space, finding the balance between maintaining the tradition of Irish dance choreography while pushing it in a new, modern direction.

It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that Irish dance TikToker Morgan Bullock was instrumental in bringing Irish dancing into the future in the eyes of the rest of the world. The Richmond, Virginia-born performer learned to dance for the screen before the stage, going viral on social media before finding a professional home with Riverdance. She first joined TikTok in 2020 after hearing about it from younger girls in her dance class.

Many of Morgan’s choreographed Irish dance videos are soundtracked by hip-hop, R&B, and rap tracks, including her viral routine to Megan Thee Stallion’s ‘Savage’ featuring Beyoncé. The whirlwind of media attention that followed this particular video was telling of how much Morgan modernised Irish dance, seemingly overnight. She believes that this blending of cultures is crucial to furthering any dance form. “Art like Irish dancing was created to be shared, created to be celebrated by all different cultures,” she says. “Irish dancing is such an adaptable dance form, but it’s strong in its structure.”

Regardless of musical genre, all of these videos are still Irish dance at the core. This integration into mainstream media has been one of the most critical contributors to Irish dancing’s boom on TikTok. We’ve all witnessed a viral ‘moment’ within the intimate Irish dancing community, but digital spectators cropping up in their millions was certainly unexpected.

Cairde’s Brian also believes this has helped to challenge preconceived notions of the art form. “I think a lot of people who were seeing it were thinking of the long dresses and huge wigs from 30 years ago. And people didn’t even think it was possible to dance to the kind of music that we dance to.”

Stephen agrees, drawing parallels to the global effect that Riverdance had after its Eurovision debut in 1994. “Nobody had seen it before, and all of a sudden, they wanted to see more of it,” he says. “I think it’s just genuine curiosity as to this new form of dance that they would never have seen growing up.”

Another aspect of Irish dance’s allure on TikTok is its universally mesmerising rhythms. The fact that the app is completely driven by sounds, Morgan says, couples perfectly with both the visual and audible nature of Irish dance as a percussive art form. “I think the thing that caught on for people was that foot rhythms are just really cool.”

Whether it’s the clever syncopation of hard shoes or the elegance of light dancing, people are simply impressed with what they are watching. “You need so much technique, you need so much discipline, and people can see that,” Michael says. Indeed, the comments section of Irish dance TikToks are often populated with observations of “rubber ankles” or satisfying beats that “scratch the brain” in just the right way.

As much as digital audiences are enthralled with Irish dance videos, there are still certain challenges that come with consuming art on a screen. For instance, Morgan observes how the ability to replay and dissect videos takes away from a “live” experience. The Gardiners, both principal dancers with Riverdance, have also noticed this shift in audience interaction. “With the virtual stage and the virtual audience, there’s a different kind of pressure,” Michael says. “It’s not the same as being on stage, but it becomes a challenge to establish that authentic connection, especially after multiple takes.”

What has helped these Irish dance content creators bridge the digital gap and engage their audiences, though, is finding authenticity. Francis credits some of Cairde’s success on TikTok to their closeness as a friend group, as they lean heavily into their wholesome charisma and camaraderie to make their videos special. “We’ve slowly been growing on how we want to put ourselves across without our dancing shoes,” Ronan says. “We try to be lighthearted, we try to have a bit of craic.”

Michael also emphasises the vulnerability that social media demands, something that is both daunting and exhilarating for the Irish dance world. “The next generation is really in a good place because they’re excited to put themselves online and try out these different things.”

In this spirit of exploration and entertainment, Francis ties everything back to inspiring our own global community of Irish dancers. “I hope it’s given Irish dancers the feeling that Irish dancing is cool. I hope we’ve actually made Irish dancing bigger than what it can be,” he says. And it’s clear to see that our art form will continue to thrive on TikTok as long as there are dancers willing to light up our screens and push the boundaries beyond what we thought was possible.