Irish Fair in Irvine

By accident on Friday I learned there was going to be a big Irish Fair at nearby Irvine Meadows this weekend, and being that my daughter is a big fan of Irish music, we decided to attend. Along the way, we discovered a competitive subculture that I never realized existed - Irish dancing.

If you've ever seen Riverdance or Lord of the Dance, you know the type of dancing I'm talking about. Generally, the dancers have their arms pinned firmly to their sides and their legs and feet do all the work. It looks pretty tough, and after watching some of the competition yesterday, the kids were working pretty hard.

I never realized how competitive Irish dancing is, or how expensive. Take a look at this picture of some of the dancers waiting to go on:

Every female dancer wears those same tightly curled wigs (I'm not really sure why), and those dresses can cost as much as $2,500. And you thought cheerleading was expensive.

We ran into Katie, a friend of my daughter's from school and a competitive dancer for many years. Her mom made this dress for her:

We stuck around to watch Katie compete and caught a photo of her in mid-dance:

There was some pretty good music throughout the Fair. We stopped and watched The Fenians for quite awhile. They have an excellent flute/Irish whistle player, and since those instruments are favorites of my daughter, she enjoyed watching the guy play.

There was also a lot of politics in the air. Congressman Dana Rohrbacher was the grand marshall and got up and spoke a bit during the concert, and while we were eating lunch, a women came up and made a passionate pitch inviting us to come hear Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams give a speech in Long Beach. I was tempted to ask "wasn't he involved in anti-British terrorism, which would explain why he hasn't been granted a visa to the U.S. in 10 years?", but I figured I'd probably just start a fight. The paper she gave us certainly painted a glowing picture of Adams as a great peacemaker, and maybe he is. Who knows?

There was also a reference or two to fighting British rule during the concert, and that got quite an enthusiastic response. I guess telling them that I'm distantly related to the Queen of England wouldn't have been a smart thing to do.

The Fair continues today from 10-7. Check it out if you're in Southern California. Good food, music, and don't forget to watch some of the competitive dancing. If nothing else, the dresses and wigs are interesting.