By Jane O'Malley, TCRG-certified Irish dance teacher and digital media researcher
In February 2024, a packed hall at Dublin's Project Arts Centre watched dancer Nick O'Connell perform with motion-capture sensors attached to his hard shoes. Behind him, a digital sean-nós dancer projected onto gauze responded to every batter and cut in real time. The audience—split evenly between traditionalists and technologists—erupted. That collision of worlds captures where Irish dance stands in 2024: deeply rooted, digitally curious, and unwilling to stay still.
For decades, Irish step dancing grew through the rigorous syllabus of An Coimisiún Le Rincí Gaelacha (CLRG), the televised explosion of Riverdance, and the competitive machinery of the Oireachtas circuit. Today, a new wave of artists and engineers is grafting tools onto that foundation. Some of these developments are commercially available now. Others remain experiments. All of them are forcing the community to ask what "tradition" means when technology can replicate, augment, or reimagine it.
Virtual Reality: Stepping Inside the Dance Hall
VR has matured from novelty to pedagogical tool in several dance disciplines, and Irish dance is beginning to follow. The most concrete example currently accessible to consumers is CelticVR, a Belfast-based studio that released its "Dance Hall Sessions" module in late 2023. Users wearing Meta Quest headsets find themselves in a reconstructed 1920s bothán in County Kerry, where they can observe sean-nós dancers from multiple angles—or, in tutorial mode, match their footwork against ghosted overlays of recorded performers.
"Students tell me they finally understand relaxation in sean-nós because they can circle the dancer and see weight transfer from below," says Dr. Méabh Ní Fhuarthaí, a dance ethnologist at Ulster University who consulted on the project's motion-capture sessions. "You cannot get that perspective in a live workshop without physically crawling on the floor."
CelticVR remains a niche product—priced at €89, with fewer than 10,000 downloads to date. But its educational traction is real. The Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at the University of Limerick now loans headsets to undergraduate students, and several TCRG-certified teachers in North America have incorporated it into summer intensive curricula.
For competitive step dancing, VR is still largely aspirational. No major CLRG-sanctioned event has yet introduced virtual adjudication, though the 2023 World Championships in Montreal experimented with multi-angle broadcast archives that approximate an immersive viewing experience.
Augmented Reality: The Invisible Instructor Lives on Your Phone
Where VR requires hardware investment, augmented reality has spread faster through devices dancers already own. DanceAR, a Dublin-based startup founded by former Riverdance corps member Ciarán Doran, launched its Irish dance module in March 2024. The app uses a smartphone camera to superimpose a 3D instructor onto the user's floor, demonstrating skip-2-3s and over-2-3s at adjustable speeds.
The technology is rudimentary. Foot tracking is inconsistent on carpet, and the app's library currently covers only beginner reel and light jig steps. Yet Doran reports 14,000 active subscribers, concentrated among adult learners and rural students without access to registered teachers.
"AR will not replace a TCRG," Doran says. "But it can reduce the intimidation of a first class, or help someone in Montana practice between monthly Skype lessons."
Social platforms have also become accidental AR laboratories. Several Dublin dance schools, including the Brennan-Lucey Academy, now use custom Snapchat lenses that highlight a dancer's foot placement with color-coded heat maps. The filters were developed pro bono by a former student now working at Snap's London office. They spread organically through TikTok and Instagram Reels, functioning as both marketing stunt and peer-to-peer teaching tool.
Wearable Tech: When Hard Shoes Become Data Devices
The most quantified corner of Irish dance in 2024 is footwear. DanceForce, a Galway-based company spun out of NUIG's biomechanics lab, released its second-generation "smart hard shoe" in January. Embedded pressure sensors and inertial measurement units (IMUs) capture strike force, batter symmetry between feet, and ground-contact time at 1,000 frames per second.
Elite competitive dancers have begun adopting the shoes selectively. Emma Byrne, who placed seventh at the 2024 Worlds, trained with DanceForce prototypes for six months leading up to the competition. Her
