Step dancing was seen as a skill to be mastered: a skill that showed that individuals had control and mastery over their minds and bodies. This was contrary to the negative reputation that English colonizers generally spread about the Irish as ‘uncivilized’. Thus in controlling their movements through step dancing, dancers were endeavouring to illustrate that they, like their colonizers, could also be controlled and ‘civilized’, but in an Irish way.
— Catherine Foley, Step Dancing in Ireland: Culture and History
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