The Irish Traditional Music Archive (ITMA) is committed to providing free, universal access to the rich cultural tradition of Irish music, song and dance. If you’re able, we’d love for you to consider a donation. Any level of support will help us preserve and grow this tradition for future generations.
ITMA are delighted to make available a digital edition of Micheal Tubridy’s A selection of Irish traditional step dances (2018).
In 1998 Brooks Academy published the first edition of this book, which used a unique notation system devised by Michael to describe step dances which he and his wife Céline had learned from dance masters Dan Furey (1910−1994) and James Keane (1917−2000). Both men, from Labasheeda, Co Clare, perpetuated an older style of traditional step dancing. Michael and Céline brought this local tradition to another generation through teaching in Ireland and abroad. In 2007 they released an instructional DVD Step Dancing with Céline and Michael Tubridy featuring dances from the first book. In 2018 Micheal published a second edition of the book and another DVD, with a further 9 dances.
Michael Tubridy has generously allowed ITMA to publish the DVD recordings and his notation, and this page brings together the learning tools for all 18 dances from the book.
For each dance there is a video recording at normal dance tempo first, followed by a performance at a slower tempo for learning purposes. Individual steps are isolated and slowed to highlight certain phrases of the dance. Voice-over instructions can be heard from Michael and Céline throughout the videos. Links to the individual steps are available in the PDF viewer below.
A PDF download of the full book is also available.
October 2025 – 6 additional dances: Micheal Tubridy created dance notations from videos he had recorded of Céline and Margaret Wray dancing the steps. Micheal has generously allowed us to add the original video recordings and his transcriptions to this playlist. In addition, he transcribed the dancing of Catherine Foley and Kieran Jordan from workshops and videos that they themselves had produced (see links below). The videos and transcriptions of these six additional dances start at number 19 below and bring to 24 the number of dances for which learning resources have been made available.
ITMA would like to thank Michael Tubridy, and his late wife Céline, for permission to publish this material on its website.
1. The priest and his boots, jig
2. The hornpipe
3. Single time, jig
4. Easy reel
5. Slip jig
6. The job of journeywork, set dance
7. Double jig
8. St Patrick's Day, set dance
9. The blackbird, set dance
10. Easy jig
11. An gabhairín buí, step dance
12. The little dutch dance, step dance
13. Mount Phoebus hunt, step dance
14. Jockey to the fair, step dance
15. Céline's hornpipe
16. Double jig
17. Páidí Bán's reel
18. Sean nós and battering, dance
19. Garden of daisies, set dance
20. Gortahork hornpipe [comp. Céline Tubridy]
21. Maggie Pickens
22. An súisín bán
23. Three ducks and a goose [comp. Kieran Jordan to a tune written by Brendan Tonra]
24. The three sea captains, set dance
*Catherine Foley’s tutorial for An súisín bán is available on YouTube. In this video Catherine dances the steps slowly and speaks the instructions.
The full dance of Three ducks and a goose is also available on YouTube, along with Kieran Jordan’s own tutorial for the steps, part 1 and part 2.
