When Ellen Coyne heard her phone buzz in bed on a dark October night in 2022, she couldn’t have known that answering it would lead to the “biggest thing to happen to Irish dancing since Riverdance.”
A dossier of messages and WhatsApp screen grabs claimed to uncover what had long been suspected about the sport and art-form; that competition-fixing between teachers and adjudicators was widespread, and that the practise hadn’t just been a problem in recent years but rather stretched back over decades.
The feis-fixing scandal as it came to be known revealed a global culture of lobbying judges to promote or demote a given dancer with the implicit understanding the favour would be returned.
“If a judge had marked up your students, let’s say a major competition six months previously, [and] it’s your turn to judge when it comes to the Al-Irelands, there’s an expectation that you have a debt that needs to be repaid.”
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Despite the spotlight suddenly being shone on the alleged practise, Coyne came up against a wall of silence.
“A lot of people kept drawing parallels with the mafia, which I initially thought was a little bit over the top.”
[ How ‘feis-fixing’ scandal rocked the insular world of Irish dancingOpens in new window ]
But the longer she spent researching the claims the more she realised that those who put their heads above the parapet felt genuine fear of retribution.
“There was always this theory that dancers would get bombed, basically, where one judge would mark them down so significantly that it would obliterate their chances of competing.”
Coyne paints a picture of a world that has lost itself to toxic competitiveness. Rather than being a joyful expression of Irish culture the sport has simply become about winning, at the expense of the youngsters taking part.
“Children were put in the position of looking at the medals and trophies on their bedroom wall and starting to question what is probably the single most important trusting relationship they have with an adult outside of the ones that they’re directly related to.”
[ Dirty Dancing: The Inside Story of the Irish-Dancing Cheating ScandalOpens in new window ]
The governing body abandoned disciplinary hearings in 2024 but has the cheating scandal changed the culture for good?
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Presented by Aideen Finnegan. Produced by Andrew McNair.
