The Irish Dance Visual Glossary project was created in May 2020 by Irish dancer + competitor Diana Dersch. With the prompting of fellow senior lady Irish dancers, the journey began to compile a list of all the Irish dance moves, their alternate names, and any variations in an attempt to make the first-ever comprehensive written "glossary" of contemporary Irish dance movements and their elements. It quickly became clear that the project would include a visual component and needed to be more than a text reference document. With this knowledge, the Glossary would need a more accessible + permanent home on the Web that could be added to over time.

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While attempts have been made to itemize Irish dance movements and notate Irish dance steps before, the Visual Glossary aims to document the names of Irish dance's component movements as they're known all over the world by combining both video and text. Diana's knowledge of the Irish dance world from her 20+ years of competition and her passion for compiling and formatting information will see this vast project to a practical and helpful completion. Most importantly, the input of dancers and teachers around the globe is being utilized to make it as accurate and thorough as possible. While the research may be more colloquial than formal, that is exactly the aim: to make something relevant and useful based on how people actually refer to the Irish dance movements by naming, categorizing, and linking them together in a searchable and visually informative format.

Combining elements of a dictionary and thesaurus with visual components, the Irish Dance Visual Glossary will be a library reference for the future of the Irish dance community -- for the casual dancer, serious competitor, and teacher/adjudicator alike.