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Lord of the Curls

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Women who spent the 1970s torturing their curly locks into straight submission should find comfort in the “Riverdance”-inspired popularity of Irish step dancing, an activity in which girls with naturally buoyant hair are a lock up on the competition.

At Irish dancing tournaments called “feises” (pronounced feshes), female performers usually wear their hair in tight ringlets that match the springs in their steps. The bouncing corkscrews are so much a part of the dancers’ costumes that some lanky-haired lasses wear curlers and hairnets to school on the days before big competitions.

“We tried to buy black ones, because if the girl has dark hair, from a distance at least you don’t know they have anything on,” says Carol Ives, whose daughters, Nicola, 18, and Erin, 13, perform for Ventura’s Claddagh School of Irish Dancing. Of course, a little razzing from one’s peers seems a small price compared to the humiliation suffered by the girl who donned a fake hairpiece for a national competition--and then lost her rug while cutting one onstage.

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How to achieve the perfect crop of curls is a hot topic among mothers of Irish dancers. Sponge rollers or plastic spikes? Wet or dry sets? Paul Mitchell hair spray or Freemans gel? After all, even the most experienced fingers need about an hour to do the job, longer if the patient is a squirming 6-year-old. And horror stories abound of picture-perfect poodle ‘dos that went limp after being exposed to humidity or too much handling. “Straight hair, it’s bad, “ Ives says. “It just doesn’t want to do anything.”

One mother recalls a time when a parent from a competing school admired her daughter’s curls and asked what kind of hair spray she used. Before she could answer, another mother interrupted, saying the brand was “a school secret.”

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