THE latest edition of the Set Dancing News arrived in my mailbox with 76 colorful pages detailing the worldwide fascination with country set dancing, the Irish derivative of those courtly quadrille dances that flourished on the continent as far back as the 19th century.

The revival of those dances has been a 25 year phenomenon since they were added to the curriculum of the illustrious Willie Clancy Summer School in 1982 by dancing master Joe O’Donovan and his wife Siobhan from Cork City.

The steps and movements have hastened down the years since marrying with the faster and at times livelier Irish reels, jigs, polkas and hornpipes. They took on the regional character of the localities where they settled for decades, only to travel worldwide thanks to the modern technology that accompanied dancing masters who knew no boundaries or limits. There are probably more people dancing the country sets all over the world than ever.

But that isn’t good news to everyone, as one letter writer, Anton Coyle, decried in this Set Dancing News issue. The writer felt that the success of set dancing has overshadowed the other Irish folk dancing tradition known as ceili dancing.

Coyle hailed from London where, in 1897, the very first ceili was organized under the auspices of the Gaelic League to help inspire an appreciation for Irish culture, the language and steps which were said to originate in Ireland and not brought from foreign soil.

He indicated that the London Irish Center in Camden Town has only one Sunday night ceili devoted to the figure dances that have evolved from modern step dancing and mostly have been created over the last century, though some originated as far back as the 18th century in basic form.

But there were once at least four such nights in London. Similar alarms could be set in Ireland and the U.S. as the sets have made the ceili dances recede almost to oblivion in some areas, or else relegated to being squeezed in between the longer sets with their multiple figure movements.

Dancing fashions come and go in the cultural continuum, and the figure ceili dances are definitely in trouble these days as fewer people are teaching the steps and movements anywhere. Your man in London encourages affirmative action from the GAA, Gaelic League, Sinn Fein and Comhaltas to play a part in promoting or at least balancing the dance card a bit.

And he takes the Irish Dancing Commission and its teachers to task for falling down on their job of teaching these folk dances in a broader forum, and to expand their expertise to adults or encourage the children to stay with it longer beyond the competition stage.

There are literally hundreds of certified Irish dance teachers who earned their status by mastering the 30 dances in the bible known as An Rince Foirne, generally accepted as the ceili canon of folk dances that have been done in social settings.

This has been simmering for decades in the Irish dancing community, but it is helpful for the debate to see someone articulate it so well as Coyle in the Set Dancing News.

He also notes that the young people will be the guardians of the future, and we wonder what path they’ll take or will a new style emerge all together?