Rising Star, proud to be a neutral costume designer

The end of a year is always a time to reflect on the services we provide and this

year is no different. I take pride in the fact Rising Star is not one person but a team effort creating unique and beautiful costumes for dancers all over the world.

Costumes that are designed with the dancer’s personality in mind, because a happy dancer is a one who performs at their best whatever level that may be.

Recently the Irish dance world has been rocked with allegations of cheating which is both upsetting and embarrassing to all of us who stand on the right side of history. We have in the past gone along with trends of names on costumes and school identifiers but this is a time to change and think of the dancers who are putting in the long hours of training and let them achieve the result they deserve by themselves.

In my twenty two years of being in this industry I have witnessed many times when customers and dancers were treated unjustly from being told they can only use a particular designer to achieve a favour or a dancers costume could not be better than someone else in that age group. I believe in freedom of choice and this is not always awarded. Moving forward we will be making a conscious effort to keeping costume design fair for everyone with no names or identifiers.

Rising Star Designs is a company that is not associated with any one dance school. We provide unique costumes for dancers no matter their level, who they dance for or against. Every dancer is treated as an individual.

I hope we can move forward in time and celebrate the wonderful art form that is Irish Dance.

Keith.