AD Competition: Irish Dates, Ballet Section and How to Qualify

The AD Competition does not work like most touring competitions. You do not have to place first, second or third at a regional to reach the Grand Finals. The organisers publish a qualifying score once the regional season has finished, and any dancer who met or beat it is invited.

Ballet is one of twelve sections. There are four Irish dates in the current season, at Charleville in Cork, Belfast, Charleville again and Dublin.

What it is

The AD Competition is run by the Aaron Dwyer Company, which also runs a development programme, three-day intensives, stage productions and a trip to Italy. The competition tours about ten locations across Britain and Ireland: Bath, Birmingham, Essex, London, Dundee, two Scottish dates and a north-west English one, plus Cork, Dublin and Belfast. Only the last three are reachable from here without a flight, which is why four dates appear on this page and the rest do not.

The company reports more than 15,000 dancers and 500 dance schools to date. That matters mainly as a signal that this is an established circuit rather than a first-year venture, so a school entering for the first time is not taking a chance on whether the event will run.

It is a multi-genre competition. The sections are acro and gymnastics, ballet, commercial, contemporary, hip hop, jazz, lyrical, musical theatre dance, open, song and dance, tap, and vocal. Unlike the Dance World Cup and Prestige, there is no separate character or national section, so every classical entry sits in the one ballet section.

How the season and the qualifying score work

This changes what a regional is for, so it is worth understanding before you enter.

At most touring competitions a regional is a heat: place in the top three, clear a score threshold, and that is your route to the final. At AD the regional is a scoring opportunity instead. Dancers compete through the season at whichever regionals suit them, and once the season closes the organisers publish the qualifying scores for the novice and competitive divisions. Every dancer who reached the mark is invited to the Grand Finals.

Two things follow from that. A dancer who has a strong day but finishes fourth in a deep section can still qualify, which takes some of the sting out of a hard draw. And the qualifying score cannot be published in advance, because it is set once the season's scores are in.

That second point is the awkward one: you are working towards a mark nobody can tell you yet. The practical answer is to treat every regional as if it counts, because it does, and to ask your teacher what the mark came out at in previous seasons. It is not a guarantee, but it is the only guide anyone has.

Novice and competitive divisions

Entries split into a novice division for beginners and a competitive division for more experienced dancers. Novice dancers are judged against other beginners, which is the point of it, but they are not eligible for Title Awards or Highest Overall awards. Worth knowing before a first-timer sets their heart on one.

Ages, and the date that catches people out

Divisions run from Tiny Tot at ages 4 to 6, through Junior at 10 to 12, up to Senior at 16 and over. The competition also takes adult performers and dancers with additional needs, and group routines are placed on the average age of the dancers in them.

A dancer's division is set by their age on 1 September, at the start of the competition season. Not on the day they compete. That is worth checking against the other competitions we list, because no two of them use the same date:

• AD Competition: age on 1 September, when the season opens.

• Dance World Cup: age on 1 January of the competition year.

• Prestige: age on the first day of the competition itself.

So a dancer born in, say, October can sit in one band at AD and the band above at Dance World Cup, in the same year. If your school enters more than one circuit, check each one separately rather than assuming the age group carries across. It is the most common thing to get wrong.

What else the company runs in Ireland

Two other strands happen here, and both are worth knowing about if you are already entering the competition.

The development programme runs as six monthly sessions at Beats Studios in Bangor, County Down: 6 September, 4 October, 29 November and 13 December 2026, then 10 January and 7 February 2027. The faculty is broad rather than classical, but it includes Bridget Green, who teaches ballet, tap and modern, alongside teachers in commercial, jazz, hip hop, heels and musical theatre.

The intensives are three days and about fifteen hours of training. They have run at ELJ Academy of Dance in Cork and at Beats Studios in Bangor. The company says more cities are coming and takes requests for locations, so it is worth asking if you are nowhere near either.

How to enter

Entries go through a dance school rather than from individual dancers, as on most of this circuit. If your child dances with a school, the conversation starts with their teacher, not with the organiser.

Their Ireland hub page carries the current information pack, and that is where the fees, rules and full section lists live. Their site is organised by city rather than by date, so the info pack is usually a faster route to an answer than the navigation is.

Looking at what else is on: every dance competition in Ireland with a ballet section.