Dance crazes can be mini social revolutions designed to cause rifts in generations and, if successful, become measurements of time. As soon as you accept the concept of The Floss, a teenager will do The Griddy, and you’re once again contemplating catch-up to a culture that’s racing away from you.
So too in 1930s Ireland, where the dance crazes of the day caused division among the generations. The dancehalls were a tapestry interlinking national culture, international influence, social divisions and, being Ireland, the watchful eye of the church.
Edwina Guckian looks at all this in her production The Devil’s in the Dancehall, an immersive project that blends theatre with a traditional dance hall experience, bringing the audience in as participants and exploring an Ireland at a fulcrum of change. Our pictures show the event in Dunkineely Hall, Donegal, last Saturday night.
[ Dancehall days: ‘He asked me to dance. Now we’re married 42 years’Opens in new window ]
For Guckian, the starting point for the project came from looking at Ireland’s 1935 Public Dance Hall Act.
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It became illegal to host a dance without a licence, bringing many events under State or clerical control. The church in turn built parish halls across the country and organised their own dances, which allowed them to keep a watchful eye over their wandering flock.
Today it’s not just dance crazes that mark time but also campaigns to repeal dance acts. For 21 years Give Us the Night has been calling for the abolishment of the 1935 Act and, like clockwork, every election cycle political parties will hold press conferences in agreement. Yet the dancehalls of Ireland remain constrained by the ethos of Victorian morality.
