{"id":593812,"date":"2026-08-15T06:36:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-15T06:36:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/593812\/"},"modified":"2026-08-15T06:36:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-15T06:36:14","slug":"people-say-my-dad-used-to-do-that-we-always-thought-he-was-just-drunk-the-revival-of-sean-nos-dancing-around-ireland-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/593812\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018People say: my dad used to do that. We always thought he was just drunk\u2019: The revival of sean-n\u00f3s dancing around Ireland \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the village of Drumsna in Co Leitrim<\/a>, Edwina Guckian<\/a> is dancing in her big sunlit kitchen. It\u2019s for demonstration purposes, because I keep asking her questions about dancing and sometimes it\u2019s easier for her to just to show me than to explain. She has lived here all her life, apart from a small period when she studied music and English and then pursued an MA in education in St Patrick\u2019s, Drumcondra. Her brother is working with sheep (\u201cescape artists\u201d) in the field next door. Her aunt and uncle are the next house on the road. Her parents also live nearby.<\/p>\n

Guckian is the enthusiastic brain (and feet) behind The Devil\u2019s in the Dancehall<\/a>, an exhilarating, softly political dance event featuring the Gralton Band (led by singer Cathy Jordan and musical director Stephen Doherty), a host of professional dancers and actors re-creating an under-siege Irish dancehall in the 1930s with a script by Vincent Woods and a hall full of dancing punters. I experienced a version of it at the R\u00f3ise Rua festival in Arranmore, off the coast of Donegal, in May.<\/p>\n

She was worried, she says, that that one was too early in the day. \u201cWe notice that people love to come in and dance when it\u2019s dark out,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s amazing how the light affects people dancing. We spent a lot of time with our lighting man, Michael Cummins, designing lighting that\u2019s really subtle and low so you can see, but you also can\u2019t fully see. I think it gives people a freedom and confidence just to dance and move. And also, there\u2019s that element of coming into a hall from the dark \u2026 There\u2019s devilment there. You can cause trouble in the dark and leave again.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is probably why the church had it in for the whole dance thing. Later she takes me down the road to the monument in the townland of Effrinagh where Gralton\u2019s Hall once stood. This was created by Jimmy Gralton, who returned from the US to bring dancing and socialism to de Valera\u2019s Ireland only to find himself being denounced from the pulpit, ostracised by much of the community and ultimately having his dancehall burned to the ground in 1932. Gralton was the only Irish-born person ever to be deported from Ireland. \u201cHe had acquired an American passport or visa [so] they said, \u2018He\u2019s an undesirable alien; he\u2019s actually American.\u2019 It\u2019s just crazy, isn\u2019t it?\u201d <\/p>\n

This was the subject of Ken Loach\u2019s film Jimmy\u2019s Hall<\/a>, on which Guckian worked as a choreographer. She had been obsessed with the story ever since she read the short book My Cousin Jimmy by her neighbour, Jimmy\u2019s cousin Margaret Gralton, who her mother would drive to the shops and bingo. \u201cIt was black and white with Maggie Gralton, so this book is exactly black and white,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s factual. There\u2019s no taking sides. And I remember reading that as a 12- or 13-year-old, going, \u2018I can\u2019t believe that nobody told me this story\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was an era with priest-led protests against jazz music, and a moral panic about the behaviour of young women. Dancehalls popped up all over the country \u2013 many lasting for decades but most now derelict or else housing cows or tractors. The music that was played there in the 1930s was a wonderful hybrid \u2013 recaptured by Guckian and her musicians \u2013 of traditional music and New Orleans jazz. \u201cThey\u2019d play tunes like Yes! We Have No Bananas and they\u2019d play the chorus, and go into …\u201d She sings the melody of a traditional reel. \u201cThey wouldn\u2019t even bother with the verse.\u201d<\/p>\n

The State published the Carrigan Report in 1931, ostensibly to formulate a legislative response to underage prostitution, but it also came to conclusions more generally about what was causing, in Guckian\u2019s words, \u201cthe downfall of Irish society \u2026 The three main things that came out of that was: motor cars, dancing and dancehalls.\u201d She thinks about that. \u201cYou know how it feels when you\u2019ve got really good music and you dance and people are suddenly dancing closely and they never got the chance to dance closely?\u201d <\/p>\n

So the establishment was right about the corrupting influence of dancehalls? She laughs. \u201cThey were.\u201d<\/p>\n

When she was growing up nobody spoke about what happened to Jimmy Gralton, so she went out gathering stories from those who remembered him. \u201cI used to ask all these questions as a child after reading that book, but it still felt like something you shouldn\u2019t be talking about. When I got involved in the film, I still had some local people saying, \u2018What are you doing getting involved in that? You shouldn\u2019t.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n

\"TheThe Devil’s in the Dancehall fuses a traditional dance hall with elements of theatre. Photograph: Enda O’Dowd \"EdwinaEdwina Guckian hauls her stage, a door she uses to dance on. Photograph: Bryan O\u2019Brien <\/p>\n

Her grandfather, Hughie Guckian, told her how businesses and families supportive of Gralton were boycotted, how people were said to have been cursed because of their association with Gralton and how Fr Joe Cosgrove denounced him from the altar and told people to throw mud and stones at his supporters. \u201cHe remembered standing there, seeing everyone just picking up sods of muck and dirt and throwing them at the Graltons.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Edwina was asked to dance in the church on St Patrick\u2019s Day, she could hear Hughie laughing from the back of the church. \u201cFr Cosgrove is rolling in his grave,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Irish dancehalls then and now: reviving a cultural cornerstone in DonegalOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

And yet, when she took Ken Loach and screenwriter Paul Laverty to see her grandad, he clammed up about the whole thing. \u201cNo, I don\u2019t remember that now,\u201d he said. She laughs. \u201cI was fit to kill him \u2026 And he said, \u2018Well, you know what, Edwina? I don\u2019t know if I\u2019ll meet Fr Cosgrove again or not some day.\u2019 Fr Cosgrove still had control.\u201d She sighs. \u201cI\u2019d love to go back and meet him and give him a good kick in the shins.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Carrigan Report led to a law, the Public Dancehall Act of 1935, that required people to get a licence signed by local garda\u00ed and a local priest if people were going to be dancing on their premises. \u201cThat made it illegal to gather people to dance anywhere without a licence, whether it was your home, a crossroads, in a barn, a field, a dancehall,\u201d she says. \u201cIt killed house dances. There are ridiculous stories on the extreme side of things of the church coming in and throwing instruments in the fire. Imagine throwing a set of pipes or a fiddle in the fire.\u201d<\/p>\n

That law is still on the books. Guckian and her collaborators play on this. They advertised some of the earlier Devil\u2019s in the Dancehall events as \u201cillegal\u201d, recreating a modern version of some old Leitrim Observer articles in which Fr Cosgrove denounced the dancehall for being \u201ca temptation of the flesh and a threat to the moral fibre of our youth\u201d, adding that \u201cwhere jazz is played, sin is never far behind.\u201d <\/p>\n

Some people with far-right associations leapt on this, seemingly in agreement with the Leitrim Observer article of nearly a century before. Guckian and many other local artists had campaigned against an event in the area that they worried would become a platform for anti-immigration sentiment. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really horrible,\u201d she says. \u201cWe have a really diverse community: people who have chosen to make Leitrim their home, and people who\u2019ve had no choice but Leitrim has to be their home, and we\u2019ve embraced all of them into our community as they have embraced us. So then when I started running the dance hall events and the illegal \u2018No dance licence\u2019 thing, [some people] turned on that. They tried to get it shut down.\u201d<\/p>\n

From boxing priests to trotting foxes a look back at Ireland’s dancehalls. Video: Enda O’Dowd <\/p>\n

Guckian dances in the sean-n\u00f3s style, a field traditionally dominated by men, which involves a loose, improvised form of Irish dancing to accompany musicians at trad sessions. Sean-n\u00f3s dancers, unlike those in the more common form of Irish dancing, follow their own instincts and feel free to swing their arms. \u201cMy family all danced and played music, so it was just there,\u201d she says. \u201cIf somebody was playing in the kitchen you\u2019d get up and dance with them for enjoyment, not a show-off kind of thing, and it\u2019s just always been like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"EdwinaEdwina Guckian demonstrates sean-n\u00f3s dancing near her home in Drumsna, Co Leitrim. Photograph: Bryan O’Brien \"EdwinaEdwina Guckian demonstrates sean-n\u00f3s dancing near her home in Drumsna, Co Leitrim. Photograph: Bryan O’Brien <\/p>\n

She is a spectacular dancer. When people see her perform, they often say: \u201cOh, my dad used to do that, but we always thought he was just drunk.\u201d She laughs. \u201cThat freedom of them just randomly jumping out and dancing. Sometimes it\u2019s in sessions where they might be playing themselves, and the music kind of gets too much for them, and they want to just dance.\u201d It\u2019s far less rule-bound than the Irish dance you might be more familiar with. \u201cIn sean-n\u00f3s you haven\u2019t a clue what you\u2019re going to do, and when you\u2019re finished you don\u2019t know what you did.\u201d<\/p>\n

When she\u2019s teaching it to children she teaches is it as a series of discrete moves, \u201clike Lego bricks\u201d they can incorporate into a dance as they feel fit. She has seen children she taught to dance practising their steps in line in the local shop. Some of her older students are now dancers in the Devil\u2019s in the Dancehall themselves. Sometimes in a chipper late at night she\u2019ll meet a young adult she once taught and they\u2019ll do a performative dance for her. \u201cIt\u2019s all still in there,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s interested in dance as a living tradition with roots in the past. She recently spent time in Donegal, at the aforementioned R\u00f3ise Rua festival, interviewing older dancers about the lost steps of a dance called the Maggie Pickie. \u201cThere are 40-something steps at least. Joe McGuigan from Derry is the man who taught me. I have about 23 [of the steps] now.\u201d McGuigan, she says, spent a lot of time trying to get steps out of one older woman who had been keeping them to herself. She laughs. \u201cPeople are really possessive of steps.\u201d<\/p>\n

Guckian believes our tradition of dancing for pleasure was stolen from us by a confluence of church and the State. \u201cI got the Markievicz Award to research this, and the more documentation I started reading, the more a rage grew inside me,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I\u2019m not an angry person. All I could think of was that this is what my grandparents, particularly my grandmothers, were listening to, this crap being preached from the pulpit.\u201d She could also see that people really want to dance. \u201cWhen someone goes to a wedding \u2026 the next day you\u2019ll say, \u2018Well, how was the wedding?\u2019 and they\u2019d be like, \u2018Great, the band were brilliant.\u2019 They had a great night dancing.\u201d<\/p>\n

When government tries to repress art, she says, it becomes clear that self-expression is a political act. And it\u2019s political because it\u2019s ultimately about collective joy and connection. Right now, she can see people have a strong desire to reconnect to community and reconnect to nature. \u201cWhen you look at our folk customs and traditions, a lot of them come back to the land,\u201d she says. Crossroads dances, for example, were often linked to the harvest. She and her neighbours have revived crossroads dances locally as well as the tradition of mummers and straw boys going house to house through the 12 days of Christmas \u2013 particularly, she says, to people who might be a little isolated.<\/p>\n

\"EdwinaEdwina Guckian. Photograph: Bryan O\u2019Brien \"EdwinaEdwina Guckian’s dance shoes. Photograph: Bryan O’Brien <\/p>\n

There are more Devil\u2019s in the Dancehall events coming up in September and beyond, and Guckian is planning an installation in Carrick-on-Shannon based on her research. The local community is also fundraising to build a new dancehall on the site of Gralton\u2019s original. They should have drawings from the architect soon. It\u2019s a mark of the latent power of the church that she has heard that at least one person has vowed, already, never to dance there.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Dancehall days: \u2018He asked me to dance. Now we\u2019re married 42 years\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

But Guckian loves to dance and wants everyone to discover the joy of it. \u201cBeing able to just move freely and not care, that\u2019s what [The Devil\u2019s in the Dancehall] is designed for,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s so lovely. And it\u2019s such a selfish project. I want to dance to this band. I want to just dance and not care and have loads of people dance and not care. So basically, I\u2019m throwing my own party for me every night. I have the time of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Edwina Guckian will be joined by 14 traditional musicians and dancers for a celebration of L\u00faghnasa for all ages at Burton\u2019s field (adjoining St Patrick\u2019s National School in Curtlestown) as part of the Shaking Bog festival in Co Wicklow on August 23rd at 1.30pm. shakingbog.ie<\/a><\/p>\n

The Devil\u2019s in the Dancehall tour begins in Cork this September, visiting Bere Island before heading to Cork City Hall for Culture Night. From there it travels to old dancehalls in Kerry, Mayo, Roscommon, Limerick, Offaly, Kildare, Clare, Galway and Sligo. For full tour details, see edwinaguckian.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the village of Drumsna in Co Leitrim, Edwina Guckian is dancing in her big sunlit kitchen. It\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":593813,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[12780,184364,15338,61,60,199678,25524,709,43],"class_list":["post-593812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-catholic-church","tag-edwina-guckian","tag-gaeilge","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-ken-loach","tag-leitrim","tag-magazine","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=593812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/593813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}