We tried to cancel on Pat1 an hour before he arrived. We don’t usually do that, but the hiking had been good on Carrowkeel, and we’d left ourselves no time to tidy the living room. Pat didn’t get the message, and arrived into Sunday dinner prep and the little one’s bath time.
“I’m going to be terrible at this,” my husband told Pat.
“Nonsense,” he said. “Everybody has a dance in them.”
I plated a few custard creams and pulled on a pair of heels beneath my hiking trousers. Pat sipped his tea, telling us that half the battle was showing up. Our carpet was littered with lego men and odd socks. A damp patch spread beneath the monstera from overenthusiastic watering. Not a very inspiring dance floor.
“Let’s see if you have any rhythm,” Pat said.
We spent the next hour waltzing around the living room to Sally O’Brian, Baídín Fheilimí and another so fast we lost our feet entirely. Pat told us we were wonderful, catching on quickly, ready to hit the ballroom floor. We weren’t, but it was great fun, and we booked him again for the next week.
Pat found himself at a low ebb following a divorce. He petitioned his support group to think of something they could do together other than grieve their losses. One of them said: “I go dancing, if you’d like to come?”
He asked her to save him a stool, she did, and now he facilitates dances along the west coast four nights a week.
Nothing but Sin
In 1935, the Public Dance Halls Act was introduced in Ireland in an attempt to curb the licentiousness associated with dances. If you wanted to run a dance, you needed a permit. Members of the clergy and law enforcement officers were able to object to these licenses, and they did. A 1955 Catholic pamphlet gave this sobering advice to women considering a dance with a stranger:
‘Doesn’t she realize that a man who uses dancing as a means of unlawfully indulging sex attraction is usually not the marrying kind and that even if he were he wouldn’t be worth having? She’s missing nothing but sin.’
It is so interesting to read through the statements issued around this time about the evils of dancing. The focus is entirely on the loss of female innocence, the risk of shame for girls and the fruit of their misdemeanours landing them in ‘the dens of great cities’. There is little admonition for the men.
Last week, it was 90 years to the day that the act became law and it is still in place today. How archaic, we might think. Thank goodness times have changed.
Well.
When I was in my early twenties, I recommitted myself to the church I left as a teenager. I was all in. Most of my free time was spent in services, helping at youth clubs, prostrate in prayer rooms and singing - how I miss the singing. Once, we tried night club evangelism. It combined two of the things I love most: spirituality and dancing. The idea was to infiltrate dens of iniquity with the love of God. I tried to talk about Jesus above the music, but eventually gave up and hit the dance floor.
The following week, a fairly senior man in the church pulled me aside and told me I had a Jezebel spirit. He was telling me in good faith, he said, so I could seek healing. A basic online search reveals that a Jezebel spirit is a sexual appetite that drives women to behave in an idolatrous, manipulative manner, causing rifts in their communities.
Phew.
Underground
At the heart of these laws and rebukes is fear. Fear of letting go, fear of our bodies, fear of desire and the places it might take us, fear of women and the power we hold.
So, when the dance halls and local meeting places became heavily monitored, the parties went underground. Secret house dances proliferated, with look outs in place to warn them if the priest appeared. Women were publicly shamed for attending these dances, with specific attention paid to their immodest clothing and how they danced.
Being labelled a jezebel is no different. I wonder about all the dance I drove underground back then, and whether I have sufficiently resurrected it today. How much of that fear did I absorb, and can I shake it off before passing it on to my daughter?
Get Out There
When Pat returned, he stayed much longer than an hour. We learnt the slow waltz, quick step and how to promenade during an old time waltz with Lucille playing in the background.
“When the music starts, take a moment, feel the beat, then get out there.”
‘There’ was a charity Black Tie Ball where an orchestra played beautifully and I got so muddled that I stepped on another woman’s toe. Everything Pat taught us went out the window, but we gave it our best shot and managed a decent slow waltz when we got going.
If everyone has a dance in them, I do not think waltzing is mine. I will, however, take Pat’s advice to ‘feel the beat’. If I do not pay attention to my body and how it responds to different frequencies and environments, I will not learn how to trust myself and my own leading.
We have animal instincts that we have tamed to the point of complete domesticity. Sometimes, we need to let loose, feel our way, and harness some of that wild energy inherent in all living things. Sometimes, we need to learn a new dance and find teachers who can show us the steps. I would like to share a few of mine with you.
Leaving the Tribe
Deborah Sloan2 is about to release her book, Everything I Know About Leaving. She is a woman whose writing I love and who is a few steps ahead of me in articulating the challenges and heartache of leaving.
She wrote this recently:
A point will come when we may need to leave an institution, an organisation, a church, a system of rules and norms that has constrained us. And during the deinstitutionalisation process, we will learn that we are no longer accepted by those we left behind. Their support has been withdrawn. They avoid us in Sainsburys. They don’t like our LinkedIn posts. The exact reasons are unknown. It could simply be because we have rejected their customs and ways of life. We have left the tribe. Coming to terms with this rejection can be hard.
As someone who has been steadily leaving institutions, organisations, systems and even my home for years, I have seen that it is just as hard for those being left. It can feel for both parties like rejection. But when the things to which we belong constrain us and keep us out of sync with the rhythm of our life, it is necessary to walk, or even dance, away.
Leaving, then, is a courageous act. If navigated with care and delicacy, it can lead to greater connection with ourselves, the Spirit that dwells deeply among us, hawthorn on the hill, fox slinking through the long grass, white-tipped waves, and the people who love us the most.
Not always, of course. Sometimes, it marks the end of things, and letting go is very painful.
Wild and Unkempt
On our recent exploration of Achill Island, we found the Red Fox Printing Press. In February, very little is open on the island, but Francis and Ham welcomed us into their studio on a wet and windy day. They took a polaroid of our family, showed the kids antique cameras, and allowed me to browse their treasure trove of hand-bound books and original prints.
I bought a print named Srāoill which means, a wild unkempt woman. She has her back to me and is facing the sea, her feet are bare and I have no idea what she is thinking.
Ham made this illustration as part of a collaboration with Machán Magan for a book entitled Nasty Words for People. In the opening pages, Machán explains that Irish isn’t a pious language, but rather full of words to help us ‘deal with the daily grind of enduring other’s frailties and foibles’.
In this dance of life, I am so inspired by creative people making true, beautiful things. They light up the dark. Antic-Ham’s art hangs like a permission slip on my wall.
The Devil’s in the Dance Hall
I recently discovered the work of Edwina Guckian, dancer, director of the Leitrim Dance Project and author of Sparks from the Flagstones, a treasury of folklore and Celtic customs. She is working on a project, The Devil’s in the Dance Hall, which promises: “Illegal house dances, pop up cross road dances, and all night dancing in dance halls across the country”. It is a move to repeal the 1935 Dance Halls Act and bring people together for a bit of old fashioned craic.
Would anyone care to take a spin around the floor with me?
Sing Gently
As TS Eliot wrote, “In my end is my beginning.” When I leave, I enter a hinterland. Here, I sort through the rubble and figure out which bits of myself I want to carry forward into the next thing.
I was raised by musicians. My best childhood memories are set to the soundtrack of my parent’s harmonies. They sang in bands their whole lives, building community around music and song. Once, I played second oboe to my dad in the Bulawayo Philharmonic Orchestra. We practiced side by side in the evenings, wetting our reeds, getting the timing just right. After the concert, we drank wine from goblets made of silver.
The thing I miss most about church is congregational singing. It is a common conversation among friends here who grew up singing in different contexts. Pat told us his parents went to singing lounges every weekend, and he had to have a repertoire of songs to hand at every social occasion. Irish traditional music is an oral art form - it’s in our blood.
Last month, I joined the Sligo Orpheus Choir. We are working on a piece by Eric Whitaker called Sing Gently. You may remember he gathered the voices of over 17 000 people during COVID-19 and blended them in a virtual choir. The lyrics say, “May our singing be music for others and may it keep others aloft.”
Singing as succour - I’ll take that. The rest is still rubble and I’m picking my way through.
Pat’s real name has been changed in case you all take up waltzing and dance me off the floor.
What a great read! Well done on the dancing. I am processing someone telling you that you had a Jezebel spirit!! You are exactly right when you say that at the heart of these laws and rebukes is fear. I see this in the church all the time, a fear of people being truly themselves, being alive, rather than some legalistic caricature. Thank you so much for mentioning my book and the launch! I appreciate your support so much!
Love the mental picture of you dancing in the living room while your children were watching. Interesting piece, Bethany. You two look fab! x