{"id":220012,"date":"2025-12-07T11:08:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T11:08:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/220012\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T11:08:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T11:08:12","slug":"reviving-a-cultural-cornerstone-in-donegal-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/220012\/","title":{"rendered":"reviving a cultural cornerstone in Donegal \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">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\u2019re once again contemplating catch-up to a culture that\u2019s racing away from you. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">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. <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" alt=\"Edwina Guckian's The Devil in the Dancehall blends theatre and dance. Photograph: Enda O'Dowd\" class=\"c-image\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/MAI4RAQNXRE4ZFHM7OEZLW46GI.jpg\"   width=\"800\" height=\"533\"\/>Edwina Guckian&#8217;s The Devil in the Dancehall blends theatre and dance. Photograph: Enda O&#8217;Dowd <img decoding=\"async\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" alt=\"Edwina Guckian's The Devil in the Dancehall blends theater and dance. Photograph: Enda O'Dowd\" class=\"c-image\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/CZRLMUW3ZFHYXI6PDHVUWNXPLQ.jpg\"   width=\"800\" height=\"533\"\/>Edwina Guckian&#8217;s The Devil in the Dancehall blends theater and dance. Photograph: Enda O&#8217;Dowd <img decoding=\"async\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" alt=\"Audience members\" class=\"c-image\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/GO2UZBRUO5BEFNS4S7U452YVYU.jpg\"   width=\"800\" height=\"510\"\/>Audience members <img decoding=\"async\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" alt=\"Edwina Guckian's The Devil in the Dancehall\" class=\"c-image\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/A7H2P5RR3NDFPBL6USULRA7G44.jpg\"   width=\"800\" height=\"533\"\/>Edwina Guckian&#8217;s The Devil in the Dancehall <img decoding=\"async\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" alt=\"The Devil's in the Dancehall \" class=\"c-image\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/4WEH7SXWCFHKJBZ6FR7YSWQDV4.jpg\"   width=\"800\" height=\"533\"\/>The Devil&#8217;s in the Dancehall  <img decoding=\"async\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" alt=\"Bridgette and Alex Ballot take a break from dancing\" class=\"c-image\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/5PXKWST4AJAVXOOATQEEROGV64.jpg\"   width=\"800\" height=\"885\"\/>Bridgette and Alex Ballot take a break from dancing <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Edwina Guckian looks at all this in her production <a href=\"https:\/\/www.edwinaguckian.com\/the-devils-in-the-dance-hall\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.edwinaguckian.com\/the-devils-in-the-dance-hall\/\">The Devil\u2019s in the Dancehall<\/a>, 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. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-it-article-body__interstitial-link\">[\u00a0<a aria-label=\"Open related story\" class=\"c-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/life-style\/people\/2025\/11\/23\/dancehall-days-he-asked-me-to-dance-now-were-married-42-years\/\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Dancehall days: \u2018He asked me to dance. Now we\u2019re married 42 years\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">For Guckian, the starting point for the project came from looking at Ireland\u2019s 1935 Public Dance Hall Act. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">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. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Today it\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dance crazes can be mini social revolutions designed to cause rifts in generations and, if successful, become measurements&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":220013,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[18,117,19,17,2212],"class_list":{"0":"post-220012","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-weekendreview"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115677974381228246","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}