Irish Gumbo

When we flew into Dublin from Paris we did so on Aer Lingus, the Irish airline. I glanced over an article in the airline magazine describing the new face of Dublin emerging in the last decade or so. Ireland has, much by its own effort, experienced an influx of immigrants. Its economy has been up—perhaps as a result of its membership in the EU—and it has tried to curry the favour of corporations looking to expand into or out of continental Europe. As a result of all this international intercourse, Ireland and especially Dublin have become places where more languages than English and Irish are spoken and more colours seen in the skin than Islander Pasty White. These mean that different cultures are moving in.

Dublin is now a place where you can walk down the street and see faces that reveal Asian, Indian, African, and Mediterranean heritage. If you sit on a bench along the River Liffey and close your eyes you will hear Irish, English, Czech, Swahili, Japanese, and Spanish in the air around you. It’s a tapestry of many colours hung on the eastern wall of the emerald isle. And of course there are people who want Dublin to change back; there are people who want Dublin to change more; and there are even more who don’t know what to do with all this change.

On Wednesday last we went to the performance of Riverdance at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin, the home of the Riverdance troupe. Their specialty is Irish music (including the Uillean pipes, fiddle, and bodhran) and traditional Irish céilí dancing. The troupe’s skill in these arts takes your breath away, or failing that, inspires you to clap and tap your feet in joyful merriment. The show is impressive artistically and fun for the audience.

The second half of the show indulges in more story-telling through the dance scenes, describing especially the development of Irish culture. One of these dance scenes especially sticks in my memory.

It begins with a change in backdrop to show a stylized city scene (perhaps Dublin, New York, or Los Angeles). Two dancers take the stage who are, notably, black. They are accompanied by a single musician playing the oboe. They’re performing a jazz tap routine that is much looser, more improvised, and more playful than the céilí that’s dominated the show so far. Indeed, these two guys could be dancing in a club in New Orleans. Their heads and bodies sway to a funky jazz beat; their knees and ankles fling to a ragtime step. They’re dressed in black trousers, one with a black button-down shirt and the other in a white t-shirt with the sleeves cut off.

They’ve just finished their first dance when at the back of the stage another spotlight comes up. Here are three white guys, dressed in green and brown striped shirts buttoned to the collar, accompanied by the fiddler. The two black jazz dancers stop and stare. The fiddler begins her song and the three céilí dancers take the stage, tapping in strict formal style: hands at their sides, faces forward, torsos still atop the flying feet. They are in perfect harmony with the fiddle and with each other’s steps.

They finish the number and the oboist begins again. The two jazz dancers do their thing, spreading their groovy dance and languid motions all over the stage in a not-so-silent challenge to traditionalism. The tension begins to mount; the feud begins. Each set of dancers asserts with perfect skill the primacy of its dance over against the other in a scene reminiscent of West Side Story—without the words. Even the fiddler and the oboist go head-to-head in a confrontation of bow and reed. The jazz dancers do a mocking imitation of the rigid céilí dancers; the Irish men return the gesture.

But as the two dance groups go back and forth, something happens. Their dances change. The jazz dancers get a little more coordinated in their steps; they keep their torsos a little straighter. The céilí dancers loosen up a bit; they allow their arms to participate more in the expression of the dance. They are becoming more like one another. The challenge of their encounter becomes an interchange. Their tapping voices become a discussion and then, as if by some unknown plan, a consensus.

In time the five dancers are dancing together, the two instrumentalists are playing together. And now they’re doing urban jazz céilí, a dance that remembers the form and discipline of the old Irish style but embraces the free-flowing spirit of the immigrant way. It’s Irish gumbo, New Orleans wool, a knitting of cultures on the dance floor. The experience is so much fun that I might miss, amidst the clapping, hooting, and tapping, my chance to witness the real power of the dance. It is, after all, a creative and meaningful response to the changes in Dublin, Ireland, and the northern Atlantic world I found described in a little Aer Lingus article.

~emrys