The Devil's in the Dance Hall

The Devils in the Dance Hall is a powerful, joyous live performance rooted in Irish social history, music, and resistance, inspired by the true story of Jimmy Gralton and the suppression of Ireland’s rural dance halls in the early 20th century; time when gathering to dance, to play music, and to think freely was seen as a threat. Drawing on oral history, folk memory, and the energy of the big-band era, Edwina Guckian has created an immersive theatre performance that brings to life the world of the parish hall as a place of movement, learning, courtship, argument, and possibility, and asks what happens when church and state attempt to take power of how a community socialise.

At its heart, the performance celebrates collective joy of dance as a form of defiance.

Through spoken word, song, and the roaring sounds of The Gralton Big Band, it tells how Ireland’s old dance halls…