SWING TALKING

Swing Talking is a unique five minute film made by the Swing dancers of Ireland for RTE’s Dance on the Box as part of the Dublin Dance Festival. The film was shown on Dance on the Box, RTE 2 on the 29th of April and on The Big Screen in Meeting House Square from on the 2nd and 3rd of May as part of the first Dublin Dance Festival.

You can view the film on the RTE Dance on the Box website.

Look up Swing in Ireland and you’ll get a lot of swingers sites, but a few hits down the line, you’ll realise this is also an age old form of dancing, which is sweeping the nation. Swing dancing or Lindy Hop, was born in Harlem in the 1920’s, and today is enjoying a worldwide revival and Ireland too has become caught up with its infectious energies and rhythms. The word “cool” is thrown around but this dance really deserves this adjective! This is a dance where men can be…well…men, and women get to flirt quite a bit! It’s all built around the concept that men lead, and women follow, but there’s always a chance to break the rules.

Swing Talking is directed by Anna Rodgers, and produced by Siobhan Ward, both amateur Swing dancers, and choreographed by Lucy E. Dunne. Aside from the Irish dancers on screen, much of the crew were made up of Swing dancers from Dublin. With just a week to prepare for the shoot, everyone teamed up, and helped create this short passionate jazz whirlwind, which also works as a metaphor for love and relationships.

If you swing dance in Dublin you will recognise most of the faces in this film. It features performances from Lucy Dunne (who flew in from Boston), Vincenzo Fesi (who flew in from Italy), and Avril Ní Chonaire (who bused it from Galway!), as well as Anita Walsh, Jonathon Gordon, Karl Kyck, Nicola Reville, Ciaran Houlihan, Johanna Foster, Siobhan Ward, Rose Cherry, Cahal Flynn, Daniel O'Neill, Libby Molony and Donal O'Kane. Maria Tecce, the Jazz singer and DJ does the voice over.

Swing dancing is a conversation between two people – not a choreography, and some might say, it’s a metaphor for interpersonal intimate relationships. The right balance of connection and tension is the key. You have to start off slow, and get to know each other. Then it can take off if you have the right connection. You have to communicate and listen to each other, or else the dance gets a little crazy, with both of you fighting to do your own thing. You might want to switch partners, or dance with two people at the same time. And in the end, you have a final dip, and then part. But sometimes, if it’s really good or you want to try again, you stick around for the next song.

This playful, familiar, and somewhat subversive form of dance is accessible to everyone – watching it makes you smile and want to get up and move to the music which we’ve all been listening to since we were born. The set in which our dancers perform is almost bare, yet in lit corners are symbolic props and indicators of the past – an old gramaphone, a saxaphone on a chair, a double bass. Projections of old swing movie archive flicker on the wall as they do in people’s unconscious memory. This is a dance with serious history. We’re all familiar with Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, but this dance really came from groups of black dancers in segregated ballrooms in Harlem.

With stunning dance scenes, dramatic lighting, and a dream like narrative on love and dance, this film captures the beauty of Swing in a breathtaking 5 minute Jazz whirlwind.