Let's Dance #1

WARNING: This is a foretaste of several posts that will discuss dancing and will be of no interest whatsoever to anybody at all except, errr, me.

Last week Mrs Dilo and I and a friend went to see a performance of Irish dancing at our Romanian opera house. The tickets were expensive, and I think there was never much chance it would better the Russian dance troupe that came last year, but it was still a good evening: costumes, pacey music, professional dancing and even a couple of songs I knew the words to and could sing along to – smashing, almost like being back in North London. And I was glad to see the audience here giving a standing ovation at the end. I respect anybody who can organise a bunch of musicians and hoofers and bring a folk art to wider audience. (Romanian dance has as yet no Michael Flatley, a Moses to lead it out of the wilderness of village weddings and anodyne TV shows and into the major concert halls of the world). Just a couple of disappointments for me: firstly, no pints of Guinness, either in the foyer or on the stage, and judging by the covers of LPs by The Dubliners, the Furie Brothers etc I'd always thought that these were a requisite, and I really fancied one; secondly, the woman sitting behind me who was introduced as one of my wife’s colleagues said “Oh, you’re English, not Irish – a lot of Irish died under English rule, didn’t they?” (disappointment in this case with some aspects of British foreign policy, of course).

But one question that I had when I entered the theatre was still unsolved when I left. Here it is, together with some possible answers; perhaps you can help me judge which is the correct one:

Q: If God meant us to do Irish dancing, why did He* give us arms?

A1: God didn’t give us arms: we were created without them expressly with Irish dancing in mind, but evolved them later on our own initiative so as to better cope with this fallen world.

A2: God did give us arms but special arms that become immobile when performing Irish dancing – the boys' trousers in this show were rather tightly cut and the girls' skirts were really very short, and it would have been a sin to put us in the way of such temptation whilst dancing.

A3: There is no God, and no such thing as Irish dancing – it’s simply sensible flamenco.

Of course, I lie, you can use your arms. Sadly I can’t find any clips of glorious, cult, feminist Irish dancing troupe The Hairy Marys with their show No Snakes Please, We're Irish.... ah, North London..... but here’s the act we saw and it does feature at least one arm movement.


* I know. But I'm in the mood to be brief.

R.I.P. #1

The recent death of Michael Jackson left me strangely unmoved. When Princess Di died I was living in a house in Denmark full of hippies who didn’t give a toss, so I’d no prior experience of being unmoved and being told this was strange. I felt genuinely sorry for their families but not much else, possibly because I hadn’t enjoyed Jackson’s later music much and adhered to the Jarvis Cocker school of thought that though talented and possibly harmless he probably wasn’t the saviour of all the world’s children. Then I remembered he had brothers called Jackie, Tito, Jermaine and Marlon; that night I dreamed a dream – good grief I must have eaten a lot of cheese the previous evening - what it would’ve been like if Jackie Chan, President Josip “Broz” Tito of Yugoslavia, Germaine Greer and Marlon Brando had been the pallbearers:

Germaine: You know, he was such a beautiful young man, in that special age between innocence and maturity.
Marlon: He coulda been a contender.
Germaine: He was a contender, you idiot! It’s just that you choose to judge him by the handed-down values of a Patriarchal society...
Jackie: Hey, this funeral is kinda boring, how about if the hearse is hijacked by the Triads, door opens, coffin flies down road and through the streets of Chinatown, and we go after it fighting everybody we meet on the way?
Germaine: ...that gives women nothing but second-class sexual citizenship and shitty orgasms
Marlon: Got any butter with you?*
Germaine: No I haven’t, you fat, pervy narcissist! So what are you rebelling against?
Marlon: What have you got? Dairylea would probably do.
Germaine: I didn't fight to get women out from behind vacuum cleaners to get them onto the cheese board.
Jackie: Ha, so you think your verbal kung fu is good, heh, Sheila?? You wait till Julie Birchill show up, then we see who is true master!
Marlon: The horror, the horror...
Tito: Hey, I successfully led partisan troops against the fascist armies during World War II and then united the mutually antagonistic Southern Slavic peoples during 35 years of relative harmony whilst both making friends with Western leaders and keeping the Red Army at bay, while this Jackson was just a singer with an squeeky voice and a funny face. I can’t believe I agreed to do this. Still, I ‘spose, a gig’s a gig.
Vicar (David Bowie, for it is he): Ashes to ashes, funk to funky, Michael Jackson was a junkie; Gone to the llama ranch in the sky, hitting an all-time high.
Everybody: Amen.

Gadjo Dilo wishes to thank the producers of On The Waterfront, Last Tango in Paris, The Wild One, Apocalypse Now and all of Jackie Chan’s films, and the publishers of The Female Eunuch, The Beautiful Boy , Ashes to Ashes and Yugo First: An Autobiography for their kind permission etc.

* I hesitated, much, before referencing this by-all-accounts terminally unpleasant film; but then I thought, if anyone can handle it Germaine Greer probably can.

Here's the geezer with his bros from the era which I personally prefer to remember: