Analyzing Irelands Public Dance Halls Act of 1935

Analytical Report for the Oireachtas, 2013

Elaine Clayton, Representative for the Association of Professional Dancers in Ireland 6/23/2013

International Communication and Cultural Policy SIS 645 Dr. Shallini Venturelli Summer 2013

Table of Contents
Executive Summary ........................................................................................................................ 1 The Current Policy: The Public Dance Halls Act of 1935.............................................................. 2 Expert Analysis ............................................................................................................................... 4 Final Policy Recommendation ........................................................................................................ 7 Concluding Remarks ....................................................................................................................... 8

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Executive Summary
The first line on the EU Presidency 2013 websites section on Irish dance states that, Ireland has a strong dance tradition: it is no coincidence that one of the most renowned Irish exports is Riverdance[which] has put traditional Irish dancing on the international map (Dance). Irelands cultural sector on dance has grown substantially as a result of this Eurovision winner in 1994. The Public Dance Halls Act of 1935 is one of the major contributors to this export, spearheading the institutionalization of traditional Irish dance and recognition on a global scale. This Act began after controversies arose stemming from the Catholic Church, Gaelic League, and the Irish Government as a result of the influx of American jazz and other international musical styles infiltrating traditional Irish music and dance. Members of the Catholic Hierarchy believed dances posed moral dangers that modern commercial dance halls represented, valorizing traditional Irish dance (Kavanagh et al., 2008, 733). The Acts goal is to limit dancing in public areas to those who carry a license issued by the Irish government. Tensions between state-sponsored organizations focused on dance and Irish nationals have sprouted as a result of this Act, including questions of what defines traditional Irish music and differing opinions on cultural nationalism by the public and private sectors. Traditional Irish dances include forms such as country house dances, crossroad dances, set dances, and cil. Townspeople would use these dances as social occasions, passing them down to younger generations as a form of cultural identity. Intentionally or otherwise, country house dances were not excluded from the scope of the Act and after its passingwere treated as illegal activities (Breathnach, 1983). Many newspapers of the time were filled with letters against the Act since it was claimed to have rid the nation of customs and traditions. While the

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Attorney General stated in response to oppositions that, I am of opinion that the dances referred to are not held in contravention of the Act because they are not held in a place as defined in that Act, the Grdai and clergy continued to apply the act as if it did outlaw those traditional dances (Public). Over 75 years later, the Public Dance Halls Act has not been changed, except for harsher amendments in 1997, since its inception in 1935. While state-sponsored performances such as Lord of the Dance, Riverdance, and Comhaltas Ceoltir ireann competitions have made traditional Irish music and dance popular once again, the Act is now a faulty legislation since it limits freedoms of the Irish populace and does not achieve true cultural preservation. As a member of the Association of Professional Dancers in Ireland, we wish to call upon the Oireachtas, the national Irish parliament, to repeal this Act aimed at closely monitoring and regulating dance in public spaces.

The Current Policy: The Public Dance Halls Act of 1935

Action Items and Goals The Public Dance Halls Act of 1935s policy provision is for the licensing, control, and supervision of places used for public dancing, and other matters connected with them (Public Dance Halls Act, 1935). The Act lays out the steps for doing so, including the progression as follows: The applicant must publish a notice with his/her intention in a newspaper that circulates in his/her district at least one month before hearing. The license is granted by a Justice of the District Court, where conditions and restrictions can be placed as he/she sees proper The license is granted for a defined period of time, and is in force for the defined period and no longer. (Ibid.)

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The goal was to control the influences from other countries deemed unsuitable for mixing with what the government named traditional Irish dancing. The Act was also instated to control public dancing, ensuring it was only carried out in properly licensed venues.

Reasoning: Model Used It can be argued that the Fianna Fil-led Irish government was utilizing the culturalnationalist global communication policy model. By enforcing the Public Dance Halls Act, the public sphere sought to preserve the national culture of Ireland and collective national interest, even though the traditional culture was re-invented into new ways of set dancing and promotions such as Riverdance. This collectivist notion was led mainly by the Catholic Clergy, Irish government and the Grda Sochna (police), promoting a new aesthetic tradition expressed from the Catholic religion and re-invented Irish tradition. The State obviously intervened in regulation of public dancing, and is still doing so today, at the expense of individual rights to what many rural Irishmen and women considered to be true traditions of Ireland.

The Facts: Limitations on Public Dancing One of the amendments made to the Public Dance Halls Act in 1997 was within the Licensing (Combating Drug Abuse) Act. This amendment changed section 10 of the Public Dance Halls Act, the liability to the owner of a venue that organized a public dance without a license. Originally, the owner would be liable for up to ten pounds a day during which such a place was used (Public Dance Halls Act, 1935). The Licensing Act changed this, raising liabilities to 1,500 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months, or both, or a larger sentence of 10,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 years, or both, depending

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(Licensing (Combating Drug Abuse) Act, 1997). This places larger restrictions on dance organizers and public dancing in general. Furthermore, section 13 explains that the national police, the Grda Sochna, have the right to enter any place where a license is in force at any time. If this is prevented, the court can issue the owner a fine not to exceed 1,500. This price was raised by the amendment on section 11 of the original Act from five pounds. Allowing the Grda this provision has the potential of leading to closing of more dance halls that have received licensing since there is no set section with specific reasons the Grda can use to close Dance Halls. Finally, Section 1.2 lays out somewhat vague consideration criteria for those applying for a public dancing license. The Justice of the District Court, the deciding official, may bring up any other matter which may appear to him to be relevant along with listed matters such as the character and the financial and other circumstances of the applicant and the approximate age of those who will be using the public dancing space. The Justice of the District Court therefore has extreme power in issuing public dancing licenses, especially with section 4 stating how he or she can insert in such license conditions limiting the days on which and the hours during which the place to which such license relates may be used for public dancing (Ibid.). With these strict licensing rules, it is nearly impossible to be issued a dancehall license.

Expert Analysis
The Invented Tradition of the Modern Nation State Most, if not all, of the expert literature on the Public Dance Halls Act of 1935 view the Act as being detrimental to original Irish traditional music and dance. Fleming claims that the Act outlawed the house dance, a common blend of storytelling, music and dance that was held

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at a private home, occasionally used to raise funds for destitute families; the main social outlet in rural Ireland up until the Act was passed (Fleming, 2004, 246). The Gaelic League, founded in 1893 to promote Irish language and culture, was one of the major players who banned a form of dance called set dancing because it was perceived to have foreign origins. A third traditional dance, the cil dance, however, was seen as authentically Gaelic, even though it was performed at local crossroads and in homes. Kavanagh, et al. found irony in this, however, since out of the nearly 150 cil and set dances danced today, only 4 have been continuously used as social dance forms for the past century (Kavanagh et al., 2008, 733). Also, cil was fashioned after the Scottish dance ceiligh. The Catholic Church was a major player as well, claiming that unsupervised dances allowed new dance styles from abroad that were seen as promoting licentious behavior (Fleming, 2004, 232). OHallmhurain states that with the private and unlicensed dance halls that opened in towns and villages came the anti-jazz crusade led by the Gaelic Leaguers, Irish Irelanders, and Catholic Church to rid the country of foreign importations from the vilest dens of London, Paris and New York (OHallmhurain, 2005, 11). As a result of this Act, cultural norms for dance moved from the local to the national setting, and the state began to promote Catholicism and Celtic origins even more; costumes were changed from ordinary clothes to bright costumes with Celtic motifs, covering the body so all attention was drawn to the Irish designs, promoting a rigid group identity at the expense of any assertions of individual style (Fleming, 2004, 234). This became a nation-building strategy, inventing new traditions for traditional Irish dance that could not, in fact, be traced to any period in Irish history (Ibid.). As traditional dances stopped occurring as often as a result of the Act, they lost popularity among Irish nationals as well. Irish music became less respected, and people found

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modern music played in the licensed dance halls to be more enjoyable. Many older generations believed they did not seem to realize the value of what was being lost (Public). The set dances and altered traditional dances that the government promoted through dance halls have become popularized over the years and now represent traditional Irish dancing worldwide.

State-sponsorship vs. Private Dancers Now taken to the national arena, both the Church and the government received financial profit for licensing dances (Fleming, 2004, 232). Once the Act was passed, the clergy started to build parish halls to house the now licensed public dances, and the state collected taxes (Cans, 2013). Those in the country who had grown up on traditional music, storytelling, and dancing did not view the parishes as natural places of enjoyment, and saw the government as using the licensing merely for profit. Despite this debate, the next few decades brought new state-sponsored organizations and performances that made Irish music and dance internationally recognized and once again respected by Irish nationals. The Comhaltas Ceoltir ireann, the Association of Musicians of Ireland, was a state-sponsored organization founded in 1951. Through music education and music competitions, the Comhaltas works to preserve and revitalize traditional music and dance in Ireland. Instead of performing for the audiences pleasure, many see these dance competitions as untraditional since they perform to win, not for cultural expression. Irish dancing became institutionalized, especially with competitive dance, and the Act promoted a more restricted version of Irish dancing than ever before (Kavanagh et al., 2008, 733). During the Celtic Tiger economic boom in Ireland of the 1990s, more time and money were available to spend on music production and education (Fleming, 2004, 235). Irish-inspired

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musicals such as Riverdance and Lord of the Dance began to be recognized worldwide and Irish traditional music and dance once again became a source of pride for Irish nationals (Fleming, 2004, 235). Although the now-popular traditional Irish music was altered from the original traditions in Ireland, Irish music and dance has become recognized on a global scale.

Law Misapplication How the ban on public dancing was enforced created controversy as well. The Grda Sochna and local clergy acted on gatherings of friends and neighbors as if they were illegal activities, directing these gatherings to licensed dances (Cans, 2013). It has become practically impossible to hold dances without the sanction of the trinity of clergy, police and judiciary (Smyth, 1993, 53). Enforcement was seemed to be patchy and the overall effect is hard to assess (Ibid.) Even today, private dance parties are shut down by the Grda even if held in closed buildings (Cans, 2013). The Department of Justices files, which were hidden from public view, were finally released in the 1980s and 1990s that showed disturbing insights into confused interpretations of the act by its handlers, 43 years after the Act was enacted (OHallmhurain, 2005, 11).

Final Policy Recommendation

The Act assumes that any public dancing not deemed proper for a license is inherently against the societal norm, which is defined by the Catholic Church. Today, the current Taoiseach (prime minister), Enda Kenny, recently stated that he, is a Taoiseach who happens to be Catholic but not a Catholic Taoiseach (Brennan, 2013). This point alone shows how outdated the Public Dance Halls Act of 1935 is. Therefore, the Public Dance Halls Act of 1935 is in need of repeal for the following reasons:

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The Act has led to the decease of traditional Irish dance, such as the crossroads dances and the common social activity of dancing in homes that has carried on for decades; the reverse of cultural preservation it was originally aimed at ensuring.

Irish dancing, whether state-sponsored or not, has already incorporated global influences that it was originally enacted to discourage as a result of the increase in globalization, emigration and media influences permeating into the country.

Irish is not a fully global player in the international sphere of dance and promotion of national culture; other countries have recently worked to establish national cultural policies supporting local arts, such as Creative Australia and Creative Scotland. Ireland would benefit from a similar initiative, but would not be able to showcase all of its local artists if it were limited to the three main dance organizations run by the state.

No regulations are specified to ensure Grdai and others do not misinterpret provisions as they have in the past.

Concluding Remarks
While traditional Irish music and dance has become recognized on a global scale, with the Act being a contributing factor, having it still in place restricts the cultural diversity of Ireland. As it was enacted to defend Irelands unique culture, it consequentially did the reverse and made dances deemed traditional by the Irish populace illegal. Repealing the Act is necessary since it has limited the peoples freedoms and has failed to achieve one of its goals of cultural preservation. On a political level, it is a faulty piece of legislation since times have changed and Ireland has already melded its permitted traditional dances, such as Riverdance, with worldwide influences.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
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