Craic’d Céilí

CRAIC’D CÉILÍ – is an experiment with infectious dancing, trad musicians & a dj. Think father ted’s caravan ceilí but in a festival field! The Craic’d Céilí is a playful twist on the tradition, it is designed to engender spontaneous dancing to Irish music. Featuring an imrpov trad band, a dj and a fear an spraoi to facilitate / call the dances, this event will be a festival first for Body & Soul.

Céilí’s are an age old way of bringing large groups of people together to celebrate Irish culture, music and dancing. However they have remained largely unchanged for the last 100 years. The Craic’d Céilí is about to change all that. With novel ceilí dances like the maisín níocháin (the washing machine) and playful twists on existing ones, like shoot the donkey, this céilí injects a bit of madness and fun back into the format.

The group dances will be interspersed with free style dancing, such as ravin’ to reels, jiving to jigs and trance na-na-damhsa, therefore no prior knowledge of any Irish dancing is needed – just pure free radical movement to the intrinsic rhythms of Irish music. Music is provided new collective called Damhsa Liomsa featuring Con Ryan on pipes, John Drew on bouzouki, Kevin Hegarty on bodhrán, Matthew Corrigan Xavier on guitar, Jack O Malley Dj’ing with live sampling and mixing and Martin O Donoghue as a the fear na spraoi.