Recently, I came across a Youtube video that amazed me. It features the talents of two Irish dancers, Peter Harding and Suzanne Cleary who are known collectively as Up and Over It. In this video, you can see the duo “hand dancing”. To create this, they spent five days working with film director Johnny Reed and then spent another five days rehearsing the skit. The whole film took two hours to film although this video is only 2 minutes and 20 seconds long.
According to the dancers, they are “reinventing Irish dance” by adding electro pop music. Hand-dancing, however, is also not new for Irish dancers because they often learn their dance steps with their hands by beating on their laps or chests. This is how they practice before shows.
I love this video because it appeals to multiple senses. The beat is kept in time although the dancers rarely look at each other. However, they are still partners because they interact with one another. At the same time, I love the background and the choices made by the director because it appeals to my visual senses. I find myself constantly looking back and forth between the background and the dancers. Both are equally as impressive.
There’s such a strong contrast between their calm/bored faces and their rapidly-moving hands, which just makes this even better. I never knew that professional Irish dancers practiced their choreography with their hands before shows. Great video!
This is really amazing and i definitely agree with Katherine that the contrast between their faces and hands makes it even more enjoyable. I actually find this “hand dancing” and very exciting but almost began to laugh when I imagines what a “hand dancing” performance would look like. I began to imagine around 15 people sitting behind a table in a recital hall with hundreds of people watching. I think that this style could take off if it were more practical to perform. It also reminded me of something called “tutting” which one of my friends who is an amazing hip-hop dancer showed me. Wikipedia could explain tutting better than I could so here-“When dancers “tut”, they change the angles of their hands and arms in rhythm with the beat.” I’ve seen performers on shows like America’s Best Dance Crew use tutting but unlike this “hand dancing” the tutting is accompanying the dance and is an aspect used to enhance the whole performance, rather than the hand motions being the main attraction. Here’s a link of someone tutting, at certain points it looks like he’s forming some sign language, maybe Beth can translate.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slblK2zL_ts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slblK2zL_ts
Amazing. Very interesting the way the Irish dancers evoke their genre with just their hands, and the hand tutting evokes hip-hop (and “Robot” moves of the 1980’s) with just the hands. Each is so distinctive and inventive.