The Parish Dance

I saw the film Brooklyn during a visit to Toronto, and the scene in which Saoirse Ronan's "Eilis" meets Emory Cohen's "Tony" could have been filmed in the basement parish hall of an old Toronto Catholic church. (I have checked, and it was filmed in Montreal.) The low ceiling, the two-toned pillars, and the stage are just so familiar. 

I found a clip of the dance scene on YouTube, and in the comments a wistful viewer writes "Wish i could meet someone this way... Not at a club, not online, just a nice old fashioned dance."

It just occurs to me that Polish Pretend Son met his wife, not at a nice old fashioned dance, but at a tango-dancing festival. I had put his chances of meeting a Nice Catholic Girl at tango at zero, but I suppose the odds of meeting a Nice Catholic Girl in Poland, even at a tango festival, are still very good. 

However, we don't all live in Poland, so you are as unlikely to meet a Nice Catholic Somebody at secular tango-dancing, Latin dancing, and even swing-dancing events as you are at Tequila Jack's or the Opal Lounge. And back when my grandparents were young (and when my parents were children), young Catholics went looking for other young Catholics at their parish dance or--as Tony did in Brooklyn--at another parish dance. If you wanted to meet Irish girls in New York, you went to an Irish parish in New York. 

Young Catholics today may feel nostalgic for the dances they never knew; I am feeling nostalgic for a parish hall. When Father Flood and Mrs Keogh organized dances for the young folks, they already had a parish hall. Poor, poor Mrs McLean is a TLMer, so she doesn't have a parish hall. She must pay for everything. Therefore, she must also solicit donations and sell tickets. 

The Eastertide Dance is my most recent attempt at resurrecting the Nice Old-fashioned Parish Dance. (Unlike the parish dance in Brooklyn, however, there will be wine and beer, tea and coffee, crisps and cake.) Catholics who love the Traditional Latin Mass are a minority within a minority in Scotland, so my original idea was to bring them together for a night of merriment. (Unfortunately, I haven't yet figured out how to provide childcare.) This worked well, I thought, at the Michaelmas Dance, so now my goal is to attract an even larger crowd. Of course, the difficulty with being a minority within a minority is that the community is not necessarily very big. Thus, I have invited a priest at a conservative-enough parish to tell his youth group all about it. As Generation Z supposedly makes all its decisions at the last minute, I am crossing my fingers and hoping for the best. Oh, and experimenting with direct marketing. 

Looking at videos of the Brooklyn parish dance, I note that poor Dolores, who so badly wants to meet "fellas," is darting glances around like a crazed cockatoo. The viewer is invited to consider if anyone is likely to ask her to dance. One of the strengths of the Eastertide Dance over that dance is that we have 7 ceilidh dances planned. Our dance balances out "couple" dances with "group dances." Dolores, if she deigned to dance our Scottish gambols, could stop worrying about the fellas and just dance.