By David Hennessy
When former Riverdance cast member Jessie Leach held her first class for what has become the Jig and a Swig Irish dance community, it was for just 16 of her friends.
That was in 2020 and although classes had to close for a time due to COVID, Jig and a Swig now has nine weekly classes attended by hundreds each week with more than 1400 taking part to date.
Jig and a Swig is so called because it is aimed at those who want to learn to Irish dance while also socialising, so each class is followed by a few drinks.
They have exhibited their skills in public at places such as outdoor festivals, Waterloo Station for St Patrick’s Day and even on ITV’s Lorraine show.
Jessie Leach, 30, was a champion dancer and Jig and a Swig came from her missing dancing and trying to find a way to do it again.
Jessie told The Irish World: “I sent out this message to 16 of my friends and said, ‘Hey, look, I really miss Irish dancing. Can I teach you some dancing? I’ll give you some wine’.
“And they came. It was a real hodgepodge of people that didn’t know each other. I taught them a ceili dance and then we went to a pub around the corner and someone said, ‘Oh, I could do this every week, do a jig and have a swig’.
“And then we were like, ‘Oh, okay, that’s what we’re gonna call ourselves. Let’s do it again next week’.
“So then I started doing it every week for my friends and then they’d bring their friends and they’d bring their friends.
“They were really enjoying it and then people were like, ‘Actually, I think the public would want to learn how to do this’.
“I launched it the beginning of 2020.
“I was like, ‘I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna start an adult Irish dance community’.”
Lockdown would hinder it initially.
“The first class was going to be on St. Patrick’s Day 2020 which was literally lockdown.
“So we just started it and then immediately shut it down.
“I went and did Instagram classes and stuff like that to bring people together but the whole essence of Jig and a Swig is being able to be with other people in a way that’s really relaxed and silly and not worrying about the struggles of life. And it wasn’t really the time to do that.
“So I thought, ‘Let’s wait’.
“So I started it up again in 2022 and just with one hour a week, we had 16 People come.
“Then there was demand for a second class. And then there was demand for a third class and now we have nine classes a week.
“Then I got Paige Turilli and then Josh Ruddock who are both former world champion dancers, the most beautiful dancers but again, they’re working corporate jobs unable to share their amazing talents, so I brought them on board to take classes to share what they do.
“I started with 16 and now since then, we’ve had nearly 1,400 take part in a class.
“We’ve had ten people now do over 100 classes which is so cool.
“Some people come two or three times a week. Around 215 people come every week across the nine classes.
“60 of those are absolute beginners, say they’ve got two left feet, say they can’t dance at all but actually, just with a bit of support from each other, they do get there. It’s great.”
Others have some background in it but gave up dancing for one reason or another.
“I have people message me saying, ‘I really want to get involved but I think I might be too old’.
“People in their 30s say, ‘I might be too old’ which is crazy.
“I’ve had people that haven’t danced for 20, 30, 40 years who think they’re gonna not be fit enough to dance.
“Irish dancing is so high energy but what I always say to people is just join in for as much as you want, there’s no pressure.
“We have people from every corner of the globe.
“I’d say two thirds of people are people that aren’t from the UK.
“I’ve had people from China, Kazakhstan, Brazil, from South Africa.
“I love it when people come and I’ve not had anyone from that country before, it’s great.
“There are lots of people who don’t have a personal Irish connection but maybe watched Riverdance and Lord of the Dance back in the 90s, loved it, became obsessed with it like everyone else.
“But then again, maybe they were like 20 when that happened and they were like, ‘I can’t start that now’ and they feel like they’ve missed it.
“Or maybe they were a child at the time but their parents didn’t put them into dancing and again, they thought they’d missed the chance to learn.”
As the name suggests, Jig and a Swig is as much about the social element as the dancing.
“There are some really nice stories from people who had been in London maybe for a few years, maybe during COVID had really struggled to meet anybody. It’s hard enough as an adult and also London can be the type of city where people are quite distant and then they’ve come here and slowly been able to build a social circle.
“We have a group chat that has 300 people in it every week and people are like, ‘I’m going to this gig, anyone want to come along?’ And they all meet up.
“People have gone on holiday together. It’s really nice.”
Jessie, who was born and grew up in Surrey, has danced almost her entire life.
“My mum started teaching me.
“She had a school for about 10 years and probably a similar ethos to how I teach adults now: Really supportive, inclusive.
“They did do competitions but not wildly competitive.
“I started when I was four.
“My mum’s side of the family are from Nenagh in Tipperary.
“I carried it on through my teens when some drop off, when it becomes pretty ‘uncool’ but I just loved it, carried on.
“I competed until I was 20 and I improved quite quickly towards the end and I won the All- Ireland championships, the north American championships and the Great British championship in a couple of years and then came third in the world championships that year.
“Then, alongside uni and work, I did a few different dance shows around the world including Riverdance which was amazing.
“It’s hard to keep that up.
“It’s kind of a choice between an office job or full time dancer and I made a choice to try and balance both is quite hard.
“Then COVID happened, it felt like the opportunity to go on tour had gone so I was like, ‘How am I going to dance if I can’t go on tour?’
“There aren’t as many opportunities for adults to dance.
“I dance the whole time which is great because I get to keep doing what I love.”
And Jessie has found herself teaching some of those same people she taught alongside her mother when she was just a girl herself.
“Some of the students that I taught alongside my mum when I was 13 are now in my class so now I teach them again.
“It’s been a bit full circle.
“I studied in Hong Kong for a bit and I taught Irish dancing with a local school and some of the girls that I taught in Hong Kong moved to London and are in the class so it’s really nice.
“When I was at university, I taught at the Irish dance society and now they come to Jig so there’s all these different places that I’ve taught and they’ve all sort of ended up coming back to London and getting involved which is really nice.
“My mum came along a couple of weeks ago.
“It’s a bit of a family affair.”
Everyone is welcome at Jig and a Swig.
“People use the word ‘inclusive’ quite liberally these days but I want Jig and a Swig to be inclusive for people who have different disabilities, people who are neurodivergent. There are people in our group who are hard of hearing.
“If you have autism, Irish dancing is a very stimulating environment so I’m trying to work out ways to try and make it welcoming and inclusive to people who might have different accessibility needs, people who maybe thought before ‘that looks either too difficult or too intense for me’.
“I’m trying to welcome them and make sure they can still learn to Irish dance as well and be supported.
“So yeah, everyone’s really welcome.”
Once again that does include those who may not be spring chickens anymore.
“We’ve had people into their late 60s so far but there’s no reason why we can’t have people who want to keep dancing beyond that.
“Just as long as you’re over 18 Because we do a lot of swigging as well.”
Jig and a Swig showed off their skills at the Summer by the River Festival last month.
“We’ve started doing some community performances.
“For people that had only started a few months ago to dance in front of hundreds of people by Tower Bridge was pretty cool.
“We danced in Waterloo Station on St. Patrick’s Day and I always open up that opportunity to the beginners as well.
“It’s not just the people who are more advanced.”
Jig and a Swig also hold taster sessions for anyone who wants to get involved at the London Irish Centre.
“I told them (LIC) about Jig and a Swig and they were like, ‘Okay, this is exactly what we need. We want more people connecting with Irish culture in lots of different ways, particularly adults.
“So it’s been a really good partnership and it’s so iconic.
“The first thing we did with them was a performance in the London Irish Centre.
“We had 60 of our dancers and they brought 250 of their friends and family so we packed it out and it was buzzing.”
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