Sep 17, 2026 · 1 hr 26 min · 13 segments
Half-way to St. Patrick’s Day finds us chatting with Jessie Leach who founded Jig and a Swig in 2019 after a competitive career in Irish dancing which included being crowned Great Britain, All-Ireland…
Jessie LeachGuest
Julia TopperHost
Christo SweeneyHost
But, um, you know, challenging this narrative of who, who gets to be an Irish dancer, who gets to call themselves an Irish dancer, um, not just, you know, people look from maybe, you know, whether they're longtime people in the community who learned from the time that they were kids looking in on adult dancers and seeing what they're doing with the adult dancers themselves, um, you know, trying to help them accept that, yes, like, this is for everyone.
You know, and I, I think that there were a couple things that the two of us, or the, it, maybe you emailed me talking about, like, that this was something that you wanted to challenge, like, who is Irish dance for? It's for everyone.
I think, well, I think the most simple one is people assuming it's for Irish people.
People literally emailing me saying, "Can I come? I'm Italian" And I'm like-
So at, at the most basic level, people thinking that it's just for Irish people, [laughs] or you have to-
So I think we have a really international group of dancers, which I think is really interesting, like, to see.
You know, I had, I had someone join yesterday as a beginner who's Russian, and she just said, "Yeah, I just saw you dancing in Trafalgar Square this year" and thought, "Yeah, I wanna do that" And I said, "Has it ever crossed your mind to do Irish dancing before that?" No.
Like, it just takes seeing an adult doing it in front of you once to be like, "Oh, I could do that too." Um, so yeah-
... lots of international people possibly ruling themselves out because they think they have to have an Irish connection.
But, um, you know, challenging this narrative of who, who gets to be an Irish dancer, who gets to call themselves an Irish dancer, um, not just, you know, people look from maybe, you know, whether they're longtime people in the community who learned from the time that they were kids looking in on adult dancers and seeing what they're doing with the adult dancers themselves, um, you know, trying to help them accept that, yes, like, this is for everyone.
You know, and I, I think that there were a couple things that the two of us, or the, it, maybe you emailed me talking about, like, that this was something that you wanted to challenge, like, who is Irish dance for? It's for everyone.
I think, well, I think the most simple one is people assuming it's for Irish people.
People literally emailing me saying, "Can I come? I'm Italian" And I'm like-
So at, at the most basic level, people thinking that it's just for Irish people, [laughs] or you have to-
So I think we have a really international group of dancers, which I think is really interesting, like, to see.
You know, I had, I had someone join yesterday as a beginner who's Russian, and she just said, "Yeah, I just saw you dancing in Trafalgar Square this year" and thought, "Yeah, I wanna do that" And I said, "Has it ever crossed your mind to do Irish dancing before that?" No.
Like, it just takes seeing an adult doing it in front of you once to be like, "Oh, I could do that too." Um, so yeah-
... lots of international people possibly ruling themselves out because they think they have to have an Irish connection.
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