Entertainment
Irish Dance Flash Mob Takes Over Sydney's Central Station
No one saw this coming!
Morgan Slimak
11.16.18

Who doesn’t love a good Irish jig? We know we do, and it seems much of the Internet does as well. In a brilliant move, an Irish tourism organization has been taking advantage of the power of viral marketing to get more people interested in visiting their beautiful and culturally rich country.

Off an on since 2011, Tourism Ireland has been organizing Irish flash mobs that occur in random countries across the globe on St. Patrick’s Day.

The first one occurred in Sydney, Australia’s Central Station back in 2011, and the resulting video is pretty epic.

The video starts with an aerial view of the busy railway station, with hundreds of people milling around going about their normal day to day business. It’s safe to say no one ever expected the Irish surprise they were about to get.

YouTube Screenshot
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YouTube Screenshot

Out of nowhere some awesome Irish music starts playing, and people begin looking around to see what’s going on.

A single boy in a black suit starts dancing an Irish jig in the middle of the station, and all of a sudden a few other people wander up and join in.

Soon, a big crowd gathers around, with everyone in a circle just watching the dancers perform. Little did they know, the action was just beginning.

YouTube Screenshot
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YouTube Screenshot

Every 30 seconds or so, more dancers go prancing into the middle of the circle to join in on the fun.

The crowd really starts getting into it — smiling, laughing, and taking photos.

More and more people keep showing up, seemingly out of nowhere, and by the end of the song, at least 100 people are in the center of the station happily dancing away.

It’s quite the site to see, and as the video now has close to 14 million views and 12 thousand likes, it’s safe to say that it definitely brought a lot of positive attention to Ireland.

YouTube Screenshot
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YouTube Screenshot

One of the coolest parts is how the whole act was pulled together. YouTube commenter Sam Lewin elaborates:

“I was in this!!! Was so much fun!! We practised underneath the station the night before and pulled it together in literally 1 go haha”

The choreography is actually really good, with everyone dancing in perfect unison. With only one night of practice, it is actually really impressive how well everyone performed. This has to be one of the best flash mobs in history.

YouTube Screenshot
Source:
YouTube Screenshot

Inspired by the success of their first video, Tourism Ireland decided to organize at least two more flash mobs in other cities in subsequent years, each time with a slightly different twist.

In 2012, Toronto got a Glee-style performance of several Irish favorites including “Beautiful Day” by U2, and “Brown-eyed Girl” by Van Morrison. Then in 2014, they decided to bring back the Irish jig flash mob once again, this time performing for unsuspecting people in a mall in Vienna, Austria.

With no more performances since, it seems we are definitely overdue for another St. Patricks Day flash mob sometime soon.

The only question is, where will the spontaneous Irish dancers show up next?

Check out the full video below to see their epic performance.

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