You think Pavlova had a trick or two? She never danced with a mop or did break dancing in her good jumper.
Invitations have been running in national papers over the past few weeks to an open audition for parts in a new Guinness advertisement. The audition was held in Dublin yesterday.
The brief was simple:
"If you're 25-plus and can clear a dance floor in five seconds, come for an audition." Who could resist? Not the athletic youths and comely maidens of this fair land anyway. To the capital's Temple Theatre they came in their diva droves.
Mr Billy Dufus (26), a botanist from Hollywood, California, was there, he said, because he was just "born to dance". With his grey woolly jumper tastefully co-ordinated with grey woolly trousers, his specially coiffed deepshag hair-don't and extra thick-lensed glasses bought just for the occasion, Mr Dufus said he had left his condominium "at 4 o'clock in the morning".
Though particularly skilled at the hip-shuffle (a special dance to be done in the sitting position), he planned to approach this audition with his special synthesis of the Billy Barry School technique and Fat Boy Slim.
"You know when Fat Boy sings Praise You? Well that's me he's praising," Mr Dufus revealed, before going in to wow his casting director.
Sitting nearby was a nervous Ms Fiona O'Sullivan (30), who had come up from Co Offaly to try a new direction.
"I am actually a doctor though I'm thinking of deviating down another path," she said. "I have no plans for the dance. I've brought both my left feet so I'll do something a bit zany and then just let it happen . . . No, I haven't told my family I'm here." Ms Stephanie Frame, advertising manager with Guinness Ireland, is hoping the ad will be as successful as the wordless and hugely-popular Anticipation ad, which starred Joe McKinney, in 1994.
"We decided to hold open auditions for this because we felt it was really compelling to watch real people just having fun being themselves."
It must have been compelling watching one hopeful do a pas de deux with a mop.
A simultaneous audition was held in Belfast yesterday. Guinness also held auditions in Glasgow and Manchester on Thursday and there will be two more, in London and Birmingham, today.
According to casting director Ashley King, who had come over from London to see the talent, some 100 were to be auditioned in Dublin, of an estimated 500 in total. "There will be a second audition of the best from each of the open auditions, which will be in London. Then the ad will be filmed in London at the end of the month. I think in the end there will be about eight to 15 in the ad."
He hadn't seen much elegance or poise, but then he didn't want to.
"We just wanted the crazy and spontaneous. What's worked really well has been when someone comes in who looks like a housewife who wouldn't say boo to a goose and when the music starts, goes totally wild."
Each had about five minutes before several Guinness executives and casting directors, while the videotapes rolled and the music hopped spontaneously from ballet to disco.
Mr Noel Keegan (29), from Abbeyleix, Co Laois, was rarin' to have fun being himself, doing his Egyptian walk. "I do weddings, birthdays, funerals and ploughing championships," he said. "But I really want to be the one they choose to launch the new bottle."
The ad, incidentally, which will be screened in Ireland on November 15th and in Britain next year, is for the new Guinness draught in a bottle. The product will also be available to wobbly wonders nationwide from November.
