Set dancing good for the mind and body

THE Italian and Irish flags were draped side by side in Feakle, Co Clare, as a capacity crowd squeezed into the community hall to witness a small miracle.

Consultant neurologist Timothy Lynch took the stage and presented his research, a forensic universe of charts and graphs, of trembling limbs and slurred speech, “benign essential tremors”, and “gait disorder”.

Lynch trawled through case studies with eloquent ease. Tommy, a farmer, works and lives independently but his head shakes uncontrollably due to a cocktail of powerful drugs that can provoke anything from insomnia to gambling.