It's safe to say that Sandymount Strand had never seen anything like it: a Native American in a spectacular fancy dancing outfit of eagle feathers and multi-coloured smock engaged in an energetic dance-off with a high-kicking Irishman.
Accompanied by the whoops of the crowd and an amplified soundtrack of native American singing and drumbeats, Iowa's Larry Yazzie and Irish dancer Fergal Fay brought a little bit of sunshine to an otherwise overcast Dublin morning.
Yazzie (40) was brought to Ireland by an advertising company to do a "sun dance".
After Yazzie had spun and stomped his way through a few dances, and the sun had begun to peek through the clouds, he urged local children on to his plywood dancing platform and exhorted them like an aerobics instructor: "Come on, feel the burn," he shouted.
Yazzie, or Mo Na Ka of the Meskwaki nation, to use his native name, dances in festivals throughout the US and the world. He'd only just returned to Iowa after dancing with Australian Aborigines at the Womad world music festival in Adelaide, when he received a call from an Irish PR agency to come to the other side of the Atlantic.
He was pleased to come, he said, because it gave him a chance to spread optimism and teach people about Native Americans. Even in the US there's a surprising lack of knowledge about America's indigenous people, he said.
Yazzie's dances are high-energy affairs. Bells tied to his legs jangle as he stomps, and when he extends his arms and spins in a circle, the colours of his outfit blend and blur with the golden eagle feathers on his head and back. The crowd of onlookers, including actress Victoria Smurfit and Hothouse Flower Liam Ó Maonlaí, were impressed.
Ó Maonlaí said he had brought his 11-year-old son Cian to watch Yazzie. "I have a lot of time for pre-colonial cultures," he said.
The crowd cheered the efforts of Yazzie, who eventually gave up his plywood dance floor for the children of the McCormack Fay School of Irish Dancing.
He returned a few minutes later to dance with the school's head, Fergal Fay.
Doug Baxter, the managing director of Ocean Advertising, had hiredYazzie as a publicity stunt.
He felt that after a dismal start to summer, the Native American would be a welcome sight on Sandymount Strand.
