WELL into the small hours of St Patrick's Day, the Grande Halle of La Villette in northern Paris was still a mass of bobbing heads and weaving bodies for the "great Irish ceili" which opened the Imaginaire Irlandais festival in France at the weekend.
The dancing followed a sell-out traditional music concert at which more than 4,000 people roared their approval for the music of Sharon Shannon, Cooney and Begley, Maire Ni Dhomhnaill and Donal Lunny, playing together in dazzling form.
Opening the evening, the Minister for Arts and Culture, Mr Higgins, said he hoped the six-month festival of culture would "convey to the people of France a new awareness of our people as dynamic and innovative, looking with confidence to the future".
The Imaginaire's first event was organised by the Inter-Celtic Festival of Lorient, which will give Ireland top billing at its annual music week in August, the final flourish for the "Year of the Irish" in France.
Hundreds of young Irish people living in Paris, flourishing Irish tricolours, were at La Villette, a vast hall that was once an abattoir. But they were outnumbered by the French, including many Bretons, who greeted the guest appearance of the veteran French folk singer Gilles Servat singing a French version of Dirty Old Town with wild enthusiasm.
The Breton pipers Le Bagad de Lann Bihoue threaded their way through the audience to open the dancing.
Dancers from the Brooks Academy in Dublin were on stage to initiate the French public in the fine arts of set dancing, while the Bretons set the pace for their own dances, hands linked in long shuffling lines.
Ireland enthusiasts like the former culture minister Jack Lang and the head of the Paris-Saint-Germain football team Michel Denisot joined guests drinking Guinness and Jameson during the event. The Paddy's weekend events continue today with a party at the Irish Embassy, hosted by the Ambassador, Mr Patrick O'Connor.