A social media campaign started by Irish dance stars Fusion Fighters ended up with a group of dancers appearing in a video for one of the music world’s biggest stars.
Dancers from the Hession School of Irish Dance appeared in Ed Sheeran’s Galway Girl video, alongside a host of Irish stars.
Their journey started earlier in the year when Sheeran put out a call for Irish Dancers to appear in the video for the single, along with the folk band Beoga, who collaborated on the song with him.
Dance troupe Fusion Fighters started a campaign called #step4sheeran on their Fusion Fighters social media pages, which saw them regularly create projects that all dancers can get involved with from all over the world.
The response was huge and saw hundreds of videos being posted with the hashtag and hundreds more being emailed to Fusion Fighters to upload.
Chris Naish of Fusion Fighters said: “There was one video in particular though that stood out to everyone and it was the ‘Galway Girls’ from the Hession School who performed a spectacular piece in Galway to ‘Shape of You’ & ‘Beoga’s – A Lovely Madness’. The video has raked up 4 Million views on our Youtube channel and several more Million over several uploads on Facebook.”
When Naish saw that the official video for Galway Girl featured dancers from the Hession School, he couldn’t have been prouder.
He said: “We at Fusion Fighters just want to say that we are absolutely thrilled and proud that these dancers got picked for arguably the biggest pop star in the world. A massive congratulations to the Hession School of Irish Dance in Galway and what a brilliant and satisfying ending to our #step4sheeran campaign!”
Take a look at Sheeran’s Galway Girl video
Written by Michael Kehoe @michaelcalling