Riverdance

Friday evening, our class met at Gaol Cross to board the bus to Killarney. I barely got through a few pages of The Aran Islands as the country scenery captured my attention. The reason we went to Killarney was to see Riverdance; I never thought I'd actually go see that show, especially in Ireland. My Irish writing professor thought the same, and told us how she was dragged to see it, but was surprised by how much she liked it. Telling us the story, she said it wasn't "high art" or anything like that, but was amazed at the "athleticism of the dancers." And it's true; they can jump so high and move their feet so quickly. It was supposed to follow a sort of Irish history. The first half was all traditional Irish dancing, but they didn't have curly wigs! There was a kind of story line based on mythology for the first part, but there was no point in trying to make sense of a story. After intermission, it moved on to dances about the famine and then emigration, which was when it got good. I'm probably biased, however, because this is when the soprano saxophonist was featured. They arrived in America and there were two African-American tap dancers accompagnied by the aforementioned musician playing jazz. Around this same time a man with a beautiful voice had a solo song about immigrants. He was my favorite. The Russian dancers were pretty cool too; they jumped really high and did the splits in the air. There was a dance off between the tappers and a few male Irish steppers and the male lead. It was funny because the tap dancers kept mocking the lead, and he deserved it.