A very wise man told me this when I announced that I was planning to see Riverdance last night:
Riverdance is good, if you ignore everything except the dancing
and friends, he was 100% right.
Going in, the only thing I knew about Riverdance was that there was a lot of Michael Flatley-esque Irish stomp-stomp-stomping jigs. I didn’t realize that there was more to it than that. I didn’t realize that there was Spanish flamenco dancing and Russian folk ballet and SINGING (oh my god there was singing!) and ominous and somewhat disturbing narration.
I DID thoroughly enjoy to jiggity-jig. and the fiddling. and the jazzy-rock tap dance-off between what I can only assume were Americans and Irish immigrants.
Basically, I liked all the IRISH parts, which is exactly what I thought I was going to see.
I will say this, though. This company of dancers is ridiculously
talented. I was in awe of what they are able to do with their feet,
their legs, their bodies. Every single person in this show performed
his or her heart out.
But overall, I left the Canon Theater, well, mostly just confused by the whole thing. Was there a story here? Because if there was, I was having trouble following. I thought, possibly, that they were trying to tell the story of Immigration from Ireland to America, maybe? Why was there so much repetition? I mean, did we really need to see the flamenco dancer repeat her entirefirst-act solo routine in the second act? And what are Russian folk-dancers, even impressive ones, doing in this show?
Personally, instead of paying the money to see the live show, I would invest in a best-of-Riverdance DVD, if nothing else than to have the ability to skip to the good parts. Because they are many, many good parts that are unfortunately, encased in a package with some very not-so-good ones.