The last thing I saw on Broadway was Hamilton, so it made sense that whatever followed it had to be even more spectacular. “Spectacular” in the sense that it just had to have more explosions and sequins. May I interest you in Lord of the Dance: Dangerous Games?
If you are not in the vicinity of New York, you can recreate the experience of seeing Michael Flatley’s latest by dropping acid and syncing up Pure Moods with the video for B*Witched’s “C’est La Vie.” But if neither of those appeal to you, I’ll just tell you about it.
I have never been to Las Vegas but this seems to be what shows are like there. There is a vague plot. The show begins with a video montage of other, gritty Lord of the Dance performances with a voiceover about how they’ve fought hard to get where they are and didn’t come this far to finish second and are totally gonna beat the kids from Camp Hawkriver in the dance off to save the rec center.
Then there is a…sprite? With a flute? And a bad guy who looks like a goth Borg matador saying he is going to steal the flute. There is also a blonde lady named Saorise and a belly-dancing brunette named Morrighan and the brunette is the evil one because of course she is. And all during this there are CGI backgrounds that look like leftover footage from Charlie the Unicorn. Did you know there is an actual Lord of the Dance? That’s not just a phrase! There is a man who is god of Irish step dancing and the Borg or whatever is trying to steal his magic wrestling belt and also break a flute. There is one part where a bunch of ladies dance in black sequin bras and then a bunch of men dance shirtless with little newsboy caps so truly there is something for everyone.
We wound up getting far better seats than we originally paid for because the show was nowhere close to sold out. It made me sad for a second. Like any #90skid I remember the fervor over Riverdance, and though I never quite understood it, it can’t be fun to go from sold out shows to a half-full theater. Though I’m sure Michael Flatley can cry himself to sleep on his bed of money and snazzy shoes.
Speaking of Michael Flatley, he made an appearance and oh boy was it uncomfortable! He danced with the entire company at the end, but did this thing where he’d stop to sort of shadow box across the stage, and then would go through these people all dancing very specifically and exactingly behind him and start grabbing the girls?? At one point there were two female fiddle players and he got behind one and started grinding with her as she was just trying to do her dang job!
Oh my god you can watch the whole thing, just do that.
I haven’t watched this yet but as the daughter of a 90s Mom who was OBSESSED with RiverDance I frankly can’t wait to.
Oh your mom, too? Where does she stand on Yanni, John Tesh, and Torville and Dean?
I still LOVE the original Riverdance soundtrack, but never particularly cared for Flatley… I’m torn!
Dropping acid and syncing Pure Moods to C’est La Vie is kind of my idea of a perfect evening.
I saw Flatley doing promo for this on the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade coverage. It looked like it was going to be sad. I see it is.
I used to do step dance (won medals at competitions & everything) & there was so!!! Much!!!! Fury directed at him from others in the community… Mainly allegations that he stole & didn’t credit choreography. My fave bit of slander is that he wore those big puffy sleeves to hide stolen silverware in.
Btw want to add that my dance teachers were all super fat incredibly fit ladies with legs like carved cement, all solid muscle. They were an inspiration.
“he wore those big puffy sleeves to hide stolen silverware in”
Now that’s my kind of dishy dance gossip!
Taking a major trip down memory lane here.
We also used to sit around and make fun of him waving his arms around. “What, is he afraid he’s going to lose his balance? Does he think he’s doing SCOTTISH dancing???” (there is FIERCE rivalry between Irish and Scottish dancers in the USA which is kind of hilarious because IME most of the people doing Irish & Scottish dancing are multiple generations removed from living in Ireland or Scotland and also the dances are pretty similar in general except one uses more swords than the other so the rivalry is really manufactured)
There was a lot of super weirdness in Irish Dancing, at least in my area, centered on HAIR. I’ve heard that’s changed, though. As far as I know they still start edging dancers out of competitions and into teaching (if they still want to dance) at a really young age, though.
Wait, does the edging them out early have to do with hair, or is it more a body type thing like in ballet? Or something else entirely? I know nothing about Irish Dancing in particular, but with my own niche ethnic dance experience, I am fascinated! I want to hear all of the stories from you now! ::rests chin on hands::
The hair issue is that you’re expected to have red or light colored hair, pulled back, and falling in corkscrew ringlets. I’ve known dancers who dyed their hair red, and the ringlets were generally accomplished by buying “falls.” they used to be (perhaps still are) standard in Irish Import shops that sell gillie shoes, brooches, claddagh anything, aero bars, lilt soda, etc. The school I studied with paid NO MIND to the hair issue, but we also only competed locally… AND we had girls who weren’t white dancing with us (which I wish there was a lot more of, I know a lot of Black girls — and boys– who are Irish and interested in dance but RACISM so they don’t get into it, which super sucks).
I don’t know what the age thing is, I might have a better idea if I’d danced longer. I only danced for 4 years and didn’t start until I was in high school. By the time I was 18 though, I was assisting the teachers in showing steps to the younger kids, which was fun. One of my best friends had been dancing basically her entire life and when she tried to continue at a different school after she moved out of state for college she was flat out told she was too old to compete and if she was interested in continuing she needed to move into teaching. I don’t know that it’s a body type thing at all… while I mostly see slender women/girls doing step dance on tv etc I’ve known a ton of chunky-to-fat girls dancing. You’re jumping up and down for hours at a time, that builds hella leg muscle. I was pretty fat when I danced and never was told I needed to slim down or that my body type/shape would keep me from dancing… which I’d been told when doing tap and ballet (and gymnastics).
It’s possible that our area simply didn’t have enough people in the early adult age range to compete so she wouldn’t have had anyone to compete with, I suppose. But if you’re steering all early adults out of dance of course that’s going to happen, and I’ve heard other people say the same thing happened to them. Also we were (and I still am) in the Chicago area which has a really big Irish American population so…?????? Maybe it’s different in Boston or something, IDK.
Wigs. For that unnatural ringlet Shirley Temple look.
The Hair Thing is still around, at least in rural Irish Dance competitions. The ringlet wigs are required for winning, you may not win without spectacular ringlets.
I’ve been reassured that’s not an issue at all anymore, and I doubted it at the time. I’m not at all surprised by your report, I’m sorry to say.
I’ve gotten back into ISD as an adult, and for the school I take classes at, they are super chill about hair and actually discourage the wigs (which I think is kinda an organization-wide policy; they’ve also gotten stricter on who can wear solo costumes, to try to discourage younger, lower-level dancers from dropping the money on them immediately). Though I know that I’ve definitely lucked out in finding a school that not only encourages adults to return to Irish dance or even take it up for the first time and doesn’t care much about competition.
Also, I luckily never came up against the ‘needing to have a certain hair color’ thing, not when I was younger and competing, or now when I see the school’s competitive dancers.
The hair and dress thing is definitely still around, and that’s going to discourage me from enrolling my daughter into Irish dance classes, which sucks because I think she would love it.
“except one uses more swords than the other”
way to bury the lede.
I adore Irish dancing but Scottish dancing is flashier & some does involve swords plus general arm movements. I’ve heard different stories abt why Irish dancers don’t usually move their arms. Idk which are true.
Me too, most involve rumours that priests thought arm movements = illicit sex and thus forced the poker-straight arms into the tradition. Absolutely no idea if that’s true, but not implausible
I’ve looked at the posts tagged “irish dancing” on tumblr multiple times because it’s so fascinating, and every single one of them seem to wear these HUGE curly wigs with a headband. Along with fake tans (this really confuses me), tons of makeup, and fake eyelashes. And the dresses are all covered in sequins and/or crystals and cost thousands of dollars. It’s incredible.
I used to make those dresses, ama?
So this is not a mashup of Riverdance and “The Most Dangerous Game,” is what I’m getting here.
This was on in London for about 6 months and seemed pretty busy whenever I walked past the theatre and had to bat excited tourists out of the way!
I remember my great aunt and my grandma trying to get tickets to Riverdance and complaining about how much time they had to spend on hold with Ticketmaster* just to get tickets!
This show sounds like everything I never knew I wanted.
*The more things change the more they stay the same. No longer do you have to call, but Ticketmaster is still the Most Obnoxious.
Seriously, how have we as a society not progressed beyond Ticketmaster?
I LOVE LORD OF THE DANCE SO MUCH, mostly because it is crackpot crazy. Riverdance is so great, genuinely — all these different styles of dance and different cultures and coming to America in the hopeful, melting pot sort of way.
And then Lord of the Dance is just like, Michael Flatley’s ego got high and said HOW CAN WE MAKE IT MORE SEXY AND MORE SPANDEX AND MORE IRELAND AND ALSO MORE MEEEE???
Have you ever seen the original recording of it in Dublin, I think? They do SEVEN ENCORES. SEVEN. Every time you think they’re done, M.F. yells, “WE LOVE IRELAND. WE LOVE IRELAND.” and then circles his arm in a big motion to mean LET’S DO IT AGAIN.
It is glorious and bonkers.
I watched that video and my jaw was down for the entire seven-encore thing. My friend showed me that specific clip to demonstrate Michael Flatley’s hilariously niche egotism.
I cling to the hope that that’s not who he really is as a person, but that might be b/c i’m too optimistic about humanity.
I don’t know what this is but your article has convinced me that watching the whole thing with a gose or two will be the perfect way to defragment my brain after work today.
misread that as “with a goose or two” and was like, sure, that makes sense, Michael Flatley seems to be the kind of person who would attract geese, why not.
I read the same thing, also I do not know what I gose is so I will imagine that it is a cocktail.
Google says it’s beer!
That intro (because of course I’m watching the Malmö video Jaya linked to) is bizarrely meta. Like, is Flatley reflecting on the costs of fame? Is he being defensive about the success of Lord of the Dance? Is there another elaborate Irish dance craze with the mashup aesthetics of Eurovision and a rough episode of Dr Who lurking out there, just waiting for Flatley to falter so that it can pounce? Is he secretly trying to tell us about his Faustian bargain, and how he traded his soul for fame and dramatic lighting?
ETA: WHAT, WHY IS THERE IS A SCARY ROBOT HEAD SPEAKING TO–A TOY? A CHILD?–SOMETHING ON STAGE?
Jean Butler from the original Riverdance 4eva! The woman dances like she’s on springs. Perfect blend of strength & seeming weightlessness.
Flatley can eat a dick, the overrated show-off.
I dunno. Think of the person attached to the dick. Flatley should eat something else.
I do love Jean Butler, but I liked her performance better in Original Riverdance vs. Riverdance NYC. I vastly prefer jumps to kicks!
The original Lord of the Dance was Jesus and the hymn of the same name is legitimately the greatest song ever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwdmqM3pc68
(posting this version because it’s best when performed by a hokey Irish band who’ll follow it up with The Unicorn Song)
Oh gosh I LOVE that song. I’d go to see the Christmas Revels with a friend’s family every year as a youth and everyone danced out to intermission with this song and it was THE BEST. (and all I think of whenever someone says ‘lord of the dance’)
Just saw the Washington Revels yesterday, and this is still definitely A Thing. Good cardio in among all the Christmas cookies.
But wasn’t that adapted from a pagan song?
Once at our weekly Catholic school mass our priest at the time sang all 6 verses of this hymn a capella, as a solo. For the sermon.
I just had to confirm with my two older sisters that this actually happened because the memory is so strange I thought I may have dreamed it.
I found the trailer deeply upsetting for reasons I can’t seem to articulate.
Was it the jelly looking legs? Was it the robots?
I DON’T KNOW.
‘His legs flail around as if independent from his body!’
Hee, my Riverdance story is that my freshman English class was shown the original Irish TV special that spawned the show (I think? I had to figure this out years later) by our teacher, who had recently moved from Ireland and was trying to make a point about real Irish culture for St. Patrick’s Day. (She mostly failed because like most high school students, we were assholes.)
Two or three years later Riverdance was *everywhere* and no one believed me when I said I’d seen it before.
It was first performed at the eurovision song contest. Not as an entry, but as the traditionally terrible act that follows the entries as every country does their individual judging and before the “let’s have an awkward video call with every country even loosely associated with Europe” bit. It BLEW. THEIR. MINDS.
STILL REELING.
*ded*
I saw Riverdance as a kid in Branson, Missouri, with my WHOLE family, and it was amazing. I only wish I could relive it.
Apropos of nothing, this is the set of ads I got:
I’d rather watch Michael Flatley egoflail all over the stage every night for a month than click on any of those.
Growing up, my parents and their friends were always throwing costume parties and doing celebrity impersonations and performances.
(These were not classy costume parties – these were excuse to wear something ridiculous and get wasted in the back yard while the kids watched inappropriate movies inside costume parties)
In about 1998, my dad was was Michael Flatulence – Lord of the Ripped Pants. I feel like the title explains the level of the performance fairly well, but I could also note that he was accompanied by my sister playing the recorder through her nose.
Now that’s a video I would watch.
Guys. Guys. Look what I found. It is frigging Argentinian cowboy step dancing, and it’s this whole big thing there that I’d never heard of before, and they do it solo and it’s glorious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dz5MCu4cwkM
It's still here…I walk past it every day to work. There is a larger-than-life picture of a shirtless man punching the air and grinning, while wearing what look like extremely uncomfortable faux-leather trousers.
Frankly it gives me the heeby-jeebies and I am looking forward to it closing.
I HAAAATE Michael Flatley. Hate. Like, flames on the side of my face, hate.
I loved Riverdance, though, and watched the video without Flatley about a billion times.
I HAAAATE Michael Flatley. Hate. Like, flames on the side of my face, hate.
I loved Riverdance, though, and watched the video without Flatley about a billion times.