Did Your Mother Come From Ireland?

DID YOUR MOTHER come from Ireland? For there's something in you Irish! There is indeed. Call it a fashion, call it a fad, call it a trend, or just put it down as crazy coincidence, but America seems to be enjoying more Irish dance companies than you could shake a shillelagh at in that new-fangled craze of that old-fangled art, step dancing.

So what gives with Irish dancing? Why not those other Celts, the Scots? Why not, for God's sake, the Welsh or even the English? Well, perhaps not the English, as anyone who has ever seen English folk dancing would readily testify. And so far as the Irish themselves are concerned, it's probably a little bit by chance.

Ever since the Gaelic League (founded in 1893) held its first ceili, a festival of traditional song and dance, in London in 1897, such festivals have spread to Ireland and Irish emigrant communities worldwide. In 1931 the Irish Dancing Commission was established by the Gaelic League, to organize and supervise training, standards and competitions for Irish step dancing in Ireland and all over the Irish world. It is admittedly quite a step and a dance from that regulation of what was very much social, or folk, dancing to the present worldwide vogue for theatrical Irish dancing, which has assumed something of the international popularity of Spanish flamenco dancing. It has in the matter of a few years become one of the hottest things in the world of popular entertainment.

How did it get from there to here--so quickly, and so efficiently? Well, of course, the commercial mother of them all is the famous Riverdance, which last March opened its new show, Riverdance on Broadway, at the Gershwin Theater, Broadway's largest, already extending its original limited engagement into September and possibly beyond. It is a phenomenon. Riverdance started as a seven-minute, hard-shoe intermission act for the televised Eurovision song contest, but it has gone a long, long way since then, and now has various companies traveling the globe.

Fast-rewind to that 1994 Eurovision telecast, and suddenly we have a young man, Chicago-born Michael Flatley, bursting onto the scene with a staccato jag of tap dance and fierce jumps that made the Irish jig into an international commodity. Flatley--yes, his father did come from County Sligo--was the first American to win the All-World Championship in Irish Dancing, and, of course, he became the first, occasionally erratic, star of Riverdance, which he in large part choreographed. The show's composer was--and still is--Bill Whelan, the producer was Moya Doherty, and the director was John McColgan.

Flatley, after a well-publicized breakup, left Riverdance to form his own show, modestly called Lord of the Dance, which after successful seasons in Dublin and London, had Flatley making his New York debut at Radio City Music Hall in 1998. He is currently threatening to retire from the stage, while still performing in his new show, Feet of Flames. Meanwhile Flatley's original partner, New York-born Jean Butler, continues in Riverdance, matched now with a Brit, Colin Dunne from Birmingham (not every professional Irish dancer hails from Erin, although most, like Butler and Dunne, have Irish roots). And it was these two who first led this Irish extravaganza in New York.

And the proliferation continues, for just before the new Riverdance flowed majestically onto Broadway, New York got the latest of these Hibernian revels, Dancing on Dangerous Ground, kicking off, or rather stepping off, a North American tour with a five-day engagement at Radio City Music Hall. This show, developed and choreographed by Butler and Dunne, opened last December at London's Theater Royal, Drury Lane. This latest spectacular, using thirty dancers, actors and musicians, was innovative to the extent that, unlike its predecessors, it sought to tell a simple story, here based on the Celtic legend The Hunt for Diarmud and Grania.

Butler and Dunne, both Irish dance champions, showed all the charming razzle-dazzle in the world. It did seem, however, that Dancing on Dangerous Ground was, dancewise, simply treading on familiar turf, despite that attempt to use Irish step dancing to tell a story--thus bringing it more in line with other dance forms, as a means of varied expression rather than a display of virtuoso footwork. The intricate, filigree footwork--very occasionally embellished with a few ballet steps such as an entrechat--is, on its own terms, both fascinating and exciting. Yet the range of Irish dance steps is dangerously small--even Spanish flamenco and American tap (and it has much in basic common with both) have been more successfully extended and expanded.

However, the success of these shows, including the Broadway Riverdance, led by newcomers Eileen Martin and Pat Roddy, is indisputable. By now the original Riverdance, since its world premiere in Dublin in February 1995, has been seen by more than eight million people in theaters worldwide, and six and a half million copies of its video have been sold, not to mention two million copies of its CD. So, when the chips are down and the peat is burning in the hearth, how do you really explain this fantastic new interest in what might seem to be simply folk dance?

Two reasons. First, the Irish. There are more Irish in New York than in Dublin, more in London than in Cork. And like most ethnic groups, they tenaciously cling to their heritage. But there is another, probably more potent reason. A number of Irish teachers and dancers, such as Flatley's guru, Kevin Massey, and for that matter Flatley himself, have seen the choreographic potential of Irish dancing. And they have made step dancing less rigid, less formalized, and have stressed its virtuosity.

Yet--forgive the critic's sour-sounding "yet"--all Irish dance has that certain built-in problem it seems almost ungracious to mention: Seen one Irish dance and you've seen them all. Well, that's not quite fair, is it? But no one has so far quite solved the problem of transmogrifying step dancing from a folk-dance style into a creative form, escaping from the limited range of steps, and that tendency toward Rockette-like ensembles. Still, as ever, the future lies ahead.

Senior editor Clive Barnes, who covers dance and theater for the New York Post, has contributed to Dance Magazine since 1956.