New pop dance and its audiences.

Some years ago I worked for a newspaper that had an arts editor--a charming fellow in a faintly hyperkinetic fashion--who was constantly searching for, and, as a result, finding, new trends in old arts. Eventually it became a sort of office joke--once was an event, twice was a coincidence, but three times was a trend! And worth a feature at least. Naturally enough, I soon became very wary of this trend of trendspotting. However, right now I feel a trend coming on. It is becoming increasingly clear that something absolutely new is emerging on the dance horizon--call it pop dance, if you like.

It certainly has a much wider appeal for a much larger audience than anything we have seen before. There are a number of examples of this, first and foremost, perhaps, the extravaganza of Irish stepdancing, Riverdance--the Show, that has recently been packing them in, first in Dublin, then in London, and recently at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. Yet it is not just Riverdance but also the "flamenco-fusion" show offered earlier at the Music Hall by Madrid's Joaquin Cortes and the European touring Lord of the Dance, a dazzling spin-off from Riverdance by a breakaway cofounder, Michael Flatley, which I saw this past summer in London.

What all these shows have in common is the exploitation (in the nicest way) of vernacular dance and music, combined with many of the appurtenances (lasers, computers, and the rest of the high-tech paraphernalia) and even methods in the production and presentation of pop concerts. And the appeal, as at a pop concert, is for the mass audiences that would be no more likely to attend an art-dance performance--be it classic ballet or modern dance--than devotees of pop and rock would the Philharmonic. There will be some crossovers, of course, but for the most part they will be twain that will never meet.

Look at Riverdance. Ireland's dance spectacular made its first New York City visit in March, impeccably timed for St. Patrick's Day, as lucky as the Blarney Stone and as unexpected as that blackvelvety mixture of Guinness and champagne. The show proved a perfect gem of its kind, and it was almost amazing how the organizers and choreographers maintained audience interest with a style of dance that, however charming, is somewhat limited in its variety. A jig is a jig is a jig--but here it has been jogged and jagged into something practically fugal in the delicately satisfying variations on its theme. That remarkable dance--which has given more than a little to American vernacular dance, especially, of course, tap--virtually sustains the evening.

Despite its dazzling footwork, the stiffly held torso and arms at the side (not akimbo, as in Scottish Highland dancing) might make the Irish jig an unlikely contender for theatricality. But if you thought that, Riverdance will put you right. However--to be on the safe side--the producers also added some wonderful Irish musicians, an Irish choir, six Russian dancers from the Moiseyev, a fine and flouncy flamenco dancer, Maria Pages, and a couple of terrific African American dancers, Tarik Winston and Daniel Barry Wooten Jr. For all this--the jig's the thing! And this celebration of Dionysiac Irish dance stole the city's heart away.

Riverdance started about three years ago, when Moya Doherty was asked to arrange something Irish for the prestigious Eurovision Song Contest, which that year was being staged in Dublin. Now with her husband, John McColgan, as its director, and with original music and lyrics (the latter being the weakest part of the show) by Bill Whelan, she has developed this entertainment mammoth. Nowadays there is more than one Riverdance troupe--as I write it is still playing in London--and obviously this Irish tour de force is going to be, as Hermione Gingold once put it, forced to tour, and we can expect more companies across the globe. And, I am sure, American-born Flatley, one of the originators of the show, and one of its principal choreographers, will himself tour worldly, widely, and wisely with his extraordinarily exciting Lord of the Dance, where the emphasis is even more on dancing.

Perhaps you might insist that despite the wide popularity of Riverdance and Flatley, this hardly represents a new populist move in dance. But how about Joaquin Cortes, who seems to be attracting a similar audience the world over? When Cortes, bare-cheated and wearing long hair, a traveling spotlight, and a skirt, stalked down the center aisle of Radio City Music Hall to start his packed-to-the-roof, one-night-only performance there recently, he may have exuded a certain ambiguous machismo, but certainly he was a different kind of flamenco dancer.

He seems to think he's a pop superstar. Perhaps he is. Obviously, like the American-Irish Flatley, and Colin Dunne, the Anglo-Irish star of Riverdance, Cortes is aiming at a new, wide audience that Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov only flirted with. He offered a long intermissionless program, with a seemingly never-ending finale--five singers, fourteen dancers, and nine musicians, not to mention costumes by Giorgio Armani. From all the spinning hype preceding the New York City debut of the twenty-seven-year-old Spanish-born Cortes, one rather expected a nightclub performer on metaphorical Rollerblades. Surprisingly, he is a good deal more than that, though a good deal less than he's hyped up to be.

A former member of Spain's National Ballet, he calls his style flamenco-fusion, and it incorporates jazz, ballet, and pop dance into its choreography, while the fiercely amplified music does a bit of gypsy fusion of its own, embracing bongo drums and a violin, flute, and double bass. The singers are extraordinarily good, but the corps proves only modestly competent. The show and the showmanship are Cortes, and Cortes alone.

For all his sketchy balletic flourishes (including shaky double air turns) and flashy jazz kicks, the key to Cortes's quality is his pure flamenco footwork and style. This is terrific--he has the most delicate and imaginative zapateado since Antonio, and he can do a farruca you would write home about to your Andalusian grandmother. And he has presence--if not quite as much as he thinks he has. It's not yet the star power of a Nureyev or that singer once known as Prince. But it's on its way. His show is a mix of the startling and the trivial; it's unimaginatively lit and needs better pacing and better shape. Yet, barring unexpected burnout, the young Cortes is going to be around for quite a while. And I think he'll be attracting audiences totally different from our customary dance audience. As will they all.