Eldergays, tell me about RIVERDANCE!

The costumes appears to have become absurdly garish. The simplicity of the original works better. This can't be improved on.

Irish bartender I know here in NYC said his sister danced in the company. That Flatley dude is a dick, apparently.

Michael Flatley, Lord of the Dance

This informercial and the Kelly Family infomercial played on a loop in the mid-90s

I'd be surprised if no one on DL ever hooked up with a dancer

It’s like the Blue Man Group, okay for ten minutes max. This is not to take away from the skill of the dancers which is amazing. It’s just I found it repetitive and lacking the storytelling aspect of something like ballet.

It was pretty impressive in the beginning, but the whole rage didn’t last long.

Like Celtic Women, it's PBS gold.

R2 and R6 more about Flatley being a dick and egocentric, please!

R4 huh?

It all started at Eurovision in 1994.

They used prerecorded tap sounds!

As an Irish dancer, it was nice to see it get a wider audience. I know everyone mocks it for the straight arms but it is a dance that takes skill - just concentrated in the feet and lower body. I love to see a good Irish dancer - but I know it was a cheesy production marketed to Irish Americans. As a young gayling, it gave me a wonderful outlet - not many gay kids are encouraged to dance and rewarded for it. I was glad to see great dancers able to make a living doing what they love.

You just KNOW that Michael Flatley took it up the ASS.

This caused problems for me in the workplace in the 90s. My favorite coworker told me she really liked it, and had gone to see it on the stage. I made a flippant remark about how strange I thought the dancing style looked. She was highly offended by my opinion, and it ruined our friendship.

i found it unwatchable. if you want to see irish dancing go to a feis or a hooley.

It was exciting when it first came out. As much of a dick as Flatley may appear to be, he was very talented and creative. Riverdance was pretty much his creation and when he tried to get credit for it he felt he desrevd IIRC he had to fight for it. I don't remember all the details now.

If the Irish had used hand weapons instead of just kicking, they would have beaten the English in battle.

Fuhrerdance

My Riverdance memories are wrapped in a gauze of clinical depression and stale cigarette smoke. My Irish coworker at the time, Liza, aware that I too was from Ireland, convinced me to accompany her to a matinee of Riverdance. I was not a great fan of this Flately business but thought what the hell, can’t be that bad. And it wasn’t. The dancing was amazing. As were the looks at us from those in nearby seats as the overpowering stench of stale cigarette smoke emanating from my seat mate began infiltrating the theater with Bhopal like efficiency. It turns out Liza suffered from severe clinical depression and had been out on disability for several weeks prior to this matinee and, it seems, had been home chain smoking in the same clothing the entire time. It was the kind of smell that almost assumes a physical shape, wraps its arms around you, and then squeezes while simultaneously shoving its arm down your throat. It must have been a very long performance for anyone downwind of us. To this day, I can’t hear that music without throwing up a bit inside. In any event, Riverdance didn’t stink but we sure did!

I worked on the follow up Lord of the Dance but after Flately had left.

We called it Lord of the Pants.

They rotated the lead because they had had enough of a star's ego.

The dancers were hilarious, most 19, 20 years old and eager to get off stage to go out and drink and spend their money.

I worked in the wardrobe department and it was a fucking marathon that show for all of us, a whirl wind of costume changes and laundry. The sweat was unreal. They came off stage drenched.

They were fun though , young and grateful, all aware they were lucky to be touring America and getting well paid.

Thx r20. I saw the recent PBS doc about Riverdance's debut during the 1994 Eurovision Song contest @ intermission. Thrilling performance by a troupe of unknown dancers at a song contest.

They tore the house down. It looked so exciting, with all the percussion and the stirring Irish music. But have to agree with posters that as exciting as it was on that occasion, it would not last for an entire concert-length entertainment on its own.

Flatley is a garbage human, who while fairly talented, didn't deserve the fame, praise, or money he received.

The one I REALLY can't stand the infinitely cringeworthy "Celtic Woman". They're not even particularly talented, and I HATE the fucking dresses in the clip.

I love these national dances. They are all so weird in their own way. I guess dance to be watched is inherently weird. Why would anyone do these sillyass movements to be watched? You're sposed to dance like no one is watching you!

Okay. I will say it.

Michael’s “legs flail about as if independent from his body!"

The Eurovision sequence is still remarkably powerful. The audience release as they end is immediate. Pity it went to his head.

Also...that mullet...

Riverdancewas like the Cirque of the 90s.

I was a young teenager in the age of Riverdance. While it was fun to pretend to Riverdance, the actual phenomenon was cheesy bullshit. Comedians would go hard on Michael Flatley...

I saw it in Dublin in the 90s and in Philly in the early 00s. I loved it. The people I went with hated it.

There are four main characters, Archie, Betty, Veronica and Jughead, but the one to really look out for is verse bottom Kevin, who came late to the show.

"verse".

ok, jan.

In Dublin, local drag queens did a "mime" of it, if you know what I mean. Two queens playing Flatly and Jean Butler plus a chorus line of high kicking drags. It was crazy, chaotic and very funny. Of course everyone in the very crowded bar joined in. Lots of jumping! The music was irresistible.

Here in Nova Scotia, stepdancing, as it is called, is an integral part of folk concerts, as is Scottish fiddle music. I used to think that stepdancing, as seen on TV, was a huge bore, until I saw a group of young men and women stepdance as a group. They were in perfect unison, and for the first time in my life, I saw what stepdancing should entail. It gave me the shivers in a good way, and they got a thrilling standing ovation. Much better than that poseur Flatley.

Your arms are moving GAWD!

Any gay stories about Flatley? I thought he was hot! No one has looked that good in a headband since LaToya!

[Quote] In Dublin, local drag queens did a "mime" of it,

Is there a video of it r31? I'd love to see it!

It inspired me to form my own dance troupe for plus-sized guys called Lard in my Pants!

Hehe show us r36!

I do recall that once it became huge, it all went to Flatley's head and the stories about him being a total asshole started coming out.

The Yanks have had a huge influence on Irish dancing.

Flatley, Lord of Castlehyde, and formerly of Detroit reinvigorated the dance style. However his sense of dress approximated that of an ageing gigolo. The American influence on costume and appearance makes the young girl dancers look like whores-heavy makeup, eyeliner, glitter and god-fucking awful curly wigs and hair extensions, and kicks so high you can see their snatch. The wigs are so tight that some girls have begun to develop alopoecia.

Jean Butler the original female lead in Riverdance is a sweetheart and beautiful dancer, but apparently Flatley didn't like her. Incidentally Flatley was never in the RIverdance production, only the Eurovision performance as he was fired for behaving like a cunt.

All the women had perms. It was outdated even in the 1990s.

"Load In Da Pants"

I saw the CD with music from RIVERDANCE at the Goodwill store yesterday. Michael Flatley was on the cover.

I almost bought it.....but it was $1.99.

My mother loves this kind of thing...and figure skating too.

[quote]The American influence on costume and appearance makes the young girl dancers look like whores-heavy makeup, eyeliner, glitter and god-fucking awful curly wigs and hair extensions, and kicks so high you can see their snatch.

Is that really the American influence? I thought all that wig, tanning (yes, tanning!), elaborate costumes, stuff was sort of the irish version of a beauty content?

Cheap and tawdry.

It really was a phenomenon in the mid-1990s. PBS would make this one of their main programs during membership drives. The original production was pretty good. Being an American, I didn't see the Eurovision performance until years later when it was put on YouTube.

I remember reading about Michael Flatley being fired right before the opening of the show. Jean Butler was co-choreographer of the original Riverdance show. She has said she didn't work well with Flatley. She said she found him charming, but she wasn't attracted to him and he was put off by that. Sounds like an egomaniac if he can't handle someone not being attracted to him. He thinks he super hot, but he's not.

I remember my ex-partner bought the VHS tape of the show, and Flatley and Butler were in it, so I assume that was taped before the show actually opened. That's the version I saw. I liked a lot of the music. For the time, it was just something different. By the time the touring company came to our city, my ex-partner bought tickets and was all excited, but I was kind of over it by then. The touring production wasn't as good as the VHS tape. I remember one of the dancers stumbled on stage. Ha!

Flatley may have been the butt of jokes, but he laughed all the way to the bank. Supposedly he's worth over $300 million. I wonder if that's more than the Riverdance producers who fired him? Still, he is a legendary egomaniacal cunt who was a nightmare to work with according to many. He retired from dancing in 2015 due to the toll it took on his body, but in 2017 he had his troupe perform at the Trump inauguration and introduced them. That's all I need to know to prove he's an asshole.

James Cagney started as an Irish dancer -- He said it was called Eccentric Dance when he was a child. All based on lower body and fancy footwork. If you've seen him dance, you can see his Irish dance roots, especially as George M. Cohen.

R35 Here's a clip, they did it every week at Bingo, it became a highlight. In the early days it was pretty epic.

R26 Cirque du Soleil was very popular in the 1990s, and had both multiple international tours, and multiple US residencies in Vegas, & in Lake Buena Vista Florida during that time.

Loving this - esp The George clip with drag queens. Thank you. Good to see an appreciation for what it was - if not the seemingly incessant reincarnations.

I think Michael Flatley had the ego and monomaniacal focus that a lot of premier dancers, performers, artists have. Not a happy person - a perfectionist. He was a great dancer in his youth - but even by the time of Riverdance was getting a little too old.

I know someone who lives near Castlehyde - his now former house in Ireland. They loved him and said he was a super nice guy with no airs. FWIW

I have to give it to him - the guy bought some spectacular real estate. Think his London house was previously owned by some vaudeville actress in early 20th century. It was prime Kensington and a very high end renovation was done. He has now moved to Belgravia - which IMO is possibly one of the most prime locations in world never mind London.

R10 I remember that, the best show after Abba in ESC ever! I saw the show twice and liked it a lot.

i hate that stupid shit. the dance and music is utterly - STUPID.

Eldergay here.

Riverdance was extremely fucking obnoxious and unenjoyable.

Tippety-tap, tippety-tap, and their stiff upper bodies and fake wigs. It almost drove me to an early grave but then hip hop came along, thank God!

R44 It's all American influence. Of course the Irish moms bought into the bullshit.

Whatever happened to the innocent Irish cailin?

it was the ultimate "middlebrow" entertainment, something that middle-class white people who knew nothing about the higher arts thought was "classy".

Ironic considering it's really tarted-up folk art, and folk art is always best when done simply.

He's a fake. He was born in the US (born in Detroit, raised in Chicago) but he speaks with an Irish accent? What a joke.

Did someone say Riverdance? I like how much all the people in the visible rows loved it at the end.

It all started when people were waiting for the outhouse in the cold.

I was attracted at first but after about 20 minutes I thought my head would explode--clackety, clackety, on ad infinitum. Like mariachi music, it's cool for the first few minutes, then I want to shoot myself.

Thank you, R58, that was perfection! LOVE the soloist!

he was never hot but hahahaha time has not been kind

he's really let himself go

no wonder he's a deplorable

R56 - correct. He was a South Side Chicago guy who used to frequent the gay bars on Halsted street.

I think his parents were from Ireland though - so he could imitate an Irish accent when needed.

I don't think there was any intelligence or drive - it was a lark that took off and became wildly successful, beyond anything people could imagine. He just happened to be at the front of it.

Luck and timing.

He went to gay bars on Halsted? I didn't know he was gay.

R63 - My brother was a bartender at a couple of gay bars on Halsted1990-94. It was definitely him.