The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Rhythm of the Dance
Caird Hall, Dundee, August 4
Passion, energy, rhythm and intensity are all part of the Irish dance hit Rhythm of the Dance.
The show is in its 20th year of international touring, with sold-out performances in almost 50 countries, so it seems safe to take producer Kieran Cavanagh’s promise of a spectacle at face value.
Born in the era of the massively successful Riverdance, which began as a one-off interval piece during the Eurovision Song Contest in 1994 and still plays to packed houses, Rhythm of the Dance had similarly modest origins.
In 1998, Cavanagh received a call from the head of music at Ireland’s national TV and radio broadcaster, RTE, asking him to put together a dance troupe to accompany the National Concert Orchestra on a three-week tour of the United States that autumn.
The tour proved such a success that another one – this time to Scandinavia – was arranged for March and April 1999. Moving the orchestra around was going to be too expensive, however. So Kieran formed a smaller band, comprising uilleann pipes, whistles, harp, flute, fiddle, accordion, banjo and bodhran, and this more traditional approach has been a major component of the show’s success.
“It’s been amazing,” says Kieran “From one three-week tour we’ve developed Rhythm of the Dance into a show that tours for 40 weeks of the year and everywhere we go people come out and fill the theatres.
“Sometimes they bring Celtic song books and literature with them to show to us. In Russia, we’ve even played music with the audience in the hotel afterwards and not being English speakers, they cannot communicate with us, only through the music. It’s fantastic to see this happen, how music can bring different nations and cultures together.”
One spin-off from the show has been the formation of the company’s own dance academy, run by Rhythm of the Dance’s choreographer, Dane McKiernan. Children as young as four enrol, learn Irish dance and can progress to the show itself where, even now, Kieran finds watching the troupe perform a “pretty frantic” experience.
“The dancers have all trained since they were very young and are incredibly fit and know how to take care of their bodies and their diet,” he says.
“But every day at the venue, before the performance, our dance captain will go through a drill where the dancers warm up their muscles and prepare properly because it’s a demanding, twohour show.
“It’s quite a lavish production but we tend to be a bit more traditional than Riverdance and we hope people will leave with a strong impression of our culture and our music.”