It is 10 years since the original production of Riverdance began its revival of Irish dancing. But what is genuinely Irish about the show is its cultural promiscuity rather than its 'authenticity', argues Fintan O'Toole
The sound many people remember from the opening night of Riverdance at The Point is not the clatter of hard shoes on the floor or the swirling cadences of Bill Whelan's music. It is the sharp collective intake of breath that greeted Michael Flatley's first entrance, flying in from the wings in his billowing white shirt and tight leather trousers, his feet rattling like machine guns. He was sex on legs, his male display so cocky and conceited but also so stunningly impressive that the effect was funny and amazing, campy and powerful at the same time. Something was happening, something for which Irish popular culture was ready but unprepared. Riverdance appealed so overwhelmingly to those original Irish audiences because it met a need that people didn't quite know was there, the need for reassurance at a time of rapid and sometimes confusing change.
People wanted to believe that the economic boom which was then getting into full swing wouldn't destroy what was distinctive in Irish culture, but would, rather, refurbish it. This was a time when the very prevalence of the word "confident" in public discourse carried with it a sense of protesting too much. It was hard for a culture steeped in self-pity to quite trust the impression that everything was getting better. The economy was booming. Emigration was petering out. The seemingly endless Northern Ireland conflict was beginning to show tentative signs that it might, after all, come to an end. But was all this confidence a confidence trick? Were we going to lose more than we would gain in the process of change? What better answer could there be than a brash, fast, slick, wonderfully organised exercise in showing off? Not only did Riverdance pound our doubts under its feet, but it did so by turning a dreary, apparently moribund tradition into a rocket-fuelled contemporary spectacle.
A decade on, of course, Riverdance can be seen as itself a part of the triumph of corporate culture in Ireland. Michael Flatley's early departure, which at first seemed like a typical Irish story of acrimony spoiling a potential success, allowed the show to be cloned and transformed it from a star vehicle to a global brand. With two companies still on the road (one in North America and one in Europe), Riverdance has as much to do with industry as with art. The show has played more than 8,000 performances and been seen live by more than 18 million people in more than 250 venues spread across 30 countries, from Canada to China. The CD of Whelan's score has sold more than 2.5 million copies and the video has shifted nine million copies. Riverdance is in itself an emblem of cultural globalisation, and not just because the show incorporates Russian, American and Spanish dance. The Irish dancers are global, too. Flatley and Jean Butler, the original stars, were born in the US. Of the Irish dancing troupe in the current North American company, 12 are Irish, but 11 are Irish-Americans. There are three Canadians, two Australians, one New Zealander, one English person, and one Scot. Many of them were, presumably, inspired to take up Irish dancing by the show itself. Ironically, the success of Riverdance, built partly on the notion that it was distinctively Irish, has meant that Irish dancing is now a definitively international form. If what we wanted from Riverdance was a souped-up version of traditional culture which would protect us from corporate marketing and globalisation, the show isn't just a failure, it's a betrayal.
SUCH A NOTION, though, misses the point that what is so genuinely Irish about Riverdance is not its supposed "authenticity" but its cultural promiscuity. Irish dancing has existed in both an international and a commercial context for a very long time. As far back as the 1770s, Arthur Young, touring Ireland, noted of the Irish peasantry that "dancing is so universal among them that there are everywhere itinerant dancing-masters to whom the cottiers pay sixpence a quarter for teaching their families". Many of these dancing-masters, who largely invented Irish dancing, were, moreover, foreign. The great authority on Irish traditional dance, John Cullinane, notes of them: "The nature of their profession, their use of French terminology in teaching dancing and their high standard of dress suggest that they originally did not rise up from among the Irish peasant classes but were, initially at least, migrants from other European countries. It is very probable that most of them came from France since, in addition to their use of French terminology, they introduced the sets of quadrilles".
The revival of Irish dancing in the late 19th century was, moreover, the work of the Irish diaspora. The very first céilí was held, not in Ireland, but in London's Bloomsbury Hall, organised by the Gaelic League's London branch in 1897 and inspired by the example of a similar revival in Scottish dance. By then, Irish dancing in America had already become interwoven with the emergence of commercial show business. The scenes in Riverdance where Irish and African-American dancers swap steps has a basis in reality. The founding father of Broadway, George M. Cohan (parental name Keohane), came from a family of Irish musicians and dancers, and the affinity between tap and Irish hard-shoe footwork is obvious enough.
This mix of local and international influences, slightly kitschy diaspora Celtic revivalism and hard-nosed commercial showbiz is the Irish dancing tradition, at least insofar as dance performance is concerned. Riverdance doesn't just reflect that tradition, though. It also draws on an even more promiscuous range of sources. It was shaped by everything from the sublime to the ridiculous, from the 1989 Yeats Festival at the Abbey, where Whelan, piper Davy Spillane and percussionist Noel Eccles first worked together in a theatrical context, to the Eurovision Song Contest (the show, of course, started life as an interval act for the Eurovision in 1994), and from Moving Hearts to the Seville Expo of 1992, where Whelan first worked with Flatley, Butler and flamenco dancer María Pagés.
This is what show business at its best can do. Riverdance has more in common with a Broadway musical than with a céilí, and Broadway works well when it manages to suck in different energies and hold them together on stage for two hours. Did Riverdance suck energy from the older, subtler, more local world of traditional Irish music? Undoubtedly. But what's just as important is that the tradition more than held its own in the hurly-burly of a big brash show. Along with Flatley's leather trousers and the clattering chorus lines, the most memorable image of that opening night at The Point was the hush when the wonderful sean-nós singer, Áine Uí Cheallaigh, stood forward and sang A Chumaraigh Aoibhinn, giving voice to a music so powerful and complex that it defies all the additional adornments of showbiz.
This side of Riverdance, the way it took its traditional elements on their own terms, was made far more evident by contrast with the testosterone-fuelled crassness of Flatley's Lord of the Dance. Flatley, indeed, can justly claim to have bestowed a double benefit on Riverdance. He launched it in the first place, with his barnstorming, charismatic presence. And then, with Lord of the Dance, he reminded everyone how relatively subtle and sensitive it was.
RIVERDANCE DIDN'T JUST draw from the tradition, however. Ten years ago, it would have been difficult to predict with any confidence that Irish dancing as an art form had a long-term future. As a social pastime, especially for young girls, it probably had a firm enough foothold in Ireland and among the diaspora. Set dancing, with its elegant and convivial atmosphere, would have continued to compete for the affections of those too pooped to pop, too old to rock'n'roll. But the notion that Irish dancing could be, in the 21st century, an arena for high-level professional performers and choreographers would have seemed absurd.
A decade on, it's a realistic prospect. By the late 1990s, the Irish Dancing Commission had well more than 1,000 registered teachers in Ireland, North America, England, Scotland, Wales, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina and even Africa. Hundreds of young dancers, who previously would have done the circuit of competitions and then moved on to real life, have worked as highly skilled professionals in Riverdance, Lord of the Dance and the various imitations that sprung up in their wake. Some of the skills developed through Riverdance are already feeding back in to the creation of a new generation of dancers. Jean Butler is currently working at the Irish World Music Centre at the University of Limerick and this week released an educational DVD, Jean Butler's Irish Dance.
Much of this energy will inevitably fade if and when Riverdance finally winds down. But if even 1 per cent of those who have been drawn into the stream are carried along on the current towards a long-term creative involvement, Irish dancing will be a viable and potentially vibrant art form in the 21st century. For those of us who spent our childhood years regarding Irish dancing as a form of ritual humiliation that gave joy only to masochists, that notion is almost as breathtaking as Michael Flatley's entrance in 1995.