This incredible live show celebrates both the rich history of Ireland as well as the art of Irish dance, from the disciplined tradition of the Celtic Step, to the sensual moves of the Sean Nos dance, rooted solely in the ancient island of Innishbofn near Galway. Rhythm of the Dance is in its 16th year and has been seen by over 4.8 million people in 59 countries, including the United States, China and Russia, but has rarely visited the United Kingdom.
Rhythm of the Dance celebrates a renewed vigour in Irish culture, embracing the traditional and the current, presenting dance, song, and musical performances in a pure style. The cast of 19 dancers, five musicians, and three singers are a travelling carnival of Irish talent, most of whom have been performing since they were four or five years old. The dancers are led by Marty McKay, who also danced in Michael Flatley’s Lord of the Dance.
The Young Irish Tenors are accompanied on their powerful and moving songs of celebration and hope by the five musicians on stage, who play a vast selection of rare and haunting musical instruments.
The show’s producer, Kieran Kavanagh, explains how it all started for Rhythm of the Dance…
“Back in 1998 I got a call from the Head of Music, Cathal McCabe, at RTE asking me to put a dance troupe together to accompany the National Concert Orchestra to America for a three week tour. I said yes and produced the dance troupe. Cathal titled us the National Dance Company of Ireland, as RTE’s radio and TV channels were state owned and it would be the State would pay us for the tour. The tour was such a success that we then toured Scandinavia in March & April of 1999 without the orchestra as it was much too expensive to move the National Concert Orchestra around and now here we are, all these years later, still touring the world for 40 weeks of the year, every year.
So, you have now played in 59 countries, tell me of your experiences around the world and the highlights over the years.
“It never ceases to amaze me how many countries we have actually toured and some of them are non English speaking territories like Russia, where we generally start a tour as far over as Siberia and then work our way back to Moscow over a five week period of one nighters going from town to town overnight by train, it’s pretty amazing and the people come out and fll the theatres and sometimes bring Celtic song books and literature with them to show to us and we have sometimes even played music with them in our hotel and as they cannot communicate with us, only through the music, it’s fantastic to see this happen, how music can bring different nations and culturestogether.
This a very fast-paced show, how do the dancers keep that up for two hours?
Well it’s pretty frantic to watch alright, however our cast have been dancing and trained since they were four years old, are incredibly fit and have to take care of their body and their diet. But we also have a dance captain in the show who will have a drill with the dancers prior to the performance, where they get to warm up their muscles and exercise.
Can you explain what instruments you have in the band?
We have an array of instruments, like the Uileann pipes, which is a wonderful instrument, played by the musician using one arm to pump wind into the pipes via a bellows, then they must use both hands and fingers to play the notes, so I always admire someone who can master the pipes. We also carry a Harp, Flute, Fiddle, Accordion, Bodhran drum, Whistles and a Banjo, so there is a vast array of musical instruments in the show and it is not unusual for one musician to play several instruments.
You also have three young Tenors.
Yes, about four years ago now, I introduced the Tenors into the show, before that we had a boy & girl vocalist and because we play repeat territories sometimes annually I always keep the show fresh and when I introduced the Tenors to the show, they were an instant hit and they still wow the audiences every night and of course they give our dancers a much needed breather and time to change costumes, as we have about 25 costume changes in the show which is a lot, especially sometimes when the dancers have literally just seconds to make that change to a new costume or it could be switching shoes from the hard shoe, which makes the loud tap on the stage to the soft shoe which is for what we call light pieces of dance.
So what can the audience expect when they go to see Rhythm of the Dance?
The audience can expect to visit Ireland for two hours, they will leave the theatre feeling that they have been on a trip around Ireland and they will have a strong impression of our culture and our music. Irish music is loved all over the world, as is our dance now. I think what sets Rhythm of the Dance apart is that we tend to be a bit more traditional and purist and we rely less on the technical support than other shows do, but still offer quite a lavish production.
Where do you recruit your dancers?
Our choreographer runs our dance studio and our school. We have children as young as four years old enrolling and next year we are excited to invite children and young teenagers from Russia to Ireland for a week to learn Irish dance at our academy. We are also planning to open fve dance academies in Russia and we are in the planning stages at this moment and we are very excited about that. We have a big following in Russia and Rhythm of the Dance is a household name there, so we were approached by our agency in Moscow to open several academies there.
Rhythm of the Dance appears at the White Rock Theatre, Hastings on Thursday 2nd July and at the Assembly Hall Theatre, Tunbridge Wells on Wednesday 22nd July, both at 7.30pm, with tickets available from the venue box offices or via their websites.