Riverdance: The New Show

I saw Riverdance - The New Show and loved it from the very first moment! It is an energetic tribute to Irish dance filled with brilliant dancing, music and choreography! The leads, Jean Butler and Colin Dunne had me captivated with their exquisite dancing! May they always keep shining and keep dancing. Their on stage chemistry was amazing, and the unity between them on stage was obvious. They look like they were made to dance with each other! This show is my absolute favourite, and probably always will be. Long Live Riverdance!

This is a "revised" Riverdance presentation, staged at Radio City Music hall in New York City. Of the three Irish "dance" musicals that I watched during the mid to late '90s (which includes the first "Riverdance" and "Lord of the Dance") I liked this one the best.

I thought it was better than the original, held in Dublin, Ireland, because it adds segments that are mostly good, it has a more varied and colorful stage setting and it eliminated apiece for two from that original that wasn't good to begin with. This is just a very solid show with few weak spots. To be certain, there are some songs/dances that are just "fair" but none that are poor, which is amazing considering there are 20 numbers in all.

The cast is similar to the first Riverdance with the main exception of Colin Dunne replacing Michael Flatley as the featured dancer. Both are extremely talented. The major difference might be in their looks with Dunne a little, goateed black-haired guy while Flatley is the clean-shaven blond. I prefer Dunne because Flatley's ego is so big he gets annoying at times. The female lead, Jean Butler, thankfully, is still there and is great to watch: what graceful beauty and talent! Butler and the rest of these women have the greatest legs I've seen on dancers. I also enjoyed the dancing of Maria Pages, a Spanish flamenco performer, and two guys: Daniel B. Wooten and Ivan Thomas. One number - with those two pairing off against Dunne and two other dancers -0 is called "Trading Taps" and is terrific fun to watch, maybe the highlight of the whole show. I have no complaints about violinist Eileen Ivers, either.

The "fast" Irish songs here appealed to me the most. I appreciated the audience not getting in the way of the performance either with shrieks and screams like the women do in the "Lord Of The Dance" video.

The New Show is just about half as impressive as Michael Flatley's Feet of Flames. Angles and perspectives of the camera were almost annoying at times and the show itself lacked the spark of adventure and mystique I saw in Feet of Flames, Possibly because this seems to be set up in NY and not in forests of England? :) The set and special effects could have been better too. However the music and dance lived up to expectations, though it lacked the master himself. This isn't a must have for every Riverdance fans, but still fun to watch it for the music once or twice.

I've seen Riverdance in person and nothing compares to the video, but the show is awesome. The dancers are amazing. The music is impacting. And the overall performance is outstanding. I've never seen anything like it! I suggest that you see this show if you can!!!

The show is GREAT. No words to describe it. Wonderful music. Incredible dance. The editors couldn't spoil it, not because they were not *that*bad*, but because the show is really *that*good*.

The editors are compulsive cutters, you can't see a scene without a cut for more than 15 secs. It's OK to show various angles, but those guys were working with multiple cameras for the first time in their lives, and they will remind you of how many cameras they have every five seconds on average... They manage to film the start of a jump with one camera, then cut it in the middle, and show the rest of it in another angle.

No matter how much they tried, they couldn't spoil that wonderful show. It's a must for dance and music lovers.