Maeve Fearon, Dancer, Irish Dance Troupe, Shannon Company Thankfully, this week has been a lot less hectic, with just three cities on our schedule. As many of you will know sleeping on a bus is not the most comfortable so after our long journey to Wilkes-Barre on our day off on Monday, it was straight [...]

It was nice to be back in a dance studio and a fine studio it was at the “Grand Theatre”, Quebec. This was even more important for one of our new troupe members, Callum Spencer who in just a few short days after his arrival would perform male lead for the very first time.

Meanwhile, our male troupe had an early start as they performed live on Canada’s largest TV show, Canada AM. Their PR duties must have paid off as the audiences in Toronto were the most memorable of the tour with a whopping near 10,000 people attending our shows!

We work on methods of improving fitness and core strength but I also introduced weights and resistance training, something a lot of us girls wouldn’t dream of doing! Chloey comments “A lot of women think that by lifting weights it will make them bulky. It won’t! There are many benefits including the fact that it can raise your metabolic rate which is an important factor in maintaining body weight. By just aerobic training you’ll struggle to get a lean, toned body.

This week Maeve Fearon is in Chicago. There are more sites to be seen, a hen party, a visit from Dance Director Breandan De Gallai and a lot of green for St Patrick’s Day.

As a dancer, you tend to concentrate so much on your own performance that you forget the effort it takes from our crew members to set up the show. For such a small group they are faced with the mammoth task of building the stage, lights, sound and costume department on a daily basis. This week, I spoke to a few of them to try and find out a bit more about their job responsibilities and daily routine.

In this weeks tour blog, Irish Dance Troupe member Maeve Fearon gives us a unique look backstage at a Riverdance show. Also she tells us how the company have covered approximately 5,392 miles and stayed in 22 different hotel rooms since the beginning of the tour!

We’ve returned to tour now for several weeks and have already seen many wonderful sights and explored some illustrious places. However, this week was undoubtedly the most interesting to date.

This week, we travelled to six cities and covered approximately 1538miles in two coaches; the ‘loud coach’ catering for people who may want to chat, watch DVDs etc and the ‘quiet coach’ for those who wish to remain silent for an entire journey.

Join Irish Dance Troupe member Maeve Fearon as she travels with Riverdance to 4 cities in one week – seventeen years since the opening night of Riverdance in Dublin in 1995.