When Riverdance last visited Hobart in 1998 it sold more than 16,600 tickets in two hours, an Australian record for the show.
The production rolled back into Hobart on Tuesday, with the touring party including 24 Irish dancers, two tap dancers from the US, a Spanish flamenco dancer, a four-piece band, 15 backstage crew and three shipping containers of equipment.

Paula Xiberras spoke to the lovely Peta last week fresh from a successful performance at Newcastle as Riverdance begins its farewell tour of Australia. Peta is sad that this is being billed as the farewell tour as she would like nothing more than to be touring with this show ‘forever’.

Riverdance is a young Irish boy’s dream come true.
For Belfast native Jason O’Neill, being an audience member at one of the iconic show’s performances was a moment he’ll never forget.
I saw Riverdance when I was 10, and it just changed my life, said O’Neill, who now works as a lead dancer with Riverdance.

Riverdance: The Music of Bill Whelan – NCH Dublin – 17 May
featuring the WORLD PREMIERE of the RIVERDANCE SYMPHONIC SUITE
RTÉ Concert Orchestra
David Brophy conductor
Thursday 17 May, 8pm
National Concert Hall

“Je suis heureuse et fière d’avoir la chance de participer au dernier show en Amérique du Nord, même si ça va être émouvant pour nous tous et un peu triste. Je ne sais pas quand ni où, mais je suis certaine que je vais retravailler avec Riverdance un jour. ” Niamh Ní Charra

It’s the last dance. After all those years of foot-stomping, heel-tapping, stiff-backed, step-dance prancing, the Riverdance folk are hanging up their shoes. Truth is, it’s only the North American market that will see a hiatus of the popular show.

Ní Charra ended up touring as a fiddler with Riverdance for eight years, leaving the show six years ago to pursue her own music career. Last year, as the producers started putting together the lineup for the show’s grand finale tour, they asked Ní Charra to come back on the road for, as she put it, a final ‘hurrah!’

Good dancing makes you want to dance, and Riverdance does that. Not only is this incoming production a chance to see, one last time, one of the defining touring shows of the past 20 years, it’s a chance to pay tribute to a show that, I’m sure, swells the ranks of local dance classes, where young girls and boys turn step dancing from something you simply see into something you do.

Local audiences will have a chance to experience The Riverdance Farewell Tour, coming April 4 and 5 to the Performing Arts Center at Kent State University Tuscarawas.

Audio Clip – WGN Radio Live in-studio interview and fiddle performance on St Patrick’s Day, Saturday, March 17 in Chicago, with Rose Duffy and Declan Masterson.