Riverdance - On Tour with Riverdance

On Tour with Riverdance

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The Boyne

It's good to be back as the Boyne start their tour with sold out shows in 2 cities

After a few weeks off to celebrate Christmas and New Year's the Boyne Company returned to the road. It was a short break for us but it seemed like everyone enjoyed it to the fullest whether they were playing in the snow, returning home to see friends and family, or relaxing on a beach. One other special event took place over the break, the wedding of former Riverdance dancer, Scott Porter and singer, Lisa Kelly. The event was attended by many Riverdance cast members and was a beautiful and joyous celebration.

Some exciting news for us coming back to tour is the fact that George Bernard Gallagher has hung up his dancing shoes to become our new stage manager. George has danced in the show with the Lagan and Boyne companies for the past three years and was also our assistant stage manager for the last year and a half.

The tour began in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

The first part of the week was unseasonably warm but the weather soon turned bitterly cold and reminded us that it was in fact early January. We had a couple of surprise visitors when we arrived at the hotel. Tim Kotchka, a dancer from Broadway and the Lagan companies and Ian McGlynn, a singer with the Avoca company who started with the Boyne, were both filling in for the week in Oklahoma. It's always great to see faces from the past so this was an especially fun week with them there. The theater we were performing at had just undergone a $30 million renovation so it was an absolute pleasure to work there. Added to that was the fact that we were completely sold out for the entire week to very enthusiastic audiences. Added to THAT was the fact that our new set underwent a facelift-or more like drastic reconstructive surgery-in the downtime. It is dramatically different from what we had for the first three tours of the Boyne and it really compliments the show and makes it more exciting to dance onstage. I think we were all a bit surprised, in a good way, when we turned around to the back for the first time in Reel around the Sun and realized how beautifully the set catches the light.

The Golden Globe awards were on TV the Sunday we were in Oklahoma and fortunately there were a couple of dressing rooms near the stage that had televisions in them.

We ordered in Chinese food between the matinee and evening shows and one group went into the dressing room to watch the awards while the other group took their food into another room to play poker (a new pastime of many troupe members). Speaking of gambling, dancer Kevin Horton won a bit of spare cash in a game the local crew ran where anyone interested puts their name on a dollar bill and throws it into a hat. One bill is picked out of the hat and whoever's name is on it wins all the money from the game. Congrats Kevin!

After Oklahoma we moved on to Little Rock, Arkansas. This was an unusual day for us because we had to travel in the morning and do a show that night. The Boyne has never had this on a tour so far and we were dreading it a bit. In the end it didn't turn out to be as bad as we had thought because most of us were able to sleep on the bus journey and had several hours to refresh after we arrived in Little Rock before we had to be at the show. Because of our short stay in the city we didn't really get a chance to explore the river front or many of the attractions that it has to offer. A few of the cast members did manage to make it to the Bill Clinton museum between shows on Wednesday. Clinton is a native of Little Rock and after he served his two terms as President of the United States a museum and public library were opened here in his honor.

After packing in four sold out shows in three days we loaded up the trucks and prepared to move to the next city.