The Corrib in Finland, Sweden and Belgium
As I find myself room-bound with inflammation of the muscle behind the knee cap, an injury probably sustained from hours of dancing at the regular once a tour party “The Dog” and then foot slogging the streets, galleries and museums of Vienna with my wife, whom I have just seen for the first time this year. I thought it timely to comment about this year so far on Tour with the Corrib in Europe in 2008.
We started 1st Jan this year in Tampere Finland. Expecting the worst from the winter weather, and that the equipment would be frozen in the truck, we decided to arrive at the venue the afternoon before the first performance on the 2nd. We had an experience from Russia in 2005 where the projection screen had frozen solid in the truck and when unfolded cracked and split, also power cables could not be unrolled and the residue of water in washing machines frozen. Therefore, with a skeleton crew we unloaded early just to allow our equipment to warm up!
The rest of the cast and crew flew in that day, some into Helsinki with a connecting 3-hour bus ride and others directly into Tampere. With the first day of the year and after a week’s break for Christmas, with only one non-arrival due to illness and a few missed international connections, I made my last airport rendezvous with our flamenco dancer, Rocio Montoya just after midnight.
We played a sold out week in a new theatre located just across the street from our hotel.
The first move to the next city of Stockholm was a new experience for a most of the Company. We bussed down to Helsinki and then took the night ferry to Stockholm.
We arrived into Helsinki as dusk came (3:30 pm) - it took a while for the tickets to be issued and we then boarded the ferry as foot passengers with all our baggage in tow at 4:30 pm. We found our cabins and then explored the ship. It had several restaurants, bars, shops and that night found us experiencing the joys of Bingo, Karaoke, the card tables and “On Board Entertainment.” The performers on these ferries work hard and multi task, you see the same faces in each show. Perhaps a lesson we could bring to Riverdance…
Fortunately the bars closed around 1:30 am and so the next morning at 9:00 am we only had one missing person on the coach when we disembarked, over then next days she was not allowed to forget her tardiness. It is always a pleasure as Company Manager to make sure people do not forget the error of their ways!
At this point, I have to praise the Corrib; Breandan de Gallai, our Irish Dance Director visited us at some stage of the last leg of the tour and commented on the punctuality of the Company on Bus calls. I told him of a friend of mine who went to an archaic public school in Yorkshire. Anyone who was late for an event was given a detention amounting to the number of people in the class multiplied by the time they were late - with a class of 30 and 3 minutes late your detention was 90 minutes. The aggregate of the time you had wasted of the people around you.
If our bus calls are 10:00 am we are on the road by 10:05 and with 68 people that shows the respect everyone has for other people’s time.
In Stockholm, we played The Cirkus Theatre, a wooden clad structure obviously at one stage the home of a Circus. Situated on one of the many islands that make up Stockholm and next to the cities Fun Fare that was closed for the winter. We played seven sold-out shows.
The next week saw us in Linkoping (Lin - sher - ping) in a new Ice Hockey Arena and then onto Karlstad and an older Ice Hockey Arena, Only 3 shows that week.
Sweden, we are told, has a high suicide rate and with time on our hands with only three shows that week; you get a feeling of depression. The daylight time is short - say 9-10 am until 3.30 pm. It is cold, windy and drab and this year there is little or no snow. Saturday evening at supper, myself and some of the sound crew were conversing with some ladies from out of town who had come into the city to let their hair down. They told us how they missed the snow; the extra reflectivness of the snow brought more light into their days - interesting how something that I would treat as a hazard can be a lifeline for the Swedes, one of the ladies was training to be a psychiatric nurse, probably a demanding and much in-demand job in this country.
Our next journey was another Riverdance first, the whole company on a Ryanair flight. We had expected a two-day bus ride from Karlstad via an overnight stop in Hamburg to Antwerp. However, although our travel agent and I thought we had explored every other possibility of travel, Alanna McCrudden (Assistant Company Manager) unearthed a route from Stockholm to Eindoven (Netherlands). Those familiar with Ryanair destinations will not be surprised to discover that Ryanair’s “Stockholm Airport” would not be near Stockholm and this was to our advantage as it was actually nearer Karlstad!
We left Karlstad at 10 am, and had a fine sunny Sunday morning drive to the airport. We arrived in plenty of time, some people grappled with the self-check in machines, whilst the rest of us joined the check-in queue. I still can’t work out why they have self-service check in machines and then make you join a queue anyway to check in your bags?
The joy of Ryanair is the baggage allowance, 15 kilos in the hold and 8 kilos in the cabin. We had warned the Company in advance of the baggage limitation but when you are away for a few months, you have to have so much with you. I usually weigh in at check-in at 17 kilos and today was no exception; even I had to pay for 2 kilos of excess. They even charge you a surcharge for paying cash.
We arrived into a rainy Eindoven and made a quick bus transfer to Antwerp arriving just before 6 pm - not a bad day’s travel compared to our original expectations.
The week was to be another Riverdance first - a three city split week. Three shows in Antwerp in a theatre, one show in Lommel in a sports hall we had played before with the Avoca Company and three shows in Brussels at the familiar Forest National.
The highlight of this week was a trip to do a dance workshop and demonstration at the St John International School in Waterloo. We had been contacted by Brian Nason, the Irish Ambassador to Belgium (who we first met when he was attaché to Irish President Mary McAleese when we played Beijing in 2003) to see if we could visit the school which has a strong Irish Dance club.
12 of us with Dance Captain Niamh Eustace were collected and driven to Waterloo. We arrived at the school and were treated to lunch in the school canteen. We all wished school dinners were of such a high standard when we had been at school and marvelled at the coffee machine (not something you would think younger children would/should be partaking of.)
We spilt into three groups and did an hours teaching to 3 different age levels, our usual ambition is to teach them some of the Riverdance steps and then run the music and try to perform the whole piece. The older students had the luxury of working on the stage of the school theatre, a fabulous facility for a school. They had 3 or 4 attempts with the music and obviously were thrilled at what they achieved in such a short time.
Then with a packed house of students, teachers and parents we performed a few extracts from the show. After a presentation of flowers and school T shirts to the cast members we re-traced our steps back to Antwerp.
It was a memorable and fulfilling day and a project that could be developed in taking Irish Dance to schools, however it is very time consuming and would not always fit into our busy touring schedules.
Belgium was a full and busy week but we had the luxury of having a central hotel in Brussels so could explore the city in the short time we were there.
Sunday was a matinee in Brussels, so a hotel check out, payroll day, promoters settlement and a show, and then by 5:30 we were on the coach for a 520 km drive to Freiburg in Germany with a show the next day. I guess we made it to bed by about 1 am and then up for load in at 9 am. I throw this in just in case you thought life on the road with Riverdance as Company Management was a bed of roses.
So back into Germany, the country we have visited most in Europe, but more of that later…
Laurie Small
Corrib Company Manager |
