Act One

In a primitive and powerful world, our ancestors knew fear and joy and fire, worked wood and stone and water to make a place they could call home. The first peoples knew the world as a place of power, their songs and dances and stories are negotiations with elemental powers. The first half of this performance shows them coming to terms with the world and with themselves.

Reel Around The Sun

The sun brings life and light and fire, the opening dance sequence celebrates this benevolent masculine power. The sun is the light of morning, exuberant and clear.

Original Choreography: Michael Flatley

The Heart’s Cry

There is also that other primeval mystery, the salmon swimming upstream, the blind urgings of nature, heart yearning to heart. We need and sustain each other; we keep this knowledge in song since the beginning of time.

The Countess Cathleen

Sensual, nurturing, independent and fierce, the power of women as they celebrate themselves, as they challenge men in a dance of empowerment.

Original Choreography: Jean Butler, Moscow Folk Ballet Company, Brendán de Gallaí

Caoineadh Chú Chulainn

A lone piper mourns Cú Chulainn, the implacable Bronze Age warrior, the great hero of Celtic myth.

Thunderstorm

The brute power of elemental forces, beyond human control, beyond human understanding.

Original Choreography: Michael Flatley

Firedance

In ancient Ireland fire and pride and beauty come out of the south, from the land of the sun. The power of the sun invests itself in the passion of the dancer.

Original Choreography: Maria Pagés, Colin Dunne

Shivna

The myth of Mad Sweeney, Suibhne or Shivna, haunts Ireland since mediaeval times.
Driven by forces outside himself, a man desperately rails against the irresistible allure of the Temptress moon.

New Choreography: Eileen Martin

Lyrics

Slip into Spring – The Harvest

The wheel of the seasons turns slowly, from harvest through dormant winter into the miracle of spring. New growth, exhilaration, the world turns and is made new again.

Riverdance

Our story begins in the evocation of the Riverwoman, it moves through the dawn of history as the river moves through the land. As the power of the river grows, as the barren earth becomes fertile, as men and women grow in their sense of themselves, our story rises until it floods the world in a vital, joyous riot of celebration.

Original Choreography: Mavis Ascott, Michael Flatley (Irish Dance Step Choreography), Jean Butler (Female Solo Choreography)

Act Two

War, famine and slavery shattered the ancient bonds between people and place. Forced dislocations marked and altered the histories of the native peoples. As we came into history we learned to guard what we valued, to accommodate ourselves to others, to learn new ways of being ourselves, to embrace new kinds of courage. Cast out and momentarily orphaned, we learned to belong to the world.

American Wake

From the mid-19th century, hunger and famine and ambition drove the Irish out of their home island, across the Atlantic to a New World. Lover parted from lover, families and communities were torn apart.

Original Choreography: Michael Flatley, Paula Nic Cionnath (Set Dance Consultant)

Lift the Wings

While those souls who were forced to emigrate were faced with the heartbreak of separation, their human spirit was often lifted by a defiant hope at the prospect of a new life.

Harbour of the New World – Heal Their Hearts – Freedom

The music and dance that forged a sense of identity are now exposed to new and unfamiliar cultures.

Ultimately, in the blending and fusion that follows, the emigrants find that the totality of human experience and expression is greater even than the sum of its many diverse parts.

From the darkness a lone voice sings and is then joined by other immigrants, reflecting the universal yearning of the dispossessed wherever they make their home.

Harbour of the New World – Trading Taps

The wealth of the poor is in song, dance and story. Under the street-lamps in the new cities the dancers perform with pride in their heritage, curious to see what other traditions bring, struggling to bridge the gap between old dreams and new realities.

Original Choreography: Colin Dunne, Tarik Winston

Habour of the New World – Macedonian Morning

Meeting the new, what we learn first is that there is something familiar in what is strange, something strange in what we had thought familiar. A tune from another place, another lifetime, can turn and haunt in the heart.

Harbour of the New World – Andalucía

In the cauldron of the big city, the pulsing energy of the streets is reflected in the fiery Latin dance rhythms.

Original Choreography: Maria Pagés

Harbour of the New World – Oscail an Doras (Open The Door)

In the flight from famine and poverty, musical instruments were an unknown luxury.

“Mouth Music” often used by the Celtic nations was now revived as a substitute dance accompaniment and also as relief from the tedium of manual labour.

New Choreography: Carol Leavy Joyce

Slow Air and Tunes

Always the child of the emigrant feels the tug of the home place; always that child feels the urge to return. What she or he brings there is a sustaining knowledge: we are who we once were, we are who we have become.

Heartland

With newfound confidence and pride, the child of the emigrant carries treasured memories home to their birthplace. A long journey ends under a native sky, a new and richer journey has taken its place.

Original Choreography: Michael Flatley, Colin Dunne, Jean Butler

Finalé

We are one kind. We are one people now, our voices blended, our music a great world in which we can feel everywhere at home, Ní neart go chur le cheile, together we are strong.