And then, another bunch of people from the same group advertised a watching of Michael Flatley's Celtic Tiger, this evening on The Shows Must Go On. Ok sure, his shows are always worth watching - I'm surprised though, I thought the channel was exclusively for Andrew Lloyd Webber's stuff! As usual these days, they were to start watching too late for me - so I watched it on my own.The ads on YouTube were slightly annoying - but it's available at a couple of other links on Time Out and Playbill.
Ah, Michael Flatley. He won the Guinness World Record for number of taps per second, you know (still holds the record as the highest paid dancer ever), and was the first American to win a title at the World Irish Dancing Championships. (Irish parents, you see, and I guess they instilled in him a passion for things Irish.) Turns out he's also an award-winning flautist - so I suppose, when he seems to play in the show, he probably is actually playing!
The show was filmed live, outdoors in Birmingham in 2005 - he's retired since, with aches and pains all over, as you'd expect from the torture they inflict on themselves. And it has all the glitz, glam, and razamataz that you'd expect from this flamboyant performer. Starts with the standard, militaristic drumming of lines of dancers - it's almost 10 minutes before there's any accompanying music.
At the start, they're in warrior clothing - the girls at the front dressed like Amazons, he himself flounces on in a stylised gladiator costume. We're then taken on a whistle-stop tour of Irish history, a video montage at the rear displaying attractive aerial shots of Ireland.. we get dancers that represent nature - bird and flower costumes - and a very nationalistic bit where Irish-dancing British soldiers (in stylised uniforms) set fire to a cottage, spewing out a huge number of scraggly-looking Irish in rags, hollow-eyed. Michael is the saintly and persecuted priest. Fast-forward a bit, and the same soldiers are having a pow-wow with some more confident-looking Irish guys, as Michael Flatley reads a bit of the Proclamation of the Republic. A few musical interludes are interspersed - FYI, the song "Four Green Fields" refers to the four provinces of Ireland, "in bondage to foreigners". This was a good performance - I could have done without listening to the other singers.
So far, so coherent. The rest of the show, however, seems to be an excuse to throw all sorts into the mix - different styles of dance, different costumes - under the guise that Ireland is now careering into the modern world. And there's a helluva lot of dancing before they finally leave - at which point I was slightly relieved, if only for consideration of their poor joints!
I have to agree with the comments under the video - I've seen better. It does veer towards tackiness - and in one particularly questionable sequence, a prim Aer Lingus stewardess (in very non-regulation specs) has her head turned by a dashing pilot (guess who?), and is inspired to - ahem - strip off, down to a stars n stripes bikini (leaves the heels on, though). As someone pointed out in the comments, this was before the #MeToo movement!
Ah well, on balance it's enjoyable, if flawed. And he's done an awful lot for the popularisation of Irish dance. I've seen a few shows like this, and I always enjoy them - but this isn't the best I've seen. Anyway, if you want to check it out, it's on until 7pm tomorrow (BST).
And for tomorrow? Again, nothing I can actually make on Meetup - might get to see Les Blancs, after all.
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