Riverdance!

Riverdance! Riverdance! Riverdance!

Tease me if you must, but I'm a big dork for Riverdance. You are too, you just don't want to admit it. I was literally sitting watching the show jaw dropped, mouth covered by my hand, eyes wide...but I'm getting ahead of myself.

I arrived at the Gaiety Theater to conduct my interview at about 6:30 and went to the stage door as I had been instructed to do by the email that I received a while ago. Inside the stage door there was a receptionist girl who really doubted me when I told her I was there to interview one of the performers. She almost didn't let me in, but then one of the other dancers walked through the door and was like "Oh you're looking for Niamh? Come back with me, I'll get her for you." So the girl brought me backstage. Allow me a moment to tell you about the Gaiety Theater. You can tell you are in Ireland when a fancy, historic opera house has not one, but FOUR bars inside. Three of the bars are for audience patrons during intermission and then they open up to the public and become three night clubs on the weekend. The fourth bar is backstage exclusively for theater employees. It's more than just a backstage green room for the performers, it has bartenders, booths, several beers on tap, a big stereo system and all of the functions of a real bar. So the dancer girl deposited me in the backstage performer bar while she went to find Niamh O'Connor.

In case you didn't know, Niamh is pronounced "Neev" (rhymes with sleeve) because it is a Gaelic name and Gaelic pronunciations have nothing to do with Gaelic spellings.

I sat around in the bar being really awkward for a long time as I watched performers come in and out and interact with each other like real live people! The flamenco dancer said "hola" to someone! The main gospel singer guy discussed Los Angeles with me! He also told me that Niamh O'Connor was on stage doing a last minute emergency rehearsal because there was a new singer in the cast that night. Finally she emerged very frazzled and said "I'm so sorry to keep you waiting! We're having a bit of an emergency, do you think you could come back after the show?" Yes Niamh O'Connor. Yes I can.

At this point I went and got delicious dinner at Wagamama. I'm not going to explain to you what Wagamama is because if you've been there you already know how awesome it is, and if you don't know what it is you'll only be really jealous that you've never been there. Ignorance is bliss.

After delicious dinner I went into the theater and purchased a colorful, overpriced souvenir program (or programme if you're Irish) then went to my seat. With my mastery of the ticketmaster website I was able to procure a front and center ticket. Literally row A seat 14 . You can also tell you're in Ireland when in addition to people sitting around you in a theater with alcoholic beverages there are people sitting around you eating popcorn.

The show began to my delight. I have actually watched my old 1996 vhs recording of Riverdance (the Michael Flatley/ Jean Butler version) so many times that while watching the show I could pick out exactly which places the choreography had been changed and which parts were improvised. Regardless of the fact that I already knew exactly what dance was going to be done before they came out to do it, I still got my mind blown several times over. It also helped that I was close enough that I could have reached out and touched the performers if I wanted to...I didn't touch any performers, don't worry, I have some sense of self control. My only complaint was that the original show got about 50 dancers on stage at once, and they've really downsized, it's probably closer to 20 now...still impressive, just not as grand scale as it was in the past. May I just point out though that the 20 or so dancers were extremely well cast...not only were they all very talented but like...there was a lot of handsomeness on that stage.

After the show I went backstage again and felt very smug because while all of the other dazzled audience members had to leave I got to go chill with the performers. It would have been even more awesome if I had been able to act like a cool person instead of like a bumbling dork like I did. This time around the backstage bar was filled up with all of the sweaty exhausted dancers. I tried very hard not to stare. Ms. O'Connor arrived and I interviewed her. All of my questions were stupid, I acted really nervous, and she was clearly very tired and not completely excited about doing an interview, but considering the disastrously embarrassing things that I could have done, I think the whole thing was very successful. She's actually not the female lead in the current show, but she is the "dance captain" who keeps everyone in line and makes sure everyone has the choreography down and stuff. She's been dancing professionally with show for 13 years...which is like longer than I've even been a dancer. She is also engaged to marry the very handsome Padraic Moyles, male lead of the show. Let me point out that Padraic Moyles can do quadruple heel clicks, nerve taps, and drum rolls faster than the speed of light. If you don't know what those things mean just act impressed. Padraic Moyles also touched my camera...he took this picture of me(looking embarrassing) and Niamh O'Connor (looking embarrassed for me) that you see below.So like...what did you do last night?