Irish culture!

Thanks to our friend Kelly, who works for Dance St. Louis, Kia and I took in a performance of Riverdance on Wednesday night. Kia was a little ambivalent, but I said, "Hey, free tickets, why not?" Hmmm, possibly re-thinking that decision.

I'm just a little wary of shows, plays, performances that try to sell the cultural aspect too much. I felt like Riverdance did that. It's a bit of a jolt to come in off the street and have someone with an Irish accent try to sell you a program. Maybe it was fake, maybe it was real. Who knows. But that was my first indication that maybe this one going to be one of those shows.

I guess I had some idea of what the show would be like coming in. And it sort of lived up. But at other times it just didn't. I think my problem with it was that it tried to be more than it was. Rather than just having a lot of fancy dancing (perfectly fine with me), it attempted to have a plot, bumpily pushed along by an over dramatic unseen narrator. At its best, it was uneven but entertaining. At its worst, it was muddled and felt like an elementary school talent show, where they would just push kids out on the stage and say, "Do something! Everyone has a talent." In one scene they would trot out the Russian dancers, in another scene we would see the Irish step dancers, in another there would be a guy singing by himself. It felt very disjointed, and this was made worse by the fact that they TRIED to make it a cohesive story. Just show me the dancing, make it light, make it fun, and everyone goes home happy.