Inside Greg Wayne’s Creative Mind: Secrets Behind His Most Captivating Stories Revealed
Then Riverdance and Michael Flatley came to my attention. And I was already familiar because I went to this weird arts school as a kid where they taught us folk dances from around the world – and Riverdance is, of course, an Irish folk dance.
Scott: Describe Riverdance for us, it’s a unique form of dancing.
Greg: Riverdance is like an elevated, theatrical incarnation of Irish stepdance, or simply Irish dance, which has been around for hundreds of years. It’s a form of tap, and it was traditionally very strict and stiff in the way you performed it. Basically, you had to keep your back completely stiff and your arms tight to your sides or you would lose points. So, the dance is really all about the feet and the precision of the steps. But in 1994, Michael Flatley, who was the original star and choreographer of Riverdance, came along and revolutionized things by using his upper body. He would strike these heroic poses and flail his arms and bring a certain amount of flash to the dance. And this was considered very scandalous by Irish dance traditionalists – but it was Flatley’s vision that turned such a conservative dance into the huge 90s phenomenon that was Riverdance.
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