Riverdance 30

Group rates available. Please contact Azaria Tyler at asamuels@capa.com, or visit Shubert.com/Group-Tickets.

The theme of the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest was ‘The River’, as produced by Moya Doherty. Bill Whelan took this theme as a starting point when composing music for that seminal interval act.

Riverdance traces the life of a river.

The invocation sung at the start is called Cloudsong: it is the rain falling, feeding the river, which springs to life and flows through the land and out to sea. There, the cloud reforms and returns to the land, nourishing, renewing and refreshing it. The constant refrain ‘uisce beatha’ translates as ‘water of life’. The number builds from the gentle song to the dancers’ feet rhythmically recalling a river gathering force and rushing to the sea.

The choreography reflects this cycle. The riverwoman dances alone, her soft-shoe dance evoking the flow of the river. As she crosses the land, the earth, represented by the male dancer, awakens and bursts forth onto the stage. As the strength of the river builds, so dancers gather, signifying new life and energy, until the full Riverdance line swells to fill the stage as the river meets the sea. Then earth and river dance in harmony, as the water of life renews the land.

The river, from cloud to sea to cloud again, symbolizes the life cycle, and echoes the Irish experience of emigration and renewal: people who had left their homeland and travelled across the sea, returned in the 1990s to enrich Ireland with their talents and experience gained abroad.

The show as a whole builds on this idea, also exploring the way people from different lands enrich the countries they emigrate to, bringing with them their own culture, music, and dance.

Composer - Bill Whelan
Producer - Moya Doherty
Director - John McColgan
Executive Producer and Associate Director - Padraic Moyles