Michael Flatley may have hung up his dancing shoes, but the Irish dance phenomenon is still clackety-clacking its way unchecked around the globe, with two new shows coming to London. One is headed by Flatley's ex-partner Jean Butler and opens in November; the other is Gaelforce Dance, which was premiered at the Albert Hall on Thursday and will return for a longer run in the new year.
Both shows claim to be the first to use Irish step dancing to tell a story, an interestingly perverse ambition given that one of the most singular qualities of the form is that it's as stiff as cardboard from the waist up. It has next to no body language and Flatley was surely the exception that proves the rule that Irish dance is not a vehicle for individual expression. Richard Griffin, the choreographer of Gaelforce, has tried to get around the problem by grafting a few basic moves from jazz and ballet onto the essentially impassive Irish vocabulary.
The show tells the story of a young woman, Aisling, who falls in love with two brothers and thereby causes a violent split within their family. Griffin flags these details up by having Aisling occasionally twine around one of her lovers in a vestigial pas de deux or extend a yearning arm to them. After she's been murdered by warring family factions we know that she returns as a healing angel because she is drifting slightly effortfully around on pointes.
Most of the rest of the story passes us by however. Griffin has no resources to distinguish the two brothers except the colour of their shirts and at moments of highest emotion his imported dance and mime are so feebly inadequate to their task that it's a struggle not to laugh out loud. The most effective drama occurs when the two gangs confront each other in percussive, Irish formation, the mood of group violence suiting the essentially regimental nature of the form.
At such moments, when the show's two dozen plus dancers are all on stage together the scale and sound of the dancing are thrilling. It's what the audience have come for and they cheer. They also rightly give an ovation to the band who, when they're periodically allowed to let rip in rocking updates of Gaelic music, cut through the vapid drama and cluttered lighting design.
