Video: Learn to Dance Like the Irish with a Lesson from RIVERDANCE 30
Mar 18, 2025
Celebrate St. Patricks Day with Richard Ridge as he stops by Radio City Music Hall to get a lesson in Irish step dancing from Riverdance 30 company members Fergus and Anna Mai Fitzpatrick. Watch in this video!
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Five, six, seven, eight
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One, two, three, two, two, three, and four, five, six. I think I'm going to join the line here
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Nice, really good. Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World, celebrating its 30th anniversary
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River Dance 30, the new generation, comes to Radio City Music Hall for five performances only
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beginning on March 28th. And we're here in the hall to meet the company and learn some of the steps from the global phenomenon
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Well, first of all, you're about to return to Radio City. How excited are you
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Oh, my God. This is a dream come true. I mean, the last time we were here was 2020
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COVID shut us down. But we're back to finish what we started. And this is going to be extraordinary
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Okay, so what is it like living in the world of River Dance? It's a dream
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Every day is different because it's live theater. Every audience is different. We get to travel the world alongside your friends
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and for us alongside family. It's a wonderful experience and it doesn't feel like a job
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It feels like a dream every single night. I agree with everything anime just said
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It's an absolute dream. We're so lucky because we're siblings. We get to do this live out our dream with each other with family So we get to travel the world living at our dream doing what we love I mean for all of these artists it the pinnacle of their career to get to perform in New York City on Radio City Music Hall
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I mean, you just dream of that as a child. And to be here, to get to do that is, there's no words
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There's no words. You know, this is the new generation. When did you start with River Dance
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I started as the first generation. So I would have started in 1996
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Seven, not long after the show first started. To be honest, which the very first time I ever saw this show
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was here in Radio City Music Hall. And I sat in one of those red velvet seats in that theater
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and my whole life changed. Right before my eyes, before a step was ever danced
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The music, the direction of how the show was created, that dry eyes, the entire feeling of it made me go
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this is what I want to do with the rest of my life. And from that moment on, I found out how to audition
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join the show, and here I am still 27, 28 years later
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So it's extraordinary. You know, this is a new generation, and this is the 30th anniversary
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We all fell in love with it 30 years ago. Now, it's generation, epigeneration
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What is it about River Dance that people fall in love with? I think it's a lot of things
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Riverdance at its core, you know, is a story. And it involves a lot of emotion human emotion love loss and you know passion immigration There so many different storylines that people can connect with And then also the beautiful music composed by Bill Wheeling
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and the dancers and the contrast of the dancers on stage, the tap dancers, the flamenco
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the Irish dancers, the Eastern European folk dancers. There's so many different cultures
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and different elements happening on stage and that is something that everybody can connect with
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Yeah, everything, that anime just said, it really touches the hearts of people and I think
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once it touches your heart, it's really tough to let it go. You just want to keep
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coming back or you want to, you tell somebody about it and they want to experience it
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and then hopefully they'll keep coming back as well to the show. So we're so grateful that it
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survived this long and that it's got a great life. Well, I think it
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resonates differently with everybody, but it resonates with everybody, right? So it's the music is just
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extraordinary. It's timeless. It's Grammy award wing. And then you put those artists on
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stage that are at the top of their game, the best of what they do in the world, it's hard
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not to be in awe of it. And of course, then there's the people off the stage that really
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contribute to all of this. It's their work on the stage as well, from lighting designers to the
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stage hands you name it it is one great big team that brings something like this together And let me tell you if you think you seen Riverdance before you have never seen it like this So we going to start with a right foot stamp We going to go stamp
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Stamp. And then we're going to go point. Point. Point. Point. And then we're going to do a cut
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Hop cut. All the way up here. That's it. And then go point on the right
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and point on the left, and point, and cut. And then the same thing again on the left foot
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Point. Point. Point. point cut this is the iconic Riverland step that we all do
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once we're in the line okay this is a simplified version but we can do this one together
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if that's okay okay then we can do the hop step step hop that other one the one I was doing this way
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you want to show us what you need one two three yeah oh very good
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this is the one I know and we call this what these are one two three
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that's what we call them so we go on one two three two three I have that right
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yeah you got here let's here let's hear let's do this This one here. Here we go. Ready? You call it
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Five, six, seven, eight. One, two, two, two, three, three, and four, five, six
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I think I'm going to join the line here. Nice, really good. Okay, right, thank you
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That was so good. So everybody, come and join us at Radio City Music Hall beginning on March 28th for five performances only River Dance 30, the New Generation
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We'll see you then
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