Rince Go Bragh: Lord of the Dance Memories

Watching Lord of the Dance with my students this spring brought me back to my childhood memories of watching the show on DVD...

Right before the summer of 2001, I watched Lord of the Dance in school. I was in 6th grade. I was also about to move to Virginia at the time. As we got settled an began to explore the area more, we ventured out to the Blockbuster and Hollywood Video by our house to rent new films to watch on Friday night pizza night. Having seen the first half of Lord of the Dance and been blown away, I convinced my parents to let me rent it (and eventually copy it for future use). That led to renting the original Riverdance: the Show with Michael Flatley. At 12 years of age, that didn't interest me as much because it was old and more importantly, short. I soon found (and rented and copied) Riverdance: Live from NYC which was more exciting to watch.

I spent at least two hours every single day of that summer in front of the television watching either Lord of the Dance or Riverdance. My two sisters would occasionally join me, their favorite to watch being Lord of the Dance. The three of us eventually got to the point where we had the show memorized, so naturally the next step was to perform the show ourselves while watching the DVD. One of my sisters played the Lord of the Dance, the other played Don Dorcha (the dark lord), while I was the Little Spirit. There were dance battles and lots of pretend Irish dancing happening, which I'm sure was a riot to watch.

To this day, my sisters will refuse to watch either shows unless they're seeing it live, while I can't watch the shows without dancing.