Riverdance

NEW YORK — When Julian Erskine last saw the American touring company of Riverdance, he had to smile. He was in the Segerstrom Center for the Arts on an October night in Costa Mesa, Calif., watching the high-stepping cast electrify the crowd once again despite more than a dozen years crisscrossing the nation. "To be at the back of a hall with the audience jumping to their feet at the end of the show after all these years, it's just so gratifying and just so pleasing," says Erskine, the show's senior executive producer, by phone from Dublin.

It has to be said: Much of Riverdance is profoundly dumb. This is not the fault of the performers — appealing, energetic, and superbly trained dancers, singers, and musicians who, on Friday night, inaugurated the local leg of their "farewell tour" at the Merriam Theater. Rather, it is because composer Bill Whelan, producer Moya Doherty, and director John McColgan have tried to tie together a group of unrelated numbers through an incoherent "theme" (something about sun worship and immigration)

There's no difficulty understanding why Riverdance - The Show, which runs through Sept. 20 at the Mann, is also Riverdance, the phenomenon. The performance features an enormous cast of uniformly accomplished, young and preternaturally attractive dancers. This company of 100, one of three circling the globe for the last 2 1/2 years, helps explain why Irish unemployment has plummeted. It is more difficult, though, to actually understand Riverdance, a perplexing pastiche of New Age thinking, confounding music and an unfathomable story line that hops over time and the globe, managing to include a Russian folk ballet troupe, one flamenco dancer, and a stunning trio of African American tap dancers who almost steal the show.

If you have a teenage Celtic-culture fanatic at home who seeks out Irish dance and music on YouTube, and anywhere else she can find it, you'll know that Riverdance, now at the Academy of Music, has gone through several incarnations, touring the world for 12 years to rapturous acclaim. Its squadrons of ultraprecise championship dancers, with their Olympian ability to execute umpteen taps a second in hard-shoe jigs, captivate with their life-affirming vigor. Through slides, song lyrics, and spoken narrative, Riverdance tells of the Irish connection to land and sea and the challenges of emigration.

Literarily speaking, the Philadelphia region will become the place to be during December. For a fortnight, two overlapping literary festivals will draw some of the biggest names in books (and other arts) to the area - Center City, the western suburbs and South Jersey. The fourth annual Greater Philadelphia Jewish Book Festival, scheduled for Dec. 7 to 14, will feature appearances by well-known authors at five Jewish community centers. Speakers will include Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz (7:30 p.m. Dec. 7, Gershman Y, Broad and Pine Streets; 215-545-4400, Ext. 219)

Michael Flatley is winsome during an interview. When he's not exposing the gleaming, dripping chest familiar to viewers of Lord of the Dance, the guy's vibes are sweet. He's better-looking in person than on the video, too. Back in Chicago, where Flatley grew up, some say the phenom dancer has always favored shirts open to the belly button. But backstage at the McNichols Sports Arena, an hour before curtain rises, Flatley's totally buttoned in blue-denim shirt and jeans topped by a ho-hum beige jacket.

In Junk, a program of 16 discrete dance pieces performed Thursday through last night at the Arts Bank, Brian Sanders and his three dancers used detritus that the choreographer found in dumpsters as props. The one- to 10-minute gems evoked hilarity, mystery and phantasmagoria. And from the audience, at least on Saturday, they evoked a standing ovation. In the show-opening Bird Alone, Sanders employed a bungee-cord hammock, contorting it into a womb, chrysalis, and safety net through dazzling birdlike swoops.

TO EXPERIENCE "African Footprint" is to take a voyage to South Africa and back - without ever leaving your seat. Defined by a fantastic combination of sweeping movements and thumping rhythms, the musical's energetic cast of drummers and dancers can turn any performance venue into the villages, plains and cities of South Africa. Directed by South African performer/producer Richard Loring, "African Footprint" premiered in 1999 and played for more than two years in South Africa, making it the longest-running production in that country's history.

"Sons of the Hounds, Come Hither for Flesh. " George Cameron (he's a junior, but he prefers the title "the younger") points with pride at the motto of the clan Cameron, which had its own booth at this weekend's Greater Philadelphia Mid-Winter Scottish and Irish Festival. Cameron is a peaceful guy, a middle-aged clerk for a brokerage firm who has a family and leads a scouting troop, but he takes a special pleasure in his membership in a warlike clan. Cameron runs a clan Web page and has even begun a new chapter of the clan.

Living up to its expansive new name, the Mann Center for the Performing Arts will be promoting a whole lot more than the usual 18 classical concerts with the Philadelphia Orchestra this summer. With the aim of increasing attendance from last year's 175,000 patrons to more than 500,000 this warm-weather season, the Mann is upping its operating budget from $2.5 million to $4.7 million, and bringing in big-name jazz, pops and children's shows, too, announced Peter Lane, the facility's recently appointed executive director, at a press conference yesterday.

It has to be said: Much of Riverdance is profoundly dumb. This is not the fault of the performers — appealing, energetic, and superbly trained dancers, singers, and musicians who, on Friday night, inaugurated the local leg of their "farewell tour" at the Merriam Theater. Rather, it is because composer Bill Whelan, producer Moya Doherty, and director John McColgan have tried to tie together a group of unrelated numbers through an incoherent "theme" (something about sun worship and immigration)

NEW YORK — When Julian Erskine last saw the American touring company of Riverdance, he had to smile. He was in the Segerstrom Center for the Arts on an October night in Costa Mesa, Calif., watching the high-stepping cast electrify the crowd once again despite more than a dozen years crisscrossing the nation. "To be at the back of a hall with the audience jumping to their feet at the end of the show after all these years, it's just so gratifying and just so pleasing," says Erskine, the show's senior executive producer, by phone from Dublin.

More than a dozen years ago, before anyone ballroom-danced with the stars, Riverdance was telling people that dancing could be cool. And Riverdance went mainstream with an unlikely dance form, too - Irish step dancing, which previously had been performed mostly competitively or as a folk dance. Spun off from a seven-minute intermission routine choreographed for the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest, Riverdance opened in 1995 in Dublin. Soon more step- and tap-dancing tours followed - Lord of the Dance, Feet of Flames, Tap Dogs, Stomp.

People call it "the Riverdance of South Africa," and with good reason. Like that ubiquitous Celtic powerhouse, Richard Loring's African Footprint features a large cast of hyper-energetic, attractive, impressively trained young dancers, singers and instrumentalists whose musical revue reportedly has been seen by more than 250 million people since it launched eight years ago. Footprint has become South Africa's longest-running show and has traveled...

TO EXPERIENCE "African Footprint" is to take a voyage to South Africa and back - without ever leaving your seat. Defined by a fantastic combination of sweeping movements and thumping rhythms, the musical's energetic cast of drummers and dancers can turn any performance venue into the villages, plains and cities of South Africa. Directed by South African performer/producer Richard Loring, "African Footprint" premiered in 1999 and played for more than two years in South Africa, making it the longest-running production in that country's history.

If you have a teenage Celtic-culture fanatic at home who seeks out Irish dance and music on YouTube, and anywhere else she can find it, you'll know that Riverdance, now at the Academy of Music, has gone through several incarnations, touring the world for 12 years to rapturous acclaim. Its squadrons of ultraprecise championship dancers, with their Olympian ability to execute umpteen taps a second in hard-shoe jigs, captivate with their life-affirming vigor. Through slides, song lyrics, and spoken narrative, Riverdance tells of the Irish connection to land and sea and the challenges of emigration.

Ger Reidy had a word for those closing up the Philadelphia Flower Show next Sunday. "Leftovers will be gratefully received," she said with a laugh, so she might mail plantings back to her home in the Dublin suburb of Castleknock. Yesterday, Reidy was working hard enough to deserve them. She was the lead dancer in an energetic 14-member Irish troupe whose music and dance dominated the Flower Show at the afternoon preview for members of its producer, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society.

The international Irish dance association has decided to bring its 2009 world championships to Philadelphia, marking the first time the annual event will be held outside the British Isles. The gathering is expected to bring up to 20,000 dancers and their relatives, teachers and friends to the city during Easter Week, usually a slow period for conventions. The decision by Dublin-based An Coimisi?n le Rinc? Gaelacha (the Irish Dance Commission) to hold its world championships in the city comes as 2,200 Irish dancers and their families are scheduled to gather in Philadelphia this Thanksgiving weekend for the annual Mid-Atlantic Championships at the Center City Marriott Hotel.

When Bruce Springsteen bounced and bounded around the First Union Center during his fall tour, he entrusted his 50-year-old joints to a good old Jersey firm, American Harlequin Corp. The same folks have saved the Kirov Ballet's knees and tickled the taps of Riverdance. They flow on the ocean with Holland America cruise liners and flash in the desert with the Mandalay Bay Casino. Tucked away in a Moorestown industrial park, Harlequin is the country's largest manufacturer and distributor of high-end dance flooring.

The drop ceiling above the Guinness tap rumbled like thunder, the acoustic tiles trembling from the stampede overhead. Sitting on a bar stool, Cletus McBride strummed a mandolin while Harold Dunn sipped amber beer from a pint glass during a break from fiddle-playing. Neither seemed to notice the roar. "They're upstairs, as you can hear," McBride said. "Before we put up this ceiling, you should have seen the place. Dust would be falling all over. " One flight up, about 40 girls in jeans and sweats - heads up, ponytails swinging, arms straight and at their sides - flailed like spirited soldiers, pounding black-heeled shoes against a faded hardwood floor.