Christopher Ortega March 12th 2010 World Music The Lord of the Dance The concert I watched was

Lord Of The Dance featuring Michael Flatley and music by the RTE Concert Orchestra and the Celtic choral group Anuna. The premise of the story was pretty corny and cliche, following the character "Lord of the Dance" and his fight against the evil dark lord "Don Dorcha" from taking over something called Planet Ireland. It really is no wonder that many traditional Irish dancers and scholars see this as a mockery of their original dances, which Most of the numbers featured Irish reels with rough timbres and increasingly fast rhythms which created an interesting landscape for the traditional Irish dancing, and what I noticed was that many of the songs were very predominantly featuring drums, which had a rhythmic density that created a place for the dancers to all find the beat. It started with Cry of the Celts which had a very rich timbre and featured the flute that caused it to go from monophonic to homophonic near the end. The middle of the act had a number called The Lord of the Dance that had a pounding rhythm that created a sense of power in the song. The show ended with Planet Ireland which was a number that emphasized an Irish jig, in which the song was actually a very traditional jig, in celebration of beating the dark lord in the story. Many of the dances in this act were centered on fighting and warriors, having rough timbres pounding rhythms giving the watcher a sense of urgency. Overall I found The Lord of the Dance to be entirely about Michael Flatley pretty much showing off. The show had some interesting rhythms and tried to bring Irish dance to the mainstream but I felt it fell short in portraying what and actual Irish dance is. Its to bad that this has caused many to believe that this show is what an actual Irish dance is.