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A poor attempt at integration

Last update - Wednesday, August 15, 2012, 12:13 By Christine Delp

A poor attempt at integration

The Riverdance show I saw recently in Dublin was not anything like the show I saw on Broadway as a kid. In the 11 years since I was first mesmerised by the quick steps, elaborate costumes and bouncy hair of the performers, in many ways the production of the show is all grown up, tailored to a generation with short attention spans. Dramatic lighting, music and fog all kept the attention of an audience that had probably been wowed by the special effects of the newest Batman movie the night before.
Of course Riverdance is known be a bit kitschy, and these added special effects did nothing but add to this reputation. But the dancing was absolutely fantastic, and so while I had to smother a few smirks during the ridiculously histrionic verbal narrations, such silly artistic indulgences were excusable.
What was not excusable, however, was the show’s poor attempt at racial integration. Amid the cast of smiling blondes were two black male dancers with an enormous amount of talent and charisma. But their star quality was undermined by the absurdity of the show’s storyline and the roles in which they were cast.
I did not expect to see any minorities in an Irish production of Riverdance, so when one of the black dancers first appeared on the stage shortly after intermission, I was pleasantly surprised. This surprise soon turned to confusion and discomfort as I realised this man was singled out from the other performers in costume and placement, and was singing about freedom with a large ship projected in the background: a rather awkward comparison between the Irish and African slaves’ journeys to America.
After the slavery dance came a jazzy tap number with only the two black dancers, seemingly a stereotypical nod to 1920s Harlem. The climax was the reappearance of the white Irish male dancers, who with the black dancers took turns showing off their moves and mimicking those of the opposing group in a sort of racial dance-off before both groups happily danced together. This was the production’s approach to integration, I presume, but in actuality it severely backfires.
Having grown up exposed to the remnants of the American South’s racially turbulent history, even as a white girl, it is probably true that I am more actively conscious of all things racially tinged than many white people in Ireland.
It is also likely that others, and not just Irish people, might find my objection to Riverdance’s portrayal of these two men as slaves and Harlemites a giant overreaction to a level of discrimination that couldn’t exist in a production that had black people playing historically black characters.
But something doesn’t have to be maliciously or even consciously discriminatory to be offensive. I do not believe that the producers purposefully portrayed the two black dancers negatively; in fact they were quite the stars of the show. But they were not stars purely because of their dazzling talent, but because they played a special, segregated role. These dancers were cast in roles as part of a storyline that didn’t quite fit into the traditional themes of a Riverdance production, as if to haphazardly “integrate” Riverdance without actually integrating anything.
The show proved that those black men could certainly perform the traditional Irish dances in addition to the less traditional tap-dancing as well as or even better than the white Irish dancers. So I hope that the next time I see Riverdance, black and other minority dancers will be properly integrated members of the cast of traditional Irish dancers, rather than (in a temporary lapse of unintentional ignorance) being cast apart from the traditional Riverdance roles because of their race.

Christine Delp was an intern with Metro Éireann as part of the DukeEngage programme.


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