This is How Movies Should Be Made

That was an excellent one.

People are voting emotionally.

Load of rubbish!!

In my opinion, Flatley ruined the first show with his ridiculous ego. He was disrespectful to his dancing partner, tried to upstage everyone and had no awareness of the spirit of Riverdance. It's well he left the show. Colin Dunne, the new male lead, is superb, and when he and Jean Butler dance together, magic happens! Eileen Ivers' fiddling is astonishing (as is Noel Eccles' percussion,) and Maria Pages' "Fire Dance" is worth the price of admission! When Pages and Ivers get together, near the end of the show for a musical duet, well, it's a genuine treasure. I agree, the editing isn't complimentary, but no technical shortcoming can quell this extraordinary tour de force. This is the one to get. There's never been anything like Riverdance! This is the real one!

The dancing is amazing, the sets are beautiful and the music very good. Unhappily the editor chose to limit cuts to a few seconds, so that just as interest was aroused the image shifted off to a view of the auditorium or some other distraction. The musical continuity is perfect, but the visual continuity is sometimes puzzling. This may be a necessity in this live recording in Radio City Music Hall (perhaps this is a composite of several performances), but the choppy cutting is not.

The show is GREAT. No words to describe it. Wonderful music. Incredible dance. The editors couldn't spoil it, not because they were not *that*bad*, but because the show is really *that*good*.The editors are compulsive cutters, you can't see a scene without a cut for more than 15 secs. It's OK to show various angles, but those guys were working with multiple cameras for the first time in their lives, and they will remind you of how many cameras they have every five seconds on average... They manage to film the start of a jump with one camera, then cut it in the middle, and show the rest of it in another angle.No matter how much they tried, they couldn't spoil that wonderful show. It's a must for dance and music lovers.

Others have commented on the somewhat strange video arrangements. I think they were trying to capture what you'd be looking at when attending a live performance. The feet, the faces, the overall view. Unfortunately, it falls a bit short. But, having said that, watching Colin Dunne is nevertheless gratifying. It's an interesting contrast to Michael Flatley in the original video. The progression of the show is evident, changes from the original Dublin production are evident."Trading Taps" is the highlight of the video, in my opinion. Tarik Winston is unbelievable, as is his partner in the piece.I think the audio was better in this version than the original video production (1995). In Dolby 5.1 on DVD it's excellent. Despite the flawed videography, it's a must-own for Riverdance fans.