My daughter, who is now fifteen, started taking step-dancing lessons when she was three and a half so I have had a lot of exposure to step-dancing.

I saw both the original Riverdance and Lord of the Dance and my reaction was that some of it was very good and some of it was not so good. Riverdance and LOTD took traditional step-dancing and made it into a show that certainly had a lot of energy. To make the dancing appeal to a greater audience they expanded on the tradition and added features that are not strictly a part of the tradition.

We should also keep in mind that there are two kinds of Irish dancing -- step-dancing and country dancing. While a glint of country dancing was shown in the shows the emphasis was on step-dancing.

I was also disapointed with the singing in the shows which didn't even sound particularly Irish, at least not to my ears. It's too bad they didn't use some traditional songs. I understand that the music for Riverdance was all newly composed, a feature which I disliked. While there are a lot of good recently composed tunes I felt that some of the flavor of Irish music was lost. Also, there are a lot of recently composed tunes that have entered into the tradition already. I don't see why some of those couldn't have been used.

I'm glad that Riverdance and LOTD have made dancing more popular but remember, when you make something appeal to the masses you end up compromising both music and dance to some degree

radriano