What Entertains the Entertainers?

April 7, 2016

As I sat on our travel days so far I pondered of what I could be doing in my spare time on tour to pass time on the bus, or just any free time in general. I’ve got nothing to really study for or a real interest in anything that I could possibly take on to the bus but it did get me thinking.

As I looked to my left I saw Shaunessy knitting.  It has become so popular now but I do admit I found it amusing at first. It was so unusual for me to see someone knitting. I recently found an article which Was on the Xpose Facebook page and it read “Knitting is the new king of mindfulness. Yes, this passed down hobby can calm your thoughts by making your brain focus entirely on the task at hand.” Shaunessy starting knitting vey recently, around November when she attended a knitting group in her Hometown of Goderick, Canada and has kept it up. She definitely classes herself as a beginner still and learning to follow patterns. Her first couple of projects were winter headbands and hats and now moved on to leg warmers which she will use for the show.

“I find it great for travel days for on the bus or on the plane, and I find it helps me to relax and be mindful”

I share a room with her and admire her patience as she completes her leg warmers! They look great! She’ll be knitting all sorts for the troupe now I imagine and will be inundated with orders for spring/summer 2017 haha!

 

James Keating, now what a character this fella is. He is an extremely creative, imaginative, and a funny person. James spends some time writing poetry, writing plays and hopes one day, “to have a movie of mine made and direct it myself, starting off with low budgets and hopefully making a blockbuster one day. One small step at a time though”

Here is one of his poems which I think is genius.

We’re the ants at peoples picnics.

We’re a tiny moving dot.

We think we know we are who we are.

When in fact, we really do not.

 

Stars look down upon us, they watch our every move.

While we hope to seek a life anew,

What we didn’t know, they already knew!

 

He doesn’t just walk amongst us, he also walks within.

Without his power we’ll never feed.

He causes greed; behind our creed.

 

We’re the ants at peoples picnics.

By James Keating (31.03.16)

I noticed on the bus that Mitchell Hodges had some sort of DJ set with him. I asked him about it and how he got interested and what he hopes to come of it. Mitch is the go to person for any song for any occasion!!

“The DJ Decks I have are called the Pioneer DDJ SB2, it is a smaller/more portable version of the bigger set up I have at home! This allows me to mix music during downtime wherever I go, on the bus, dressing rooms ect! From a young age I’ve never been much of a TV person, music has always been my biggest interest so when I joined Riverdance, our violinist Pat Mangan had his Decks on tour and began teaching me the basics. From that point I knew I wanted to be able to get a room of people having the best time to “Mitch’s Bangers” from then I became Tour DJ playing for our warm ups and nights out! My dream is to be playing in mega clubs and festivals all over the world making the biggest crowds dance and sing along to my music….One day :)”

So it got me thinking again of what I could do. I might start practising more of our native language. We call it Irish or Gaeilge. I think it’s a shame that most Irish people can not speak their native tongue and it is always something I want to be able to speak fluently. So I’m going to maybe try get back into it and take off from where I would have stopped learning it at school! “Beatha teanga í a labhairt” the life of a language Is to speak it, and that’s that goal!

 

Slán,

Sarah