Dance Captain Take Over

June 2, 2016

This week I decided to catch up with one of our newest dance captains, Stephen Brennan. The job of a dance captain is very difficult. Not only do you have to deal with the logistics of rotations every day, (Rotations are the blueprints of the show that tell each dancer which position they are in for each number during the show. We get a new set of these every single show we do.) but you also have to watch the show and give corrections to the dancers when needed. As you can imagine this can be a difficult job so lets see how Stephen fairs!

(Meghan): What is the most challenging part of being a dance captain?
(Stephan): “Two things.. One is having to focus on every other dancer in the show as well as myself. I have to remember my own numbers and positions but I now need to remember everyone else’s so that if they ask me a question I can answer them accurately. The second thing was learning how to find the line of being a peer with all of my coworkers outside of the theatre, and being the dance captain when I am at work.”

(M):What has been the most rewarding?
(S):“Riverdance was the reason I started dancing in the first place so when I first joined I was so happy to be a part of the show. Now I am lucky enough to be a principle dancer and a dance captain in the show that first inspired me to dance!”

 

(M):Overall do you enjoy the experience?
(S):“Very much so. I really enjoy the complexity of the show and learning all of the ins and outs of how the show and it’s choreography work. I also like figuring out the logistics of orchestrating who dances in which position depending on the size of the theatre and heights of the dancers in each number.”

All in all from a dancers perspective I have to say that I found that Stephen to be a great dance captain. I can only imagine the extra pressure that goes along with the job so I’m sure that he’s a small bit happy to be passing the dance captain torch back over to Andy O’Reilly for the remainder of the tour. Well done Stephen!