Riverdance First UK Stop – Bradford

March 29, 2010

Patricia Henry, Dancer, Corrib Company

Well after a week off to spend relaxing at home with family and friends we were well rested and ready to come back on tour. This time we are touring the UK (Farewell tour) for two and a half months visiting all the big cities and a few small ones along the way.

Sunday was our travel day back to the UK so we were all on different flights into Manchester, with some travelling from Galway, Cork, Belfast and Dublin. We were all met in Manchester airport by a coach and travelled for about and hour to the hotel in Bradford. As it was quite late on Sunday when we arrived in, we all just chilled out and went to bed.

Monday was then spent catching up the people we hadn’t bumped into on Sunday, and it wasn’t long before we all heard the good news about our Irish dancer Joe Moriarty and Russian Folk Ballet dancer Yulia Lykunanova, they had spent the week off in Belgium and got engaged the day before they came back on tour. We had more good news to celebrate Monday night because Toby Kelly our Saxaphone player announced to us that he got married to his partner (Julian) also on the week off. So I would like to say a big congratulation to both couples.

We had what you might call an unlucky start to the tour as the company was hit by a tummy bug, so we had a lot of people off sick. With one of the female troupe at home injured we were pleased to have Shona Cobbe from Dublin over filling in for the week. Bradford is a quiet town with not a lot happening in it, although it does seem to be going under a lot of reconstruction. But as for audiences, we couldn’t have asked for a better start to the tour, we completely sold out all shows for the whole week, so let’s hope it will continue.

Our second week brings us back to Ipswich, where we will celebrate St.Patrick’s Day. Check back next week to see what we got up to.

Patricia