On Monday morning we headed through the snow to Kansas City Airport to fly to Youngstown, Ohio. This former steel town close to Pittsburgh has been the source of many songs, including a dramatic and historical one by Bruce Springsteen……

Frankfurt was exciting. Mairead Masuda performed the Female Lead for the very first time.
Riverdance lead dancers, Joe and Maria judged an Irish dance competition where groups had choreographed pieces to different music. The winners had the honour of performing just before the start of Riverdance to a full house.

There was a lot going on this week. The hotel in Dresden was amazing. We were also pleasantly surprised with the city of Dresden – the shopping was very good and there was a variety of restaurants to choose from. We had another birthday to celebrate this week, Eamonn Galldubh (Musician).

This week we left El Paso, Texas bright and early after a delicious Mexican breakfast for Lubbock, Texas. This city is famous for being the birthplace of rock legend Buddy Holly, and also houses the football giant Texas Tech University. We actually performed on campus, in the City Bank Auditorium. This venue was attached to a sports arena, so we had plenty of space backstage, and I even warmed up in the stands of the Coliseum one day. Talk about good acoustics!

We travelled after the show on Sunday night to Stuttgart as it was only an hour away, so it meant that we were getting into the hotel just in time to watch the Super Bowl.

As we landed in Beijing, there was a great buzz among the cast. There was so much to do in Beijing.. Another major event the upcoming DVD shoot for Riverdance-Live from Beijing that was shot over three days. So much preparation and work has gone in to make the DVD shoot go smoothly, so we were all excited to get the process going.

This Monday, we had a short bus journey to Amarillo, Texas for the first three shows of the week. The Amarillo Civic Center was attached to an ice hockey rink, so we were very cold at work the first few days! In fact, after being in California for a couple of months, being in Amarillo was a very cold awakening to the winter!

We are into our second spilt week in a row in Germany and the exciting thing about this week is we get to celebrate Gillian Madders 21st birthday.

For most of the company, last Monday was like any other travel day this tour, except the flight to Kunming didn’t leave until around 9pm, so everyone got to enjoy another day off in Chengdu. On the contrary, about 20 company members traveled to Changsha instead on three separate flights to participate in a Chinese television show. I was included in the group who did the television show and it was an adventure to say the least.

Happy February everyone! This week on tour we started a stretch of split weeks, where we perform in two cities per week. This generally means a lot more traveling, packing and an extra need for sleep…at least for me!