Maybe Lord of the Dance is like Disneyland – dreaming of it when young, it's magical; growing up with the idea of it is comforting; actually seeing it is a life-impacting experience.
See Lord of the Dance or visit Disneyland when you're in your mid-20s, childless and single, and the gaudy commerciality of it all is what stands out the most.
We grew up with Disneyland, living 20 minutes away from the Anaheim, California, theme park. We were home-schooled, and for a couple of years, our parents splurged on annual passes.
In a way, too, we grew up with Lord of the Dance, in the later years of our youth, of course, but still with that certain sense of wonder and love that fills any young girl's heart when letting herself be swept away to another world.
Lord of the Dance was in Sofia on June 3, and we had secured press passes for the 5.30pm show. For it was a show – it was not a performance, not a concert or recital, not even two hours of Celtic dance. A spectacle, maybe, at best.
It started with these torch-holding dudes in hooded black robes proceeding on stage. They stand there solemnly and this little elf-like creature in a sparkly yellow jumper "playing" an interpretation of Aaron Copeland's Appalachian Spring (which is, in fact, an American folk tune, but no matter) arises from the mist. So using her glitter pouch (of which I am jealous), the sprite wakes up all the girl dancers and flits off stage.
These chicks are wearing the first of their at least eight super-short skirted costumes, hair either super-curled or super-straight, slightly bouffanty and half up, with loads of make-up. And I'm like, puh-leese. They guys are ok; I mean, you can't exactly expect them to be in spandex as well (thank God). And they start dancing and it's nice and all, but they just look like they are... performing.
My friend questions whether Michael Flatley will be there, like he was when Lord of the Dance was in Bulgaria back in 2001. The answer soon comes, when we realise that the youngish-looking bloke with the garish rhinestone-encrusted belt buckle (that's about as big as one cheek of his bum) who is flaunting himself around, attempting to egg on the audience, clapping his hands, strutting up and down the stage and throwing poses, we realise that he is supposed to play Michael Flatley. And not even that, not even that said bloke is supposed to be playing Flatley's role – he is to be Michael Flatley re-incarnated.
I christen him Mikey Junior.
And it looks like he, too, is just performing, like he said to himself: tonight I am to don various satin costumes, dance around with a blonde chick (whom I at first took to be a drag queen, given the extremity of her red lips, blue-shadowed eyes and crispy bottle-blonde hair) and play out Flatley's ego in front of 5000 people in some country of which the only thing I will see, again, will be the hotel room and the performance venue.
The girls dance wearing costumes that look like flowers, the boys dance wearing these funny strap-on grey plastic chests, muscles chiselled, making them appear half-Transformer, half-Hallowe'en costumed. I figure out that they are to represent the “evil” side. When their “leader” had appeared on stage, he looked better fitting to a Metallica concert, with black pants, a black t-shirt with a Celtic logo screenpainted on the front, a mast covering his eyes and nose, and black bands over his forearms. He was cute, at least. Mikey Junior just looked like a poseur.
Later, when the girls chorus is doing a dance, all of a sudden they rip off their quasi-Celtic mini-robes to expose black velour sports bras and matching knickers. I cringe.
At one point, the “temptress” appears. (She was wearing some red, deeply cleavaged, laced-bodice mini-dress.) This chick was, hands down, the best dancer. Her leaps looked like a gazelle, her hands like butterflies, her footwork like, well, an expert Irish dancer's. And the expressions on her face were enough to convince anyone of her sincerity.
Otherwise, we were relegated to a battle of good versus evil over the rhinestone-encrusted Lord of the Dance belt (complete with much masculine stomping of feet, akimbo arms and robot-like movements), which, at the end, is rescued by the yellow sprite.
Then everyone is happy and they do a dance of joy in fluorescent costumes, the guys in pants and polos, the girls in mini-skirts and sports bras. I have not seen such colours since the late 1980s. I feel like it's time to Jazzercise.
The only part of the show that I missed, and one that I would have really liked to see, was during the final round of applause. I am turned around, staring at a packed NDK, remarking how the audience is reacting to the show. Some random guy decides to jump on stage and, I don't know, try and take a photo or something. But all that I caught was the lightening-like reaction of the stage crew, and a pair of brown-shorted legs being dragged off stage left.
Was it worth it all? If I had paid 150 leva or even 70 leva to see the show, I would have felt cheated. Sometimes, even with the press pass, I still think that it would have been better if all that had been collected in my mind were long-ago images of a glamourous European spectacle, seen from a television screen.
