Richard Griffin Richard Griffin (pictured below, on the left) is one of the most innovative and progressive choreographers of Irish dance today. He and his wife Margaret run jointly the Griffin-O'Loughlin School of Irish Dance, which is one of the most succesful dance schools of all time. They have won 35 World titles in every discipline - boys, girls, solo, ceili, dance drama and figure choreography. Richard has worked with various dance groups in Ireland, USA, Canada, Australia and Switzerland. He frequently attends workshops at the Irish Dance Academy in Luzern, Switzerland and is confident there will be Swiss dancers at the Worlds by 2001. To learn more about the Irish Dance Academy, click here. His son Emmett is also a superb dancer and is currently touring with Gaelforce Dance after previously dancing in Lord of the Dance for three years (including Feet of Flames in July 1998).
Doing live steps such as in Gaelforce Dance is not very easy for the dancers because they have to dance very exactly, but for a choreographer like Richard it is more easily to change one or the other part of the show basically overnight, if he feels it is necessary, without the need to produce a new tape with recorded steps and music. "Normally some parts of the show change every six months, and that's what is nice when we come back to the venue we visited before, the people can always notice some new stuff we choreographed - and we will keep those changes in the future too." Colm O Foghlu Colm (above, on the right) is not only a musician and composer but also a dancer. He studied dance from a young age with the world renowned O'Shea School of Irish Dance. He studied various instruments at both the Irish Academy of Music and the college of Music, Dublin, before joining the B. Mus. Programme, University College Cork. There he studied composition with Dr. Michael O'Suilleabhain, the leading authority on contemporary Irish music. Awards include R.T.E. Creativity Award, Feile Na d'Teangacha, Feile Pan-Ceilteach, Slogadh, Oireachtas, among others. 1997 he released his debut album "F. Choing". Colm is the producer and arranger of the Gaelforce soundtrack CD. Colm heads the Gaelforce Orchestra including Paul Ryan, Marek Czapelski, the fiddler Elzbieta (Ella) Haluk and singer Tara Ryan. He works very closely with Richard:"It's very important when Richard is composing steps that the rhythm of the music is complementary to the steps, so we sit down and talk about it. It starts mostly with a part of the story we feel the audience maybe isn't connecting with - so it starts mostly with the character and how we both feel the character should be, and than we try to make it as interesting and exciting as possible." |
Richard joined Gaelforce Dance in February 1999 when he was asked by Michael Durkan to choreograph the new show. Since than he has taken the role of Dance Director as well and has taken the show to a very high and enjoyable level. "We try to be different: more theatrical, and we stick to our policy to use the live steps. The spectators go to a theatre to see a live show and we think that they should get what they want. A show where we are in the marketplace needs to have all the edges that it can have, and being live is a very strong edge. I don't know if we stress that enough and if people are aware of that fact, but it is a big difference between being live or not."