Champions of Dance – Dublin Fringe Festival – Review
by Lesley-Ann Whelan

Location – Peacock Theatre,
Dates – 9-14th September

After a long day of work, followed by picking up the kids from afterschool, helping with their homework and making the dinner, the prospect of heading back up to Dublin was weighing heavily upon me. It might be almost blasphemous of me to say that I haven’t seen Riot, described by one reviewer as the most exhilarating spectacle of the 2016 Fringe. Nor had I, perhaps less blasphemously, seen Lords of Strut reach the semi-finals of Britain’s Got Talent in 2017. So, I wasn’t quite prepared for how exhilarating Champions of Dance was going to be. Lords of Strut are two half brothers- Sean-Tastic and Famous Seamus (Cormac Mohally and Cian Kinsella) and Champions of Dance is their origin story in the form of a dance-fantasy-opera. The brothers are the chosen ones who will save dance, much in the same way that Bill S Preston and Ted Theodore Logan would save the world by creating the ultimate rock band!

Since birth, their mother has trained them in dance, waiting for them to fulfil their destiny. But their dysfunctional family dynamic forces them off track as the brothers go on a journey to find out who is the father of Famous Seamus, all while attempting to defeat a secret organisation whose sole purpose is to destroy dance.

Champions of Dance demands lots of audience participation and is not for the faint hearted. When Mammy appeared out on stage several men in the audience began to sink in their seats, anticipating what was about to happen as Mammy plucked a gentleman and dragged him up on stage to find his lines of the script…well…where the sun don’t shine.

The physical acrobatics of the dance routines performed by Sean-Tastic and Famous Seamus are breath-taking. Through years of practice and thousands of performances they have honed their skills and perfect timing. Champions of Dance will promise you an hour of tears rolling down your face from laughing, a pain in your cheeks from smiling, a sore throat from cheering and chanting and pure exhilaration coursing through your veins. As there is limited ticket availability for this show, don’t delay and miss out. It is one show you will not regret going to, even on a school night.