Irish Riverdance
Riverdance displays modern Irish culture while it is based on an old,
influential culture with a love of complicated stories and poetic styles and
prevailing from the 6th century to the 9th
century. ⅠThe development of Riverdance
1) With (1) ______ starting in the 9th century this
ever-influential culture (1)
______ declined and never recovered indeed. The
traditional love of story and song existed in a
form the peasants liked and without a distinctive Irish style till
the (2) ______ beginning at the end of the 19th
century.
(2) ______ 2)
The Irish love of music has succeeded in surviving the change from
Irish, (3) ______ to the language of the invader
and has once more begun to blos
(3) ______ som and become influential outside
the country. 3) Irish music was reduced to being the
language used in the countryside and (4) ______
as people moved to the cities, for young city people didn’t like
(4) ______ "peasant
music". However, this has begun to change and since the 1980’ s
has taken off. Many top singers in the world are Irish and quite a
number of people are working for the music
industry in Ireland. Riverdance is an ex-
pression of that (5) ______ and that ability to understand the new.
(5)
______ Ⅱ Riverdance is also a kind of (6) ______ interesting
pop song. (6)
______ 1) It uses song and dance to tell the story of a
people whose spirit the Great Famine broke.
As a result of this famine, two million people died or left
Ireland by 1851 and (7) ______ continued to decrease until
1961.
(7) ______ 2) People with ideas left for (8)
______ The Irish in Ireland became hopeless
(8) ______ and unconfident and much
of its modem culture is about the sadness of that
time and the sorrow of saying goodbye to those who left. There is (9)
______ (9) ______
for this saying goodbye--"American Wake".
3) The leaving didn’t cease until the 1970’ s because Independence in 1921
was followed by a civil war and an economic
depression. Now it is common to see along
(10) ______ from that time falling into ruin.
(10)
______