Record breaking day

Most Irish dancers dream of someday dancing with Riverdance. Today for 1629 dancers that dream came true.

Earlier in the year Riverdance announced that they wanted to host a world record attempt on the 21^st of July as part of the Gathering Ireland to have the longest line of Irish dancers in the world. Once I found out I was off work on the day I registered to take part. I got the video of the steps needed,  I’m not a fantastic champion dancer I don’t pretend to be but I did my best teaching myself  the steps. Then today I went along to Dublin for the record attempt. There was a fantastic buzz with everyone so excited to be there, taking part and dancing with the Riverdance troupe. The troupe all lined the Samuel Beckett bridge over the River Liffey and the rest of the dancers lined each side of the River Liffey.  Once everyone was in line, first over 600 of us danced the Riverdance step and then everyone else joined in and we danced basic skip 2, 3’s. They made the official announcement and we did indeed break the World Record which was previously held by Nashville with 652 people dancing in a continuous line.

Some of the troupe passed us as we were lining up:

Dancers as far as you can see:

 

We made it onto many news sites online as well as RTE and BBC news. This is a list of just some of the sites the news of the record breaking line appeared on :
Riverdance website
Breaking news: World Record for Longest Riverdance line report
thegatheringireland.com
rinceinniu.ie
BBC: Riverdance break world record
Ireland am
The Irish Times website also reported on the longest line
The Guardian.co.uk
The Irish mirror.ie
Digital Spy
Euronews.com
belfasttelegraph.co.uk
thejournal.ie
98fm.com
newstalk.ie - - I'm in the video on this page :)
independent.co.uk
irishexaminer.com
bestbits.ie
spin1038.com
irishcentral.com
leinsterexpress.ie
My old dance school
It was even on american news sites - kmov.com
as well as RTE
WorldIrish.com had photos and videos of the day
I love the comment at the start of this video "You're all going to be part of history"
 The list goes on. 

I had to edit to add in the news of the record breaking longest line made it into a few of Mondays newspapers as well:
The Irish Mirror:

The Sun:

 The Irish Times:

The Irish Daily Star: 

The Irish Independent's article spanned two pages: 

I think that last bit is my favourite because it really captures how tough it was. I don't normally dance for a continuous five minutes. I've done shows before with the old dance school I was in and even those we never danced for a full five minutes without stopping. The Riverdance steps weren't so bad because you could follow how many sets you'd danced but the skip 2,3's seemed to go on forever. The dead legs were worth it to have been part of the longest line though.

Record well and truly broken I then went along to see Riverdance the show in the Gaiety Theatre. It was brilliant. Full of Flamenco, Russian, Ballet, Tap and of course Irish dance and music it was just the perfect way to complete the day after breaking a world record.

There it is officially on the Guiness World Records site:
Longest line