TikTok's Gardiner Brothers are taking to the stage at the Gaiety Theatre to perform the iconic Riverdance.
Michael and Matthew are Irish-American dancers and choreographers who are currently living in Galway. The lads have racked up a whopping total of 2.2 million TikTok followers to date in the hopes of spreading Irish culture around the world.
Riverdance is celebrating 25 years this year and their shows are already on in Dublin - and of course, the lads are the stars of the show.
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Michael told Dublin Live: “Matthew and I were both asked to audition for the lead roles in Riverdance, it took us 10 weeks to train and the two of us were successful. I did my first lead show in Boston and Matthew did his in Chicago which is obviously a dream of ours.
“We go to the gym and lift weights as part of our fitness routine. We’ve to be very athletic. We burn a lot of weight in terms of cardio. We’re always practising throughout the tour. You’ve to stay physically fit and look after your body, it’s a part of the job.
“It’s the best win to see the world, we’ve been to China, Japan, all over North America, Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales - and that’s just with Riverdance. You get months of experiencing different cultures and different locations.
“We were both asked as part of Riverdance to perform for the Pope in Croke Park in 2018. It was brilliant, we both choreographed a special piece for that gig. There were 100 of us dancing that day. He’s the most famous person we performed for.”
The pair were born in Denver, Colorado. Their parents are Irish and they thought it was important for Michael and Matthew to have Irish culture in their lives growing up.
Michael said: “There wasn’t a really big music scene in Denver, both of our parents are musicians but there was a dancing scene. They put our older sister, Hannah into a dance class and when I was about four, I stuck my head in and enjoyed it. Then Matthew came along and it was a part of his everyday life.
“We’ve been involved in dancing the whole way up. We moved back to Ireland in 2006 and joined the Hession School of Irish Dance in Galway. We’re very grateful for them, they made us the dancer and people that we are today. We competed the whole way up and entered world championships.”
Meanwhile, Matthew added: “I was three years old when I started, I almost didn’t have a choice in a way. I was thrown into it, as the youngest child I was just following the older ones. It was a part of my way of life and I’ve never looked back.”
Michael admitted that it has been tough at times to deal with the people who see dancing as being a girls activity - but they didn’t let it bring them down.
He continued: “Like anything, there’s always someone who has something to say. We definitely got that by being boys in dancing. There’s that stereotype, but we danced our way through and didn’t care.
“Riverdance has always been in our lives. We saw it for the first time when we were in Denver all those years ago. It was something we always looked up to. Michael Flatley was the male dancer we looked up to. In 2015 we both auditioned for Riverdance and we started touring.”
Matthew said: “We had a lot of boys in our class and we looked up to them. It made it very inclusive, but obviously we enjoyed having girls in the class too. The Hession is known for having great male dancers, so that helped and we had plenty of banter with that too. Deep down, Irish dance is in everyone’s blood.
“We’ve grown our social media to 2.2 million followers on TikTok in the past two years. We wanted to promote more modern and versatile Irish dancing, showcase Irish culture to wider audiences, push the boundaries and show the younger generation.”
You can book your tickets to Riverdance here.
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