Dancing enriched whiteness: race and gender in commercial Irish dance performance from Riverdance to the Trump Inaugural Ball

Abstract

ABSTRACT In January 2017, Michael Flatley introduced male members of the cast of Lord of the Dance performing at President Donald Trump’s Inaugural Ball. Flatley’s decision for the cast to perform at the Inaugural Ball was widely criticised as showing support for a white nationalist president. In this article, I demonstrate how this performance – and the implicit aligning of Irish dance with white American nationalist rhetoric – were not aberrant but in fact followed a trend developed in commercial Irish dance stage shows of the late 20th century. Through an analysis of the early performances and rhetoric surrounding Riverdance and Lord of the Dance in the mid-late 1990s, I demonstrate how Irish American whiteness is performed in these shows and directly contributes to Irish American identity as a form of what Diane Negra calls “enriched whiteness.” I further argue that the Inaugural Ball performance built on this history, embodying white nationalist hypermasculinity through the use of Irish dance and American nationalist projections alongside the exclusion of women.