KATHERINE MacALISTER talks to Prodijig’s Alan Kenefick about winning Sky 1’s Got to Dance, being in Riverdance, and his new show Footstorm

Alan Kenefick is living the dream. Having fantasized about creating his own Irish dancing show, even as a small boy with tapping feet, here he is touring the UK with his new Prodijig show Footstorm, which has received standing ovations every night so far.

“It’s finally happening and is terrifying but exciting at the same time,” he grins. “So while it’s quite ‘out there’, I think people appreciate the risk because we’ve now done 14 shows and had 14 standing ovations.” When he says ‘out there’, Alan really means it, because this is no Lord Of The Dance.

Instead, Footstorm is based around the clash of two worlds and a broken time machine complete with alien creatures and an epic battle.

“It takes the audience a while to realise that there’s a whole story to experience and that they go on a journey with us and really get into it as the story evolves.

"So while we want to be the new Riverdance, we had to come up with something new, a big theatrical production.” And that’s exactly what Alan’s got.

What makes his achievement even more laudable is that the route he took was a twisted one because after getting together a troupe to appear on Sky 1’s Got To Dance, which Prodijig won along with the £250,000 prize, they then went to ground.

“We didn’t want to disappear never to be heard of again,” Alan explains, “so we used the money to take time off and write a new show, turning down everything while we did that, including a spot on The Ellen Degeneres Show in the US.

"It meant we had to get our heads down and get on with it, so we all moved in together and the money kept us afloat so that we could spend eight hours a day in the studio together, rather than having to gig to pay for it. It was a really intense part of my life, really tough, but I’m really proud of what we’ve achieved.”

Even so, Alan must have been terrified before Footstorm’s opening night in Dublin?

“We were too busy to think about failure, luckily, because we had to choreograph it, write it, cost it – every single day was taken up and then there we were on stage.” So what took him so long?

“We were all in Riverdance, which we loved. Except that after four years it gets a bit monotonous, but it’s hard to leave a well-paid job where you travel the world, making money, to create your own thing.”

And yet all the way through Riverdance, Alan was privately choreographing his own steps and doing solo performances.

“It’s always been about dancing – I went with my sister to dance classes aged nine because my mum said my feet were always tapping and they discovered I was a natural.

“I have rhythm and movement in my blood, Irish dancing falls out of me.”

“Riverdance was every Irish dancer’s dream. But I always wanted to do my own show.” Now he has achieved it, how does it feel?

“I’m very proud of my Irish dancing and am never going to get away from it completely, so I would have been devastated if Footstorm hadn’t worked out.

“But now I’m already thinking about ideas for another show because I’ll always be a fan of Irish dancing. Who knows, we might even get Footstorm to the West End or Broadway,” he says over his shoulder as he rushes back to rehearsals.

As I said, living the dream.

Prodijig comes to Oxford’s New Theatre tomorrow night with Footstorm.
Go to atgtickets.com/oxford or call the box office on 0844 871 3020