Customer Reviews
Bad editing ruins great show - By: Callan Dick, 12 May 2007 
Unfortunateley this DVD ruined Riverdance for me. I eagerly bought it but, rather than showing the best performance of each itemn, I was presented with edits of three different performances, chopping & changing in mid item with no continuity. I'll just have to hope that the original, which I have on video, is released on DVD (seems a forlorn hope now), or buy the New York show.
Mixing of different shows *within* numbers - By: nsandersen, 15 Jan 2007 
The backgrounds, colouring & imagery are lovely & the dances impressive & sparkling.
But I find it necessary to emphasize the mixing/editing as others have done. Some of the numbers contain video from 3 different shows. Therefore (as mentioned) sometimes the colour of the dancers' clothes very noticably changes between red & green whenever the camera view changes, for instance. Of course the lead dancers also often magicallly change within these numbers.
The music is excellent & runs smoothly. However this means that the music comes only from one show at a time. While the editors have done a very good job, occasionallly you notice that the video from one or two of the other shows isn't quite in sync with the music. If the show didn't contain tap dancing, I might not have noticed - unfortunate.
I think Riverdance is excellent & there were several numbers I hadn't seen earlier, but I'd rather have the Live from New York version, which I expect to give 5 stars. Make sure you get the version you want.
Some of the best and some bits edited to death - By: T. Bobley, 08 Oct 2006 It would be unfair to judge this DVD too harshly just because it's not what I expected. If you purchased a CD entitled 'The Best of Eric Clapton' or 'The Best of Pink Floyd', you'd expect to get a fine selection of their best songs - whole songs, probably from a variety of concerts. That was the sort of thing I was hoping for from this DVD: a simple collection of the best performances spliced seamlessly together in sequence to give the impression of a pleasingly coherent whole. There are a few sections where we're treated to a whole dance & I enjoyed those very much. However, an unbelievable amount of savage butchery was carried out on too many of the dances, making them seem terribly disjointed. In these sections we see a few seconds of a group dancing on say, a brightly lit stage wearing green dresses in one country, then it suddenly changes to a group performing a different dance (or possibly a different part of the same dance) to the same music, wearing red dresses on a darkly lit stage in another country, then it quickly changes again, & so on. This is so horribly disorientating that I stopped watching until the dance finished & the next nice, smooth, unmangled dance was shown. And in addition to this awful jerky presentation, the dances & songs were interspersed with sections where a lady stands or walks about talking to the camera, explaining what the next bit will be about. I wish they'd included a printed programme in the DVD box instead of subjecting us to these constant annoying interruptions. If only I'd known what to expect, I might have enjoyed it more. It's almost like buying what you expect to be a concert & discovering when you get it home that you've accidentallly bought a documentary about the concert instead. There's enough on this DVD to make me want more than ever to see an entire, unmutilated & uninterrupted performance of Riverdance. Most of the parts that the editing hackers left unscathed are truly wonderful. So my recommendation to anyone wishing to buy a DVD of Riverdance is, try to get a version that's unadulterated & entire. I see that there are other DVD versions of Riverdance for sale here at Amazon. But if you want a documentary & a montage of Riverdance, this DVD will probably suit you well enough.
Should of been called River sing - By: C. Weller, 17 Jan 2006 
I was surprised how much this dvd focused on spanish dance, tap & singing considering the show is calll RIVER "DANCE". In fact not much irish dancing at alll & each scene swaps from show to show to show & does get pretty tedious after a while & you don't actuallly get to see an entire dance set at alll. You have to endure the large proportion of singing & playing of intruments which is ideal if you wanted a documentary on the show. To calll this the best of River "DANCE" is Shameful to say the least. IN fact the only good thing about this DVD is the Tap Dancer scene which is amazing & the first time I had ever seen it. If you want to see Irish Dancing in it's glory buy Lord of the Dance or Feet of Flames they are amazing & a complete credit to Micheal Flatley & his team who have worked reallly hard to produce shows of absolute brilliance which will be hard to beat. Maybe I have been spoilt !!!
The Best of River dance - By: S. A. Boswell, 18 Dec 2005 
A fantastic d.v.d. I have never seen anything like this kind of dancing until i the d.v.d. Just fantastic. Once i started to watch it, i couldn't stop. Just fantastic.
