Young Irish dancer tells how his talents were tapped

By BERNADETTE RAE

At just 18 years of age, Bobby Fox was the baby of the cast of To Dance on the Moon when he joined as its principal male dancer last July.

Now the world champion-level tap dancer, veteran of Riverdance and Dancing on Dangerous Ground, is the second-youngest in the 20-strong crew of dancers, musicians and actor/singers, with the arrival of a new trouper, aged 17.

Billed as "the first ever Irish dance musical," To Dance on the Moon is the story of a young man's quest for meaning and love, entwined in Celtic mythology and Irish folk legend as well as the spirited, toe-tapping, clenched elbow "step dance," Irish music and song.

While the message may be old, the performance remains a young person's game. The most senior cast members are barely 25.

And Fox is "having the time of his life," he announces in rolling brogue, from a bus heading towards Brisbane from - wherever it was they spent the last night. Fox hasn't a clue what the name of the place in which he began the day might be.

The schedule is hectic, the dancing fast and furious and the constant "battering" - the percussive rhythm of feet on floor - takes its toll on knees and backs, he says of life on the road Down Under.

But Fox has a girlfriend in the cast, female lead dancer Alanna McCrudden, and the parties and barbecues they are invited to at every new destination make up for the long hours travelling with little to do but eat, sleep and press buttons on a Gameboy.

Fox was 16 when he joined Riverdance and toured central and eastern America and Canada. That was "the best experience ever" for a lad straight out of school. But even brighter opportunities beckoned.

In his first weeks with To Dance on the Moon he was able to perform for his family in Ireland, then toured Europe before heading for Australia and New Zealand. Irish dancing has been a huge part of his life, he says, since he began his first classes, aged four.

Fox's character in To Dance on the Moon is Daigh, whose ruling passion is dance. But his father insists he pursue a "proper" job. Fox's real-life story is a little different.

"Dancing for me was a family thing. My parents love Irish dancing and all my sisters were doing it, so I did it too, from the age of four. I might have given it up as a kid - if I could have," he confesses.

But while he did get "slagged off" a bit as a youngster, he enjoyed the competitive side of dancing. His success came from the usual combination, he says, of some raw talent - and practice, practice, practice.

"Now Irish dancing is a life - my life," he says.

The claim for Fox is that he is "number three in the world" in tap dancing and promises a challenge to the Guinness Book of Records' listing of "38 taps a second" while in New Zealand. None of that, says Fox, is too important to him, personally.

"I had a go at the Guinness record thing in Sydney," he says. "It was organised as a promotion for the show. I found out about it on the plane about half an hour before. I managed 19 or 20 taps a second, I think.

"It is not important to me, at all, but it has to be said there are ways of cheating it. There are lots of techniques - even different sorts of shoes. Irish shoes are not the same as tap shoes. Some types of shoe can double up your beats."

Being the fastest tap dancer in the world might not interest Fox, but improving his technique and bringing new depths to his style does.

While To Dance on the Moon represents the strictly traditional Irish dance style, with the arms held close to the side, and the music has resisted the trend set by other Irish dance spectaculars to introduce Spanish and East European rhythms, the lead dancers have some artistic licence, says Fox.

He has studied under a number of top Irish dancers and incorporates all those influences in his performance.

He also borrows the "fluidity" of jazz-tap and the "passion and heart" of flamenco and would like to study, more seriously, these other dance forms.

"Being the fastest tapper in the world is one thing," he says. "Doing what I do the very best I can, that is another."

* To Dance to the Moon will be performed at Founders Theatre, Hamilton, on Friday and at the Aotea Centre, Auckland, on Sunday.