Latest news with #Titanic:ShipofDreams
Irish Independent
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
‘We're astonished by the reaction' – Irish dance crew's Titanic themed performance goes viral
A video of their dance Titanic: Ship of Dreams has now been watched more than 150,000 times and won considerable praise; not only for the standard of the dancing, but also for the storytelling they brought to the performance. What makes the achievement all the more impressive is it's the first time a team from the school, based across counties Armagh and Tyrone, took part in the competition. Gerard Carroll, the man behind the performance, said he'd like nothing more than to expand the performance for the stage given how well it was received at the Convention Centre and beyond. 'I'm astonished by the reaction we have been getting,' he said. 'Since I first opened the Irish dancing schools 13 years ago I've dreamed of being able to do something like this and to see the 19 dancers on stage, giving it their all and now thrilling so many people with the video of their performance, it's hard to believe it happened. 'We'd been working on the routine for a full year. 'There were a lot of tasks involved and a lot of moving parts to what finally came together on stage and for that everyone who has worked on this has to be immensely proud of their efforts. 'The first steps were writing the story, then composing the music, the choreography, and selecting 19 of our dancers suited to the roles and who could dedicate for a full year to what we wanted to achieve as a school. 'We visited the Titanic Museum in Belfast as a team for some initial inspiration for our piece as well as for some team bonding. It worked a treat.' One of Gerard's major obstacles was trying to fit his Titanic story into the six minutes the team was permitted for the performance. 'That was the rules for the competition,' he said. 'It would be a dream to expand the production as there were so many parts of Titanic's important story that we did not have time to include, for example the building of the ship, the stories of the emigrants, so there is a lot of scope for expansion. 'This was the first time our school has ever entered this competition, so we were surrounded by other schools who had a lot more experience in this category. "We debuted the performance at two separate dress rehearsals for family and friends, but when we performed it on the world stage, it was the first time we ever presented a piece like this for competition. 'We knew that we needed to work harder than anyone anticipated since we were totally new to this field of dance, and coming second in the world surpassed our expectations.' Despite the acclaim that has followed, Gerard says he has no hard feelings about not coming out on top. 'A team from Louth won and they were great too,' he said. 'Two of the five judges actually had us in first place and we were only 10 points from winning. 'Because dancing is so subjective they use the panel of judges who independently give their scores. I am an adjudicator myself and I know how difficult those decisions are to make.'
Belfast Telegraph
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Belfast Telegraph
Titanic Irish dance wins NI crew fresh fans around world
A video of their dance Titanic: Ship of Dreams has now been watched more than 150,000 times and won considerable praise; not only for the standard of the dancing, but also for the storytelling they brought to the performance. What makes the achievement all the more impressive is it's the first time a team from the school, based across counties Armagh and Tyrone, took part in the competition. Gerard Carroll, the man behind the performance, said he'd like nothing more than to expand the performance for the stage given how well it was received at the Convention Centre and beyond. 'I'm astonished by the reaction we have been getting,' he said. 'Since I first opened the Irish dancing schools 13 years ago I've dreamed of being able to do something like this and to see the 19 dancers on stage, giving it their all and now thrilling so many people with the video of their performance, it's hard to believe it happened. 'We'd been working on the routine for a full year,' he added. 'There were a lot of tasks involved and a lot of moving parts to what finally came together on stage and for that everyone who has worked on this has to be immensely proud of their efforts. 'The first steps were writing the story, then composing the music, the choreography, and selecting 19 of our dancers suited to the roles and who could dedicate for a full year to what we wanted to achieve as a school. 'We visited the Titanic Museum in Belfast as a team for some initial inspiration for our piece as well as for some team bonding. It worked a treat.' One of Gerard's major obstacles was trying to fit his Titanic story into the six minutes the team was permitted for the performance. 'That was the rules for the competition,' he said. 'It would be a dream to expand the production as there were so many parts of Titanic's important story that we did not have time to include, for example the building of the ship, the stories of the emigrants, so there is a lot of scope for expansion. 'This was the first time our school has ever entered this competition, so we were surrounded by other schools who had a lot more experience in this category. We debuted the performance at two separate dress rehearsals for family and friends, but when we performed it on the world stage, it was the first time we ever presented a piece like this for competition. 'We knew that we needed to work harder than anyone anticipated since we were totally new to this field of dance, and coming second in the world surpassed our expectations.' Despite the acclaim that has followed, Gerard says he has no hard feelings about not coming out on top. 'A team from Louth won and they were great too,' he said. 'Two of the five judges actually had us in first place and we were only 10 points from winning. 'Because dancing is so subjective they use the panel of judges who independently give their scores. I am an adjudicator myself and I know how difficult those decisions are to make.'
Times
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Titanic: Ship of Dreams review — as lavish as a White Star Line cabin
Everyone loves the tragic glamour of the Titanic — Downton Abbey at sea with that fateful iceberg looming up in the distance. More than 100 years on it still attracts a nerdily fetishistic curiosity. Even its most blandly inconsequential passengers have had their biographies written. Monographs are published about its soft furnishings. Billionaires risk their lives in futuristic submarines to probe its mouldering metal skeleton. If the Titanic had been an old rust bucket creaking across the north Atlantic without a palm court and millionaires there wouldn't be nearly as many films, books and podcasts. Titanic: Ship of Dreams is a chart-topping new podcast from the BBC and Noiser. As its title implies, it leans into the opulence. Indeed, it is something of a huge,
New Statesman
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New Statesman
How the Titanic sank
Photo by: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images The sinking of the Titanic is one of those historic events that only grows more vivid in our cultural imagination as the years go by. More than a century later, everyone has a friend with encyclopaedic knowledge of what happened, and there have been countless retellings across novels, Hollywood films and television dramas that have made even small details of the story notorious (the Case of the Missing Binoculars!). And here we have a major new podcast from the history company Noiser, hosted on BBC Sounds, which tells the story of the catastrophe over 13 lengthy episodes. Titanic: Ship of Dreams is narrated in ominous tones by Paul McGann, of Doctor Who and Withnail and I fame, who has a personal connection with events (his great-uncle, Jimmy McGann, was a trimmer down in the ship's engine room), and interspersed with the voices of experts, from historians to Julian Fellowes, creator of Downton Abbey and the 2012 TV drama Titanic. One talking head suggests there is only one story that is more popular 'in the history of mankind, and that is the story of how Jesus was crucified'. The pace is slow, yet it remains deeply compelling. Duncan Barrett's script is arresting and immediate. Unfolding in the present tense, it is full of human colour and overloaded with detail: not just crucial information such as the number of lifeboats and, yes, the location of the binoculars onboard, but the number of seconds it took for the ship to slide off the slipway and into the water at its launch on 31 May 1911 ('the longest 62 seconds in history') and the material used for the chairs in the Parisian-style bistro for first-class passengers (wicker). These small observations bring the ship vividly to life, and the scale of the project strikes us anew: not just the size of the vessel, but the number of people employed to build and sail it, the unfathomable luxury of the interiors, and the ambition with which it was executed. Clearly, the story has not been exhausted yet. [See also: The music of resistance] Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Related
Irish Examiner
22-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
Podcast Corner: Actor Paul McGann has a family link to tale of the Titanic
The Noiser network is home to dozens of history podcasts - over 600 episodes - ranging from Napoleon to Hitler to Sherlock Holmes and The Curious History, hosted by domestic historian Ruth Goodman and with episodes on sheds, laundry, bins, and heating. Noiser's latest series is one most of us in Ireland will be familiar with. Launched on April 8, Titanic: Ship of Dreams is hosted by actor Paul McGann ( Withnail and I, etc), who sets out what we can expect over the course of the series, from first designs and the years of construction in Belfast to 'the fateful voyage that sealed the ship's fate and beyond', considering some of the questions that haunt Titanic scholars more than 100 years later: Was the captain really ordered to increase speed, why were so many iceberg warnings ignored in the leadup to the collision, and with almost 1,200 places available on the lifeboats, why were only 700 people saved? Paul McGann's great-uncle James was on board the Titanic. There's a vivid soundscape underpinning McGann's rather grand narration - and if anything deserves such oratory, it's the biggest ship ever built. Consider this, early in the opening episode: 'For a moment, she looks like she won't move after all. Freed from her wooden moorings, the giant ship stands stock still, a towering immobile monument. Then almost imperceptibly, she begins sliding towards the water, gradually picking up speed, five, 10, 15 miles per hour. Finally, after the longest 62 seconds in history, Titanic floats freely for the first time.' McGann also has a personal connection to the story. His great-uncle James McGann is known in the family as Titanic McGann. An experienced 29-year-old Liverpool lad recently returned from a voyage to South Africa, he's signed up for Titanic's maiden voyage. 'I never met Uncle Jimmy,' explains Paul McGann. 'He died almost half a century before I was born. But my brother, Stephen, you might know him as Dr Turner from Call the Midwife, has managed to piece together his story.' He adds: 'By rights, Uncle Jimmy should have nothing to do with Titanic." There are more Swedes onboard than Irish, we are told in the third episode, Into the Atlantic, as the Titanic stops off in Queenstown (Cobh). There are also 154 Lebanese emigrants onboard - about 10% of passengers. Amid McGann's narration are talking heads and historians, who help explain such titbits, also expanding, on this particular episode, on some of the quirks of the menu and how Titanic even has its very own 'ice man', serving cocktails and desserts. Meanwhile, in Queenstown, a sinister omen is apparently spotted. Atop the ship's fourth funnel stands a figure, soot black from head to toe. Some of the more superstitious Irish visitors are convinced it's a harbinger of death. In fact, the ghoulish figure, reveals McGann, is one of the engine room workers. 'For all we know, it could have been my great uncle Jimmy.' Read More Culture That Made Me: Des Kennedy, the Belfast-born director of the Everyman in Cork
