Katherine MacAlister takes a look at a blisteringly successful show so intense there are ice buckets in the wings for the dancers to plunge their aching feet into.

AN ESTIMATED 1.3 billion Chinese watched the Riverdance TV special over the New Year.

Executive producer Julian Erskine just can’t get his head round viewing figures like that.

But he knows there is a huge untapped audience just waiting to scramble for Riverdance tickets when the show arrives in China. Which is why the Riverdance company is upping sticks and moving to the Orient.

We love it in this country too, but having had Riverdance on our shores for 14 years, it’s someone else’s turn. And it’s a slick production now, a far cry from the seven minutes of Irish dancing cobbled together by Erskine for a Eurovision show in 1994.

Being an Irishman, he didn’t see anything unusual in the performance, certainly nothing to make it a world-wide phenomenon, but Europe loved it.

“It came out of left field,” Julian recalls.

“We didn’t plan for world domination or to make a fortune, but here we are, and we’ve been running to keep up with the show ever since. It’s been flat out!

“In Germany we had to get extra security because we got treated like rock-and-roll stars,” he laughs.

“People’s reactions have been extraordinary.

“But what has kept it going is that even when people have seen it once, they keep coming back to see it again.”

It hasn’t all been plain sailing, though.

In Madrid, two roofers fixing a leak managed to set the Riverdance venue alight.

“We arrived with 14 articulated lorries of stuff and left with one, and it took eight weeks to get the show back on the road,” Julian remembers.

“And on our opening night in City Music Hall in New York, we assumed that somewhere that famous would have a sprung floor, but we were wrong,” he muses.

“The cast said there was no way they could perform without it. In the end, we had physios and masseuses around the clock in a sort of field hospital in the back room and the show went on.”

His dancers also get injured on a regular basis, however careful they are.

“The dancing really is quite punishing,” Julian admits, “because they jump really quite high with straight backs and arms by their sides ,so the shock that goes up through the body when they land is enormous.

“We use sprung floors to cushion the landing, otherwise the physical impact is too much.”

So how does he know when a dancer has got what it takes?

“It’s their scale and ability, and that X-factor that raises them above everyone else.

“But you have to remember all of our dancers are already award-winning when they come to us.”

So any regrets?

“If it was the end of the road for Riverdance then it would be desperately sad, but it’s not.

“We’re just moving on.

And yes, it is out of our comfort zone but seeing people in Japan reacting to Irish music is amazing.

“They absolutely love it, so it’s exciting.

“But it’s also what we do. That’s showbiz.”