Patrick’s Day celebration, and perhaps to restore a bit of national pride along the way. The Gathering is essentially an attempt to paint the globe green again in a year-long St. But though a quarter of that population, about 15 million people, claims some Irish heritage, their visitor numbers are going south as well, with a 6 percent decline last summer compared to 2011. Until recently, the Brits were filling in the gap with short hops. The problem is that the sense of meaningful ethnic identity is evaporating, along with the passion that used to fuel Irish-American pilgrimages to the homeland, and so North American visits to Ireland are falling, falling. Twenty two American presidents have had Irish roots and so has Bob’s Your Uncle. We are talking Mohammad Ali and Barrack Obama, the Bushes, the Kennedys, the Reagan family, and the descendants of Ulysses S. Census Bureau found that over 36 million Americans –12 percent of the populace-reported Irish roots. The 2008 American Community Survey run by the U.S. Theoretically, the global school of fish is indeed vast.

The idea– which some call the return of the begging bowl-is to tap the descendants of the Diaspora to think Irish again and help their ancestral land’s beleaguered economy with a lengthy stay. In the 1990s, nearly 70 years after it became an independent nation, the Republic of Ireland began to emerge from its long period of economic stagnation.In the biggest Irish tourist initiative ever, the government and tourism agency Bord Failte have launched a 5 million-euro scheme called “The Gathering” which aims to coax 325,000 extra visitors to reconnect with their roots in the Old Sod in 2013. The article also considers the ways in which the EU and European regionalism inform the performance of national identity. Riverdance is contextualized by defining Ireland's role within the larger economy of the European Union (EU) and the ways in which national identity within a globalized perspective emerges during this period. This article examines how this performance of national identity branded Ireland as a distinctive cultural product in the globalized marketplace of the mid-1990s. Riverdance reimagined the economic and cultural possibility inherent in heritage products in the global market.

Premiering during the rise of Ireland's 'Celtic Tiger' economy, the show revealed a nation in transition, establishing a new global identity to match their new economic prowess. Riverdance's influence as a cultural product for Ireland positioned step dance as a major cultural signifier of Ireland. Irish dance production Riverdance appeared on the global theatre scene in 1995, and has since become synonymous with Irish culture.

Ireland's Heritage by Bord Fáilte