RIVERDANCE Dancer Was Passenger On Air France Flight From Brazil

Eithne Walls, a former dancer with RIVERDANCE, was one of the passengers aboard the missing Air France flight. The plane, which disappeared Monday, contained 228 people and is thought to have crashed into the Atlantic Ocean.

Eithne Joined Riverdance in 1998 as a member of the Flying Squad and then danced full time with the Broadway production at the Gershwin Theatre in New York. For 18 months she lived and worked in New York and like the entire company of Riverdance, became a New Yorker. She later joined the show for its first run at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin in 2004. She left the show to study medicine at Trinity College in Dublin.

Those close to Eithne share that she was someone who once you had met her you would never forget her. She always had a smile on her face and she just seemed to be always happy and enjoying life. However that constantly smiling face did not mean that she was simply skimming through life, far from it, anyone who travelled with Eithne will remember the medical books always on the go and her constant attention to her studies.

She was in her 20s and from Ballygowan, County Down, Ireland and had been dancing for over 20 years winning a variety of medals in at variety Irish, American, national and world championship competitions.

Eithne just started a job at an eye, ear and throat hospital in Dublin. She was on vacation with two other young Irish doctors.

The thoughts and prayers of all of us here at BroadwayWorld are with her family and friends at this time.