‘Oh, have you seen the kid from Chicago?’
That was the buzz going around the competitions across America about this local ‘wonder kid’ of Irish dancing.
When I was doing the workshops in America there would be a feis in places like Cleveland one weekend, and Buffalo the next. We’d all travel and gather at those feiseanna, and I began to hear the name Michael Flatley cropping up quite a lot.
He had created huge excitement among people who’d seen him dance.
I was intrigued by this young guy’s reputation and was looking forward to the day I would see him dance.
* * *
It was his smiley face that first caught my attention when Michael was pointed out to me at a competition, as I finally got to watch him in action when he was about fourteen years old. He had gorgeous hair, laughing eyes and buckets of charm. Even before he took a step, I could see that this little guy had something special about him. In show business today, they call it the X factor. Whatever that is, it’s a magic ingredient.
When Michael got up on stage that day, he charmed the judges. But he didn’t have to use his words, because his feet did the talking.
I was just mesmerised watching him dance. He was way ahead of his time. Where everybody else was doing the solid rhythm and beat, Michael was performing syncopated stuff that had everybody asking, ‘Where are those sounds coming from?’ He only has one pair of feet, but it sounded like there were dozens of pairs hitting the floor. The sounds were coming from his toes, his heels, the middle of his shoes … all at the same time. He was amazing. I had never seen the like of it.
I remember meeting Michael later when I was over at another feis in America. Matt Meleady was with me, and as we were walking around the venue we bumped into Michael and his younger brother, Pat. They were two lovely, mannerly young guys.
‘Hello, Mr Meleady,’ Michael said.
Matt then introduced me to the two little lads, who seemed quite shy at the time, as young teens usually are.
They were both familiar with Inis Ealga because by then our school was a huge name in the competitive world of Irish dancing, as we had won every title going in every age group.
Our success would not have escaped Michael’s attention. He would have seen the performances of our solo dancers and the huge number of titles that they won. He would also have seen our choreography and figure dancing, so I guess that’s where Michael first noticed my work.
Later, he had many of my dancers in his first lineup with Riverdance at the Eurovision, and I know that he appreciated their training and he knew that I was the teacher who had trained them.
As a competitive dancer, Michael won numerous competitions in North America and Ireland, but it wasn’t until 1975 that ‘the kid from Chicago’ finally became a world champion when he competed at the Mansion House in Dublin.
A frisson of excitement swept through the hall at the World Championships that year as word spread that ‘the kid from Chicago’ was competing for a top honour. The interest in young Michael Flatley was phenomenal.
You could hear people in corners and corridors asking: ‘What time is this kid from Chicago on? What age group is he in?’ and so on.
He was a superstar before he even appeared on stage that day.
Of course, Michael was going to be restricted in what he could do as a competitive dancer, having to dance to strict rhythm and time. There was a particular speed he had to adhere to. It was only in the set dance that he could do freestyle, but even then he had to keep his arms down by his side, which he obviously found really frustrating.
When Michael’s dance came around, he was like a magnet drawing people from every nook and cranny in the building. Everybody piled into the hall to see this amazing kid that they’d either heard about or had seen at other competitions. It’s not an exaggeration to say that he created electricity in the room.
And then a silence fell over the hall when he stepped up.
Michael’s first dance was the light round, followed by a heavy dance, either a jig or a hornpipe. Then came the pièce de résistance, the freestyle set dance that he had choreographed himself. Jaws dropped as he took off like a rocket with his hands down by his sides. Rhythm-wise, whatever you could fit to the music was up to you. Well, what he did to the music nobody had ever seen before. He was so thrilling and mesmerising to watch. He made the straight arms, straight-looking dancing, look sexy. His feet were going at a hundred miles an hour. He was even doing moon walks. And when he finished it was probably one of the first times that somebody in competition got a standing ovation.
Even on that day, the teenage Michael Flatley was iconic.
Needless to say, the seven judges were equally blown away by Michael’s performance, and Irish dancing had a new world champion.
Michael Flatley never danced in competition again to my knowledge. Once he had achieved his ultimate goal, the world champ moved on.
I heard some time later that he was running his own dance school in the Midwest of America.
The next time I met him, Michael was dancing with Irish traditional music superstars The Chieftains at the 1984 Special Olympics in Dublin. I was still with Inis Ealga and we’d been asked to put on an Irish dancing display at the event. This was a huge undertaking for us as we brought in all the other schools around Leinster, and we had about 200 dancers performing in different formations that day. We rehearsed the troupe a couple of times a week in the build up to the big event, and then we spent the day of the opening ceremony putting them through their paces at the venue for our massive exhibition of dancing.
Someone said to me on the day: ‘The Chieftains are over on another stage and I hear that Michael Flatley is dancing with them.’
I decided to go looking for Michael, just to say hello.
It was springtime and the weather was very cold and wet as I made my way across to the stage where The Chieftains would be performing later. As luck would have it, Michael was there at that moment. He had matured in looks since I’d last seen him, but he still had the lovely hair and big, warm welcoming smile that I remembered.
Michael knew me straight off, and he gave me a big hug. As we were chatting I was shivering because I was underdressed for the biting cold of the day. Michael spotted my discomfort, and then the well-reared young gentleman took off a black leather jacket he was wearing and insisted that I put it on to warm up.
Later, I went over to see him dance with The Chieftains, and then he came over to watch our big display. We chatted some more afterwards, and I returned his leather jacket to him. And then we parted company with another big hug.
Michael always made you feel good when you were around him.
It was a decade later when I saw Michael again – this time he was on television, dancing at the interval of the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest in Riverdance. I was at home that night with Ian in our house on Western Avenue, Prudhoe. Although there had been a veil of secrecy around the Riverdance number at Eurovision, I knew there was a big performance coming up with some of the girls that I’d trained. Some of them told me, even though they weren’t supposed to let out a whisper.
But I still wasn’t prepared for what I saw.
As I sat and watched, I was filled with joy, but I also became a bit tearful because it had been only six months since I’d left some of those girls. They were my girls, and I was so proud of them as I snuggled up to Ian on our couch and watched the performance unfold on television.
Then Michael Flatley and Jean Butler exploded on to the stage in front of them and I got a jolt. I had never seen anything like that before in my life. It was sensational: a moment of magic that lit a fire and spread a love of Irish dancing around the globe. And it’s still blazing to this day.
Michael put Irish dancing on the map worldwide that night, and even in Ireland itself.
There’s now a feis in nearly every European country every weekend. Last year I was judging them myself in cities like Milan and Moscow.
A
nd that’s all down to the night Michael Flatley exploded on to the stage and became an overnight superstar at the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest.
* * *
What Michael and Jean did was completely new to me that night, but I was familiar with ‘the line’ because whenever Inis Ealga did big festivals around Europe we always performed a big line dance similar to Riverdance, except we did it to a hornpipe. Lily Comerford, who was a famous name in Dublin for Irish dancing going back to when I was a kid, always did a line too to end a big dance number, so that feature went back a long way. Lily, incidentally, was also famous for her black jackets and tan skirts.
I remember ‘the line’ serving us well when I was a young dance teacher with Inis Ealga and we were invited to represent Ireland at the Dijon Festival in France. The offer came from one of the Irish government departments, but we didn’t realise how prestigious it was when we set off with our gang of about twenty young dancers.
Later we would discover that it was like the Olympics of folk dancing. In typical Irish fashion, we had to make our own way there, setting off with our suitcases in hand, carrying our gear and travelling by hackney cabs, train and boat. We eventually got there to find groups from every continent represented; they all had the ministers from their governments with them, and they were chauffeured around in big buses.
We didn’t realise going out that it was a competition and that we were judged from the moment we arrived on several aspects, including our appearance, behaviour and performance.
I remember one very formal lunch attended by dignitaries where our group was completely baffled by the array of cutlery in front of us. We didn’t know where to start or finish with them. As far as I can recall we were being judged on our knowledge of etiquette that day. I think we acquitted ourselves well enough, and the friendliness and good manners of the little Irish group seemed to go down very well.
Of course, we also had our secret ‘weapon’ with us: a tiny ten-year-old boy called Donal Conlon.
Little Donal was cute with lots of talent as a dancer. He caught the eye of every delegation from the get-go. In every venue we’d go to, the crowds starting chanting, ‘Donal! Donal! Donal!’ Donal had become famous very quickly for his ‘clacks’, as the locals called it. He was able to click his heels high up in the air. It was visually exciting to watch, so Donal instantly grew a fan club.
As the days went on, we realised from the headlines in the local newspapers that Ireland was getting great praise, with Donal’s ‘clacks’ being singled out for mention. Whenever he would clack way above his head the crowd would go wild.
On the Sunday night, the final night of the festival, we were among the countries chosen to dance in the mega-concert. By now, we realised we were in a competition and it was serious business. This was both nerve-racking and exciting.
Every delegation had a guide, and our guy was so proud that his group had been doing so well up to then. That afternoon when we were given the order of our appearance on stage to perform, he got really excited. Although the guides knew what was going on, they weren’t allowed to tell us.
Our guide might have been happy with our position, but we were chosen to dance last. Maybe he had a bet on one of the other countries to win, I thought. Nevertheless, we gave the performance of our lives as a group of dancers. We had to start and finish on the dot of twenty minutes.
We always completed displays like that with a hornpipe, speeding it up at the end, and finishing really fast in a big, long line – just like Riverdance years later. And that’s how we ended our performance that Sunday night in Dijon to tumultuous applause.
When the results came, I was braced for disappointment because I thought we had finished way down the line.
Then it was announced: ‘Irelande sa dor’ … Ireland for gold.
We had won gold for Ireland!
It was an unforgettable moment, one that still gives me a tingle when I think about it today.
* * *
One Sunday night in February 1996, after Ian and I arrived back from our few days at Danny Doherty’s school in Coventry, there was a message on my answering machine.
This was pre-mobile phones when the landline was still the king in the world of communication. As I listened to the message, the voice was unmistakeable.
‘Hello, is this the Marie Duffy I’m looking for? This is Michael Flatley here. If it is, can you call me back on this number …’
I never imagined how that call would change the course of the rest of my life.
Birth of a Lord
I was now happily ensconced in Prudhoe, and I loved my life there with Ian.
Prudhoe is a small village in Northumberland, with one of the notable features being a castle which has been there since ancient times when England was at war with Scotland.
The village had a lovely atmosphere, and the people were very friendly and welcoming. You wouldn’t go to Prudhoe for the weather, though, because it’s cold there most of the time, yet I thought I’d died and gone to heaven when I went to live in that part of the world with Ian.
Ian’s house wasn’t luxurious, but it was really lovely and very comfortable. One of my passions in life is interior decorating and design; it’s something I would have been interested in doing professionally if I’d had the opportunity earlier in life. While I have no training, I have a natural flair for it and I made some suggestions to Ian about changing the interior of the house. Ian was a great DIY man, so we both worked on making alterations and decorating what was now our home together. That was a labour of love for the two of us.
* * *
Ian’s invitation at Newcastle Airport to ‘go for a pizza sometime’ when we first encountered each other still hadn’t been fulfilled.
Every now and then, after we married, one of us would say: ‘How about going for that pizza?’
It was a joke between us, as we’d talk about that morning when we had first chatted in the airport.
Eventually, though, we did go for a pizza together. The Metro Centre, situated between Gateshead and Newcastle, was at that stage one of the newer shopping malls in Europe. It was very fancy, with nice restaurants and cinemas, and we both loved it.
One afternoon we decided that we’d spend the evening there, finally having our famous pizza with a bottle of wine, and then catching a movie. We got there with lots of time to spare before the movie was due to be screened. We had our pizza and wine, and then we checked our watches and reckoned there was enough time left for another bottle. So we sat and chatted … and finished the second bottle.
We were both now full of the joys of wine as we strolled arm-in-arm into the cinema.
Then I turned to Ian and said, ‘All my life I’ve heard about the back row at the movies. What happens in the back row?’
Ian laughed.
‘Well, let’s sit in the back row and find out,’ he said.
So we sat in the back row. Before the movie had even started we both dropped our heads … and then we snoozed our way through the film from beginning to end.
As we woke up, the credits were rolling.
On the way out we giggled like two teenagers.
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘so that’s what happens in the back row at the movies!’
When I reflect on that idyllic period in my life, I realise that I probably didn’t really start to live until I met Ian. Up to then, my life had been a constant whirlwind, driven by my commitments to Irish dancing. Ian taught me how to live by just doing ordinary things and enjoying everything you did, even simple things like going for a walk. Like so many people, I hadn’t been living in the moment. I wasn’t stopping to smell the flowers. I was allowing life to pass me by at a terrifying speed.
Ian taught me how to relax, and it was a blissful period in my life with him. I had never known such happiness.
One of our greatest pleasures was going for a meal to a quaint little local Italian restaurant called Il Piccolo in Prudhoe, run by a handsome Sicilian chef, Manuele Orto, and
Pam, his lovely English wife. Pam had met Manuele on a trip abroad when they were both young people, and they had settled in Prudhoe after they got married.
Manuele is a chef extraordinaire, while Pam is also an exceptional person in her role as front of house in the restaurant. She is a very warm, homely lady, whom you instantly feel has been part of your life forever.
When Manuele would finish his work as a chef in the kitchen, he’d then join his customers in the restaurant and entertain everyone with his great Sicilian sense of humour.
As Ian and I got to know Pam and Manuele, eventually becoming close friends as couples, we learned that they used to refer to us as ‘Romeo and Juliet’ when we first started going to their restaurant.
‘You know who is in tonight?’ Pam would say to Manuele.
‘Romeo and Juliet?’ he’d laugh.
I guess they gave us that name because they saw a happy couple who were very much in love.
* * *
Michael Flatley’s message intrigued me when I listened to it on our house phone in Prudhoe after returning from working with Danny Doherty’s class in Coventry that Sunday night. I was so curious that I decided to phone him back straight away, despite the late hour.
By now, Michael had left Riverdance, in controversial circumstances. As he would later recount in his own autobiography, there was conflict between himself and Moya over his role in the show. Moya Doherty, he said, had raised the money to put Riverdance on the road. She regarded him as the star of the show, but also saw him as an employee.
Michael, on the other hand, acknowledged that Riverdance could not have happened without Moya. But, because he had created the dance, Michael insisted that Riverdance was ‘my baby’. The night before the Riverdance show was due to open in London for the second time in October 1995, Michael was sacked as negotiations broke down over his contract.
Lady of the Dance Page 10