However, while I was tough on dancers, I was always conscious of delivering my message in a way that would never undermine their confidence. And I do think they respected that what I was doing wasn’t being harsh with them for the sake of it; rather I was striving to instil a pride in their work and I was pushing them to bring out the best that I knew they had the ability to achieve.
In the decades that followed, I always received positive comments from the dancers I had worked with when they were moving on. I had letters and cards thanking me for the training and discipline that they got, and the experience and know-how they picked up in so many areas of work during their time with me.
So being ‘The Clog Witch’ maybe wasn’t so bad.
They all laughed at that description of me anyway.
As I said earlier, I also became a substitute Mammy to the young dancers who joined our shows. Lord of the Dance was like a big family and I was their mother figure.
All through my life I’d had experience of working with children and teenagers in Irish dancing classes, but it was a lot more challenging and intense when I was out on tour around the world with young people. You hear parents talking about what they have to cope with during their childen’s ‘difficult teenage years’.
Well, welcome to my world.
We had all of that on the scale of a small army, but I’m happy to say both the teenagers and I survived it.
Here I have to point out that, fortunately, considering the amount of young dancers who worked with us, we never had anything serious to cope with. It was just the usual stuff you’d expect from teenagers struggling to find their feet in the world, never mind on the stage.
Parents entrusted us with their children, and I took that responsibility seriously. I remember one dance teacher handing me over her lively young teenage son in London with the words: ‘Only it’s you, Marie, I wouldn’t let him go anywhere. I know you won’t let him get out of hand. That’s why I’m happy for you to take him in.’
It was a challenge for both of us, him as well as me, but actually that young fella turned out just fine. But everyone of the Lord of the Dance crew looked out for the young members of the cast. They were our assets and we never forgot our responsibility to them on a personal level.
The dance captains in Lord of the Dance were under strict instructions to contact me if any young dancer had a problem. If they were feeling sick or had any sort of small injury, they were not allowed to dance until they got a clearance that they were medically fit to perform. If a dancer had a minor trip or injury, he or she had to immediately pull out and be checked by the physiotherapist on duty. And if it was deemed that an X-ray was required, the dancer was immediately taken to a hospital or medical clinic.
That duty of care is something we took very seriously. I was on call twenty-four hours a day to deal with any problem like that.
As well as my role as mother, sometimes I was forced into the position of being an agony aunt, to the boys as well as the girls. We forget that boys are just as sensitive as girls.
However, I drew the line at mediating between couples who were having problems. I would listen, but I never took sides. I had quite a few broken hearts to deal with in my time, both male and female. But that’s life.
There were many times when I was confronted with the problem of couples being split up to work in different touring troupes with Lord of the Dance. Whenever we brought in a new batch of dancers, we’d mix up the troupes so that each would have a good balance of experience to maintain the standard we set. Sometimes this would mean couples being parted, which didn’t go down well. But we had made this clear when they joined up, so they understood that the show comes first.
Of course, there were times when dancers had the opposite problem after their relationships broke down. In that situation, they didn’t want to be in the same troupe together, but they just had to deal with it.
Whatever personal issues were going on among the dancers, come showtime they were expected to set them aside and give the performance of their lives on stage. That’s what people had paid good money to come and see. There are no sad days in show business. You have to banish them from your mind when the curtain goes up.
Michael Flatley was a typical example of that. When his father, Michael Snr, passed away in March 2015, in true show business tradition, despite his personal trauma and heartbreak, Michael went out and performed on stage in Lord of the Dance: Dangerous Games that same night.
* * *
Las Vegas is the entertainment capital of the world, so in July 1998, when we opened in our own theatre at the New York-New York Hotel and Casino, we knew that Lord of the Dance was now in the superstar league.
The Lord of the Dance venue wasn’t a hotel showroom, it was an actual theatre that would become a second home to the young dancers over the following years.
It is hard to imagine what went through the minds of those young people when they first arrived in Vegas, which, of course, is also the gambling Mecca of the world. They were teenagers who had been plucked out of their normal, everyday lives, and transported to this bizarre planet that is Las Vegas.
I had held auditions for this new Vegas troupe in a venue at the top of Parnell Square in Dublin, and the response had surpassed all my expectations. The queue seemed to go on for miles, snaking down the street and around the corner that day. Those who made the cut were then taken to Newcastle where I trained them up. It was an intense experience for them – and now here they were in Vegas.
They seemed to quickly adapt to their new lifestyle. It helped that we were surrounded in Vegas by really decent people, from the hotel staff to the technicians and the theatre ushers to bus drivers. They all treated the young dancers like their own children.
I had mixed in some experienced dancers with the troupe and seconded Catriona Hale and Declan Bucke as dance captains for Vegas.
Our other dance captains, Bernadette Flynn and Daire Nolan, ran the European shows in Troupe 1. Bernadette Flynn, who came from Nenagh, Co. Tipperary, was just a schoolgirl aged sixteen when she first joined the show, even though she was a six-time world champion at that stage. She would go on to establish the character of ‘the good girl’ and make it her own as she developed it through the years.
Bernadette retired from the show in 2010, but even to this day girls taking her place aspire to the standard that she set for the role.
Before Vegas came around we had also put out a second troupe to tour around America, with a team of new dancers and some experienced members from Troupe 1, including John Carey, Jimmy Murrihy, Cian Nolan, Fiona Harold, Damien O’Kane, Areleen Ní Bhaoil and Gillian Norris. They were the leads and dance captains.
Back in Vegas the dancers got to enjoy the perks of being in a hit show on The Strip. It was VIP treatment for them all the way in the local clubs, where they could skip queues with their LOD badges. They were living a teenage dream, having the life of Reilly.
We did two shows nightly and we had to adapt the performance to suit our Vegas audiences, cutting it back to forty-five minutes and running through without an interval. Visitors to Vegas are mainly there to gamble, so if we had a break in the show there was every likelihood that they wouldn’t come back. It’s the nature of Vegas; there are too many distractions.
But the Vegas show was a tremendous success and it would run for four years.
The reputation of Lord of the Dance spread throughout the showbiz world and soon the show was attracting major celebrities. Singers Tom Jones and Shania Twain were among the first to check us out in Vegas, as was soccer legend Pelé. Tom Jones went out with the cast afterwards and he didn’t stop raving about the show all night. Years later we went to see him in concert when we were in Paris, and he invited us to his after-show party. That night Tom was still talking about our Vegas show.
A lot of boxers came to see Lord of the Dance, probably because Michael had been a boxer and often talked about his love of the sport in media interviews. Mike Tyson was in
the audience one night, and I hope we knocked him out with our performance. I just couldn’t resist that!
Steve Collins, known as ‘The Celtic Warrior’ and one of the most successful fighters in Irish boxing history, was living in Vegas while we were playing at the New York-New York hotel. Steve came to see the show several times and would always come back and spend time with the cast when the show was over. One of our dancers, Jimmy Murrihy, reckons having us there made Steve feel that he was back in Dublin.
Wayne ‘Pocket Rocket’ McCullough, a champion boxer from Belfast, was living and working in Vegas when we later moved to the Venetian hotel, and the boys in the troupe played soccer with him a couple of times a week.
Speaking of soccer, the male dancers from Scotland started a Celtic Football Supporters Club in Las Vegas. Every week they would roam out into the small hours of the morning to watch Celtic matches on TV. I believe that their Las Vegas Celtic Supporters Club was even featured in the official Celtic magazine back home.
As the years went on our dancers grew accustomed to seeing famous faces in the audience at performances, and at the after-parties. It was always a thrill for all of us to meet celebrities. Michael Caine came to one of our early shows at Wembley Arena in London. Ian was still alive at the time and I remember him being very excited to meet that wonderful actor because he was such a huge fan.
Legendary American actor Jack Nicholson, singer Celine Dion and country superstar Garth Brooks also came to the shows in Las Vegas.
After we did a performance on their daytime TV show in the States, Donny and Marie Osmond were so excited and impressed that they later came to see the entire production.
Actress Goldie Hawn was at one of our London performances. Goldie came backstage and the female dancers had a great laugh with her. She was absolutely fascinated by their wigs and costumes, and she had a fit of giggles trying them on.
I’m not sure what my Aunt Em would make of this, but some of my own favourite memories are of meeting Prince Charles on several occasions when we performed for the Prince’s Trust charity.
I always found Prince Charles to be a very nice man, who is quiet-spoken with a manner that is gentle and soft. And he came across as a person who had a genuine interest in other people.
After shows, Prince Charles would come down the line and have a word with each individual. And I noticed that he’d have a different comment or question for each person, so he showed genuine interest and it was very personal engagement. He wasn’t going through the motions with stock comments.
I remember being nervous but very excited when I was introduced to him for the first time after Lord of the Dance had performed in James’s Palace for a special event. The other entertainer that evening was the wonderful Shirley Bassey. Michael Flatley danced in the troupe that night and, of course, he made a massive impact on the room.
And then Prince Charles came down the line and we were introduced to him. He was very charming indeed that night.
Two years later, Lord of the Dance performed at a Prince’s Trust event in Buckingham Palace and, once again, Prince Charles greeted us all individually in a line. When he reached me during the meet-and-greet his face displayed an instant recognition.
‘Oh, I remember you,’ Prince Charles said, smiling. ‘You’re the dance lady who works with him,’ he acknowledged, referring to Michael.
That was good enough for me.
I was very chuffed indeed that I was now on Prince Charles’ radar.
I was thrilled, in fact.
But Aunt Em was probably turning in her grave.
* * *
Michael’s ambition kept on getting bigger in the wake of the success that Lord of the Dance was enjoying, particularly in Las Vegas.
As he said himself, he used to have a recurring dream about being on his deathbed and suddenly thinking about something he still hadn’t done. Michael certainly didn’t want that dream to happen, on either front.
So next he tells me that he has an idea for an open-air show called Feet of Flames to be performed in London’s Hyde Park in July of that year, 1998.
‘It’s going to be a mega-sized show, everything has to be bigger and better and greater,’ Michael said, his enthusiasm spilling out.
‘We are going to perform it on three levels.’
My mind went into overdrive as I tried to imagine the scale of this new production. It was very exciting, particularly as Michael added that I would now have the challenge of working with 110 dancers who would be performing on the three levels at the same time. It would normally be thirty-six dancers in a regular show.
I didn’t have time to draw a breath as we set about the creation of Feet of Flames. To pull off what Michael called ‘the biggest show on earth’, we combined Troupe 1 and Troupe 2. But we also auditioned another set of dancers, which we called Troupe X, and then we rehearsed them in Newcastle.
The newcomers who joined us for Feet of Flames included two of the O’Brien sisters, Niamh and Aoibheann. Troupe 3 stayed in Las Vegas.
There were huge changes to the set pieces from the original show, so the dancers had a lot to absorb and learn. And we drilled them to within an inch of their lives.
Feet of Flames was an incredible spectacle, with our army of dancers performing on three levels. We had fifty dancers on the floor in Planet Ireland. Above them were two shelves, as we called them, with thirty dancers on each shelf.
I knew that not everyone would be comfortable dancing on the higher levels, so the production manager, Barry Thornhill, the dance captains and I did our best to reassure the teams.
The dance captains and I had the cast watch while we went on the riser so that they could see how it moved up when we were on it. We did a couple of steps to show them that it was safe. We gave them a little demonstration on the different levels to help them banish any doubts or anxieties.
Unbeknownst to them I was feeling nervous about dancing on the higher levels myself, but I had to bite the bullet and do it. There were only a couple of dancers who had concerns and we had to change them around. I know of one dancer who went to a mentor and got some help for her fear of heights.
Hyde Park in July 1998 was an incredible day for everyone: the performers, the audience, Michael Flatley, and me.
I’ll never forget it.
Several years down the road we would tour Taiwan with that show.
* * *
In those early years we were forever adding new dancers to cope with the demand for Lord of the Dance shows. But, as I said, we had no scarcity of talent coming through and bidding for a crack at the big time, or imagining themselves as the next Michael Flatley. Everywhere we went around Europe we held auditions and hired new people.
The next big residency we got was Disneyworld in Florida the following year. It was in July 1999, and was quite a challenge for the dancers, as they had to perform outdoors in sweltering heat. To help them acclimatise, we found a suitable outdoor spot where we did stretching and warm-up exercises, and then we got them to run through a full show under the blazing sun. It was a boot camp they had never before experienced. But show business is all about adapting to new situations and challenges.
As the grounds were open to the public during the day, we had to do the Disneyworld rehearsals on site in the middle of the night. So everyone was pulled out of bed at two in the morning, and then we’d work from three to six, going back home to our apartments after the sun came up. It was certainly a unique training regime. There was a lot of moaning and groaning at the start, but the dancers soon got used to it.
The Disneyworld performance was similar to our shows in Las Vegas, running for forty-five minutes with no interval. And they did two shows a day. After they settled in, the troupe loved working in Disneyworld and they enjoyed mixing and mingling with all the Disney characters.
One of our female dancers, however, had a nightmare experience when she was bitten by a spider one day in our costume department. The horrified dancer had to be immediate
ly rushed to hospital, where, fortunately, it was discovered that the bite was neither life-threatening nor serious.
However, I’m sure the poor girl has nightmares about that incident to this day.
I still shudder at the thought of it.
* * *
Away from Lord of the Dance I had stayed close to my network of friends in Prudhoe after Ian died.
As I said previously, people going through a bereavement are advised not to make any life-changing decisions while they are recovering from their personal trauma.
Grieving sometimes takes years and you have to work through the various emotional stages of sorrow, loss, anger and guilt. This was the advice I was given.
Pam and Manuele’s home remained an open door to me when I was back from my travels, and there was great comfort in that support. Having a dance studio in Newcastle so that I could commute to rehearsals while working on new shows also kept me anchored in Prudhoe.
My only brother living in England at this stage was Tony. He and his wife Lena were down in Dorset, in a town called West Moors just outside Bournemouth. My niece Cathy and her husband Len also lived down that way.
Whenever I was free I would drive down and spend weekends with Tony and Lena. As time moved on, they then suggested that I should consider relocating to their area so that we could be close to each other. And, after they planted the seed, I eventually came around to the idea and began house-hunting in that part of England.
Doing the rounds in my spare time viewing various properties for sale was an experience that I actually quite enjoyed. It was like a pastime. I eventually found a gorgeous house that captured my heart in a village called Three Legged Cross.
There were several explanations as to why this lovely little place is called Three Legged Cross. One theory is that a type of gibbet, known as a ‘three-legged mare’, was once common there; another suggests that once upon a time there was a boundary stone in the area, marking the convergence of three great estates: Lord Shaftesbury’s to the west, Lord Normanton’s to the north and east, and the nineteenth-century banking family Rolles-Fryer’s to the south.
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