Lady of the Dance

by Duffy, Marie; Rowley, Eddie;

  * * *

  Through the Foundation I was again reminded of the impact Michael Flatley had made, both personally and with his spectacular shows after his first Riverdance performance at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1994. Europe, in particular, became obsessed and absorbed with Michael Flatley. From that time on, Irish dancing classes started springing up all across the Continent. There were no borders.

  In 2012, the Foundation had an application for assistance from an Irish dancing teacher called Biljana Pajic, who is based in Belgrade, Serbia, where she has established Erin’s Fiddle Dance School. Biljana was seeking help from us to run a weekend workshop for over fifty dancers.

  My dear friend, Lord of the Dance captain Bernadette Flynn, agreed to take on this project, so she flew out to Belgrade and the Foundation covered all the expenses involved.

  Bernadette is such a great ambassador for Irish dancing in general, and Lord of the Dance in particular. Biljana later wrote how she couldn’t believe her good fortune when Bernadette arrived to host their workshop.

  ‘I started Irish dancing in 2004, and two years later established a dance group in Belgrade,’ she explained.

  ‘I could only dream about meeting and learning from one of the stars of Lord of the Dance. I could not imagine this at all, seriously, because in the land where I live Irish dancing isn’t that famous and familiar to people.

  ‘My dancers and I worked a lot, and achieved a lot too. Everything we’ve achieved until now wasn’t a gift from anyone. We had no financial or any other support from any institution.

  ‘That’s the main reason why I was so delighted to find out about The Marie Duffy Foundation. I thought it was a great opportunity for anyone who does Irish dancing and needs some kind of support. I applied hoping to have a little bit of luck, and surprisingly I got it!

  ‘I couldn’t believe what I was seeing – an offer for Bernadette Flynn to host an Irish dance workshop. The dancers were euphoric, although none of them could believe it at first. But on the 4th of May Bernadette arrived in Belgrade and the unforgettable weekend began.

  ‘Words cannot describe how thankful we are and what this has meant to us. It’s hard to find support for what we do, but this opportunity has surprised us when we least expected it, especially from someone who has never met us personally or seen us dance live. We really appreciate it.’

  In 2013, the Foundation had a request from Dominique Dure, a twenty-six-year-old Irish dancing teacher in Argentina. Dominique, a native of Buenos Aires, was looking for support to travel to Ireland so that she could try for her official teaching qualification from the CLRG.

  Dominique is the director of Celtic Argentina, the first ever school of Irish dance established in Argentina. It was founded in Buenos Aires by her mother, Christine, who has Irish ancestry. The popularity of the school shot up after Riverdance and Lord of the Dance performed in Buenos Aires in the year 2000.

  Dominique was really passionate about Irish dancing and culture and for a long time she had harboured an ambition to become a fully qualified teacher. The Foundation was delighted to support her and cover her trip and fees for the exam. Dominique was successful on her first attempt, thus becoming the first qualified TCRG teacher in Argentina.

  ‘This was a big achievement for me, a dream come true,’ Dominique said later in an interview with Irish America magazine.

  Today, Celtic Argentina is one of the largest Irish dance schools in South America, and the biggest in Argentina.

  Asked in the same interview why she thought Irish dancing was so popular in Argentina, where only two per cent of the population boasts Irish ancestry, it was interesting to hear Dominique’s views.

  ‘People are mainly attracted by the hard shoes,’ she suggested. ‘Personally I think that the sound of Irish traditional music combined with the rhythmical sound of the shoes is unique and magical.

  ‘It’s a style of dance that demands discipline, timing, elegance, rhythm and is accompanied by music that raises your spirit. Irish music is also very inviting and encourages everyone to dance, so there is always a very enthusiastic response from the public.’

  The Foundation would go on to fund lectures and practical workshops at the University of Limerick, provide bursaries for final year BA students in the university, and support projects like the making of a short Irish dance film by a young woman called Aisling McFadden.

  We were always on the lookout for an individual dancer, someone with a love of Irish dancing who, for whatever reason, was being deprived of the chance to pursue their passion. We wanted to put our resources behind a kid like that, and help a boy or girl to go as far as they could with their talent. And that opportunity came to me through the world of competitive dancing.

  One day I was told the story of a promising young dancer who had a difficult personal life. Dancing brought this young girl great joy and it was probably her only form of escapism from the trauma that she was then dealing with in other areas of her life.

  The details of her life are personal and I won’t go into them. But from the moment I heard her story and saw her dance, I knew we had to help. She was a lovely young girl who had worked hard against the odds to take dancing classes and participate in the competitions. And despite the personal challenges she had to overcome, this girl had won a place at the World Championships.

  However, as they were being held on the other side of the world, there was no chance of her being able to make the trip because of the expense involved.

  As I said, it was individual cases like this young dancer’s that we had envisaged supporting when we set up the Foundation. So I went to the board and put her case to them, and, of course, there was no problem getting approval to fund the trip, covering the girl’s flights, her hotel accommodation, subsistence money and other bits and pieces.

  I have to say, it was so rewarding for everyone associated with the Foundation to play a role in assisting that lovely young girl to achieve such a big dream. She couldn’t stop smiling, and neither could we.

  For that one case alone, it would have been worth setting up The Marie Duffy Foundation.

  * * *

  I’m delighted that the Foundation is now attracting huge interest and support and we believe that it has a great contribution to make to the future of Irish dance.

  Whether they are complete beginners, novices or high achievers, the Foundation continues to promote ways of enhancing the skills and knowledge of dancers so that they can reach higher levels. It also provides master workshops for dance professionals.

  Most recently it has funded and promoted the Aisling Awards at the World Championships to recognise the top dancers from new and developing Irish dance regions around the globe. These awards are highly sought after and have been instrumental in promoting and improving dance worldwide.

  Irish dance is constantly changing and evolving, and it is the aim of the Foundation to identify and support the creative and inspirational individuals who will be at the cutting edge of dance excellence in the years ahead around the world.

  As the motto of the Foundation says, ar aghaidh linn i bhfeabhas – we go onwards improving all the time.

  Onwards Ever, Backwards Never

  I’ve been writing this book in my seventieth year, and publishing it in a year when Lord of the Dance is celebrating its 21st anniversary.

  Today, when I look at those numbers they don’t really register with me.

  Can this be true: that I’m seventy years old!

  Is it really twenty years ago that I first started out on my journey with Michael Flatley in Lord of the Dance?

  In my mind I’m still a teenager … well, maybe a twenty-something.

  My passion for life and living, dancing, partying and working hasn’t waned with the passing of time.

  I still get such a buzz seeing a young dance student flourish, a show come to life, and a cork pop on a bottle of champagne.

  One of Ireland’s greatest ever singers, Joe Dolan, who was a dear frien
d of mine and in whose south Dublin home I enjoyed many a great party, had a favourite expression about life.

  ‘The future is always better than the past,’ Joe would say.

  Joe was a charming, smiley man who was full of fun. He was Ireland’s first pop star, starting out as a showband idol in the 1960s, appearing on Top of the Pops in Britain, and topping the charts all over Europe with a unique voice and songs like ‘Make Me An Island’, ‘Sister Mary’ and ‘Goodbye Venice Goodbye’.

  But Joe wasn’t the sort of guy who lived off past glories. He was always fired up with energy and enthusiasm, constantly taking up new offers, tackling modern songs and putting his own stamp on them, and literally having a ball all his life until the sands of time ran out for him.

  Luck plays a part too. Joe was lucky to enjoy a great career doing something he loved: singing and performing. Away from the stage, he lived for golf.

  Maybe that’s the secret to staying young at heart – loving what you do.

  I loved Joe’s attitude to life because that’s how I’ve always felt about it. The future is always better than the past … How right Joe was.

  Until recently, I was still going at a hundred miles an hour myself and loving every minute of my work.

  I never wake up in the morning and think about my age.

  Act your age?

  You must be joking!

  My mind is still in the moment, happy to take on a new challenge.

  Of course, time takes its toll on the body. Cancer takes a bigger toll, so in the last couple of years I’ve been advised by my friends and medical team to take my foot off the pedal and slow down. If I don’t, as Abigail Evans, Eve Went and Leslie-May Harrison constantly warn me, there’s trouble coming down the line.

  Abigail and others remind Mike and me how lucky I am to have survived the cancer I had, because it was so far gone before I was diagnosed. They think we forget this and they urge me to step back from my work rate.

  Stress is one of the worst things you can have in your life; it is a recognised cause of cancer. And even though I never thought of my work as being stressful, I’m sure it was at times. I always looked upon it as good stress, but then I’m not qualified to say that such a thing exists.

  So, with the prodding of all of those good people who have my best interests at heart, I decided to cut back on my work with Lord of the Dance, which today employs around three hundred people. I haven’t completely severed my ties and I’m available whenever my services are needed, but now I don’t do the day-to-day stuff.

  Michael Flatley, of course, totally understood why I had to make this decision.

  When Michael danced for the last time in Ireland in March 2015, I joined him and the performers at the 3Arena. After that Dublin show, Lord of the Dance: Dangerous Games, where Michael received his final standing ovation amid rapturous applause in the venue where we had launched the extravaganza nineteen years earlier, he paid me a lovely tribute.

  At the after-show party, in what was formerly The Point, Michael acknowledged my role in the success of Lord of the Dance as he announced that I was cutting back on my day-to-day responsibilities.

  My ties with Lord of the Dance will never be fully severed, but in November 2015 I joined Michael and the troupe when we took our final bow together at the Lyric Theatre on Broadway. That was an emotional night.

  I have loved every moment of my time with Michael Flatley. We’ve had our ups and downs, but we’ve come through it all with a friendship that will never be broken. It’s been a big sister/little brother relationship and, naturally, like all families it didn’t always run smoothly. But the important thing is, you come through the challenging times and it makes the relationship stronger.

  Michael has a great heart. I’ve been with him for twenty years, so that says it all.

  * * *

  When I look back on my twenty years with the show I think about the thousands of young people I worked with in the various troupes through those couple of decades. It brings a smile to my face. At one stage we had four Lord of the Dance troupes running simultaneously around the world, with thirty to forty dancers in each show. Every night of the week we had at least sixty dancing on stages somewhere in the world.

  Naturally, nature took its course and the young people fell in love with each other while touring with the shows. Mothers get to see their sons and daughters grow up, meet the love of their lives, and get married. Well, I had hundreds of young people doing that, so I was really blessed.

  It was lovely watching all the different relationships happening and seeing the couples grow together.

  Back in 1996 in Troupe 1, lead dancer Jimmy Murrihy introduced a hilarious Thirty Second Rule for young lovers. If cast members had hooked up – or ‘shifted’ as they used to say – on a night out, they would get the Thirty Second Rule treatment on the bus as we travelled on to the next city the following day.

  Jimmy would take the microphone on the coach, put the two unfortunate dancers in the spotlight, reveal their antics from the previous night, then give them thirty seconds to declare if they were going to make their relationship official as boyfriend/girlfriend.

  This was great fun for everyone on the bus at the expense of the mortified young couple.

  Many of those relationships would go on to stand the test of time, and a few probably didn’t last more than thirty seconds. But in general, the couples who got together usually stayed together and went on to marry. I’m told by Jimmy Murrihy that the tradition of the Thirty Second Rule is still going strong twenty years later.

  Out of those relationships came an avalanche of weddings. There were so many that I have lost track, but I was privileged to get lots of invites. It wasn’t always possible for me to attend those lovely occasions due to tours and so on, but I did try to be there for the dance captains because of the personal relationships I’d built up with those individuals through working closely with them on the shows.

  The very first wedding was Daire Nolan, who wasn’t just a dance captain to me, but one of my great friends as well. Daire was Michael Flatley’s first ‘bad guy’ and he danced opposite him. Catriona Hale was the lead female, and we all worked long hours and late into the night in those early days as we battled the clock in the countdown to the first opening of Lord of the Dance.

  I remember that after one particularly stressful day I took Daire and Catriona out for a meal. We ordered a bottle of red wine and the waiter said, ‘I’ll leave it to breathe.’

  We got totally engaged in talking, until finally Catriona said in a fit of desperation: ‘Has that wine breathed yet!’

  Daire and I burst into laughter.

  I was on tour in America with Lord of the Dance when Daire’s wedding came around, but I had bought the dress, the hat and the ticket home to Ireland for his big day. Daire was marrying his lovely girlfriend Carol, who wasn’t one of the dancers but we all knew her well as she regularly came to the show.

  The day before my flight there was an issue with the show in America and I felt that I should stay around to help resolve it. So literally at the final hour I had to make a call home to say that I wasn’t going to be at the wedding. Daire, of course, completely understood the situation.

  As they say, that’s show business!

  Today, Daire and Carol are the proud parents of three beautiful children. And that’s the other lovely stage of my life because nowadays I regularly meet the next generation – the children of my dancers.

  One of the weddings I did get the chance to attend was Rebecca Brady’s. Rebecca was a former Inis Ealga dancer during my time there. She married Patrick Campbell, an American dancer, whom she met in Lord of the Dance.

  I remember another lovely wedding in Donegal when local girl and Lord of the Dance member Tracey Smith married fellow dancer Don McCarron from England. Don was our dance captain in Las Vegas. Dancers Aisling Murphy from Cork and Dubliner David McCabe also fell in love and I was privileged to be at their wedding. They now run the Cabe
Academy of Irish Dance in Dublin.

  One of my fondest memories is the wedding of Lord of the Dance captain Bernadette Flynn, who had become like another family member to me through the years. The gorgeous young Tipperary woman found love in the show with dancer Damien O’Kane from Derry. They were well matched, as Damien is a gentleman in every respect. He was also a star dancer and he took over the lead role from Michael Flatley when he stopped performing.

  I saw Bernadette and Damien start out as buddies and best friends in a little group. Then their relationship grew over the years and today, they are doting parents to a beautiful little daughter, Mia Rose.

  Mike and I have a close friendship with Bernadette and Damien, and they will be a part of our lives until the day we die.

  The last show wedding we had the honour of attending was that of dance captain and ‘bad guy’ Tom Cunningham from Dundalk and fiddle player Giada Costenaro from Italy. Their beautiful ceremony in August 2013 took place on Lake Maggiore in the elegant Italian town of Pallanza. Their guests included many dancers from Lord of the Dance.

  We all stayed in the little resort of Stresa across the water from Pallanza and travelled to the wedding by ferry. The banquet that followed the gorgeous ceremony in a stunning church on a hill went on for hours, and my recollection is that there were around twenty courses.

  It was lovely to see the smiles on the faces of Tom and Giada as their fairytale wedding came to life.

  * * *

  One day in 2006 I received a phone call from Michael Flatley while he was on holiday in the Caribbean. He was very upbeat, full of the joys … and it transpired that this had nothing to do with the beautiful weather in Barbados.

  Michael called to tell me that he had just got engaged to Niamh O’Brien and they were getting married. I was thrilled for both of them.

  Niamh was also like a daughter to me, as I had known her since she was just three years old. Her mum, Monica, used to refer to me as ‘Niamh’s second mother’ because I was on the road with her when she joined our shows.