Dance

Issue date:
August 8-10, 1997

28 taps a second?

Incredible as it sounds, it's true. In fact, the 1990 Guinness Book of Records credited Flatley with the world record for most taps per second. (The current record, held by an Englishman, is 32 taps.) Of course, that doesn't mean his feet hit the stage 28 times a second. With each "step" -- a shift in weight -- come multiple "taps" -- the sounds that are made.

TIP-TOP TAPPER

Michael Flatley is dancing as fast as he can -- 28 taps a second. With a smash summer tour and a chart-topping video, how much farther can his feet take him?

By Mary Roach

itting down to coffee with Michael Flatley is a strange experience. It's the sitting part that's odd. Here is one of the world's fastest dancers sitting calm as dawn, a china coffee cup balanced on his leg. You expect the star of the mega-grossing, theater-packing Lord of the Dance to be a knee bouncer, a fidgeter, an in-your-face gesticulator.

	Unlike the more traditional, rigid Riverdance, Flatley's Lord of the Dance is an arm-waving, hip-gyrating spectacle.

Flatley burst onto the popular dance scene in 1994, when his tornado-on-taps performance as the intermission act in the famed Eurovision Song Contest prompted a British stage producer to call him. Together they fashioned a full-blown step-dance production featuring Flatley's choreography. Riverdance took London's West End by storm, and now America, but Flatley barely got to taste the champagne. He was fired eight months into the tour. The producers maintain a no-comment policy, but the story goes that they felt Flatley had gotten greedy, demanding full artistic control and a raise on his weekly fee of 50,000 pounds (more than $80,000). He contends they tried to cut his share of the royalties and take away the copyright to his choreography. British papers had a field day, denouncing Flatley as a hotheaded narcissist.

That's the other odd thing about sitting down to coffee with Michael Flatley: He's humble and soft-spoken. This is a man who collects unicorns and calls his parents every Sunday. At nightclubs, he has to "have a few shooters" before he'll get out on the dance floor. He speaks so quietly that I've had to place my tape recorder beside the cup and saucer on his leg.

Flatley, 38, has been dancing since he was an 11-year-old in an Irish neighborhood on Chicago's South Side. His grandmother, herself a championship dancer, introduced him to step dance at age 4. To this day, Flatley gets down on one knee, on the stage each night behind the curtain, in silent tribute to her. "I know she's still helping me now," he says, his words coddled by a soft Irish brogue. Though Flatley is American, his parents were born in Ireland, and the family traveled there frequently throughout his youth. After six years of lessons and competitions, he won the All-World Championships in Irish Dancing, the first American to take the title.

About 10 years ago, Flatley began straying from tradition, "testing the waters," as he says. "From the start, audiences responded to what I was doing." Did they ever: The Lord of the Dance production company reports that the world tour has grossed more than $100 million to date. At New York's Radio City Music Hall in March, it sold out an incredible 11 of 13 shows.

he current controversy has to do with Flatley's reinterpretation of Irish step dance for his show. Traditionally, the dance is performed with the arms alongside the body; the hips, the shoulders, even the face are held rigid. From the waist down you're an eggbeater; from the waist up, you're facing a firing squad. In Lord of the Dance, arms are held high, hips gyrate, dancers beam and smirk. Purists, as Flatley calls his critics, are not impressed. "'Lord' Stomps on Dance Conventions" read the headline in the Chronicle review here in San Francisco, where he was appearing the day of our interview. Fans -- Flatheads, as they call themselves -- couldn't care less about tradition, proclaiming their man "the eighth wonder of the world" and following Lord of the Dance from city to city. The Michael Flatley Visitor's Book, an online fan bulletin board, rivals the Bible in length and devotional fervor.

Flatley finds the traditional ramrod-stiff, poker-faced step-dance style something of an anachronism.

"I've heard it was the Catholic Church that imposed that rule," he says. "You weren't allowed to move your arms because you might be seen to be flirting with the girls. Another explanation I've heard is that during the British invasion the soldiers made them dance with their arms tied." Either way, it's not in keeping with what Flatley finds when he visits Ireland. "So many of the Irish are so passionate and joyful. To think of them dancing with their arms at their sides and no facial expression -- I don't understand it. My dream was always to dance the way I felt in my heart. With the passion that came from inside, I couldn't do it that way."

Not all the purists are complaining. Across the United States, Irish dance classes suddenly are in demand. "A teacher called me in Vancouver to say thanks," says Flatley. "He said, 'I just bought a new Mercedes. A year ago, I was broke.' "

latley himself picked up a new Lamborghini, though he has at present no driveway to park it in. For the past four years, he's been living in hotels, his belongings locked in storage. When the show takes a break and the rest of the cast heads home, he makes for a beach: the Maldives, Antigua, Bora Bora. Which explains the freshly laid tan -- that and the fact that his sunscreen is SPF 2. (Fit as he is, Flatley's no health fanatic. This morning's breakfast: steak and eggs.) When Flatley does finally settle down somewhere, you can bet it'll be a comely piece of property. It's been reported he makes $1 million a month.

Flatley blinks. "That is grossly inaccurate."

Oops. It did sound a tad high. But to judge by the number of diamonds on his earrings, he must be pretty well off. "I'm sorry," he says. "I just have to tell you this: I make way more than that. Way more."

There are, of course, things money can't buy. It can't buy you someone who's willing to wait five years till you're back from your world tour, your forthcoming movie project (a dance love story due to start filming in March) and whatever follows that. For the time being, Flatley buys diamond earrings for himself alone. His 10-year marriage to makeup artist Beata Dziaba dissolved in '95 (he filed for divorce in June); a subsequent relationship with an unnamed Irish woman also fell prey to the demands of his career.

Does he miss the stability of a settled home life? Flatley looks wistful. "God, I would love nothing more than to settle down, have coffee and read the paper in my own house, come home to my girlfriend at the end of the day. I'd love to have children someday. But for now, that's impossible."

In the meantime, he's making the most of his situation. Flatley can't mask his delight when the topic turns to the groupies who gather outside the stage door after every performance -- "the girls," as he puts it. "Ahh, it's brilliant, it's terrific. I mean, who wouldn't like that?"

Flatley has likened dancing onstage to sex. "It's similar in that it's such an enormous high. I never get tired of it. I'm always looking forward to it. I give give give give give as much as I can, as fast as I can, for as long as I can. ... We do the encores at the end, two and three and four encores, and people just keep asking for more, more, more."

haka thakaka thakakaka thak go Flatley's tall black shoes. We're over at the auditorium now so he can show me a few steps -- here, because his performance insurance prohibits him from dancing offstage. He's alone onstage, warming up for the evening's performance. Though the sound of his shoes is amplified for the show -- the troupe carts around its own wired-for-sound flooring -- it's loud enough now, a cappella, to be heard in the lobby restrooms. Flatley used to throw away his shoes after every show, until British Aerospace fixed him up with heels made from high-tech aluminum "like on the nose of the Concorde." Now it takes a week to wear them out.

In between numbers, I ask Flatley whom he considers the greatest living dancer. He answers without missing a beat. "Me." Then he laughs. "You weren't expecting that one. You should see your face!" When it comes to his dance talents, humble goes right out the window.

"Let's see you do the Macarena."

"What's that?" Flatley looks lost.

I tell him I'll teach him the Macarena after my dance lesson. And so the world's greatest living dancer proceeds to teach the world's least great living dancer a jig step, specifically "the first, most basic step they teach to children." It takes half an hour. We never get around to the Macarena.

Ten minutes later, Flatley is tearing through a jazzed-up reel, tapping and twirling like a wind-up toy with stripped gears. He truly is an amazing dancer. More amazing is that he's dancing on a badly bruised Achilles tendon, two broken bones ("just little ones") and a recently torn calf muscle.

He insists the injuries have nothing to do with age. "Sure, my legs are sore," he told me earlier, "but they've been sore since I was 16. My kicks are higher now than ever, and my feet are faster." He doesn't have plans for retirement -- though he's looking for a replacement for himself in Lord of the Dance so he can try his moves on the big screen next spring -- because he doesn't plan to retire.

"I'm going to keep dancing as long as it's fun. Fifty, maybe 60 years more."

Watching him now, you almost believe it.

San Francisco-based Mary Roach last wrote about Nicolas Cage.


Photo Credit: WAYNE STAMBLER FOR USA WEEKEND