Profile: Michael Flatley: Michael Flatley may have danced for the last time onstage but he's now facing a new set of jigs and reels, writes Shane Hegarty
The biography on Michael Flatley's official website tells a tale studded with glory, of achievements against the odds, of his "ardent resolve" and "follow your dreams" philosophy, of how he "liberated Irish Dance from generations of rigidity" and brought Riverdance to the world. It relives the time he tore a calf muscle, but ignored his doctor's advice to rest for six weeks, and instead strapped up that muscle and danced through the pain. It is a story to bring a Celtic mist to one's eyes.
Some details are missing, though. It acknowledges that he left Riverdance "amid great controversy", but the names of Bill Whelan, John McColgan and Moya Doherty do not figure in this official history. Nor does the legal settlement that followed. Neither is how his ex-manager John Reid sued him for breach of contract. It is unlikely, then, that a future biography will include the details of his current predicament. This week, a Chicago-based estate agent, Tyna Marie Robertson, claimed the dancer raped her in a Las Vegas hotel room last October. She is seeking $10 million in compensation and $25 million in damages.
Flatley has denied the charge. "Their relationship and everything that occurred between them that night was entirely voluntary and consensual on her part," according to court papers filed in the Los Angeles Superior Court. He has counter-sued for $100 million.
As he has always liked to point out, Flatley is a man who bounces back just as much as up and down. When bullied as a boy, he took boxing lessons and went on to be a champion, knocking out the bullies along the way. When his dance teacher told him he was too old to begin training for competition, he ignored the advice and went ahead anyway. When he left Riverdance, he created Lord of the Dance, a show more successful than its predecessor. After an undisclosed settlement with John Reid, he subsequently sued the Daily Mail for getting its figures wrong.
Throughout his career, he has faced the ridicule of people who look at the open-blouse, oiled chest, perma-tan and head-band and see not the artistic visionary that Flatley believes he is, but a gaudy egotist peddling gross stage Oirishness. That didn't stop the record sales that accompanied each of his shows. In 1999, Forbes estimated he was worth €52m, enough to perma-tan the planet.
Michael Ryan Flatley was born in Michigan on July 16th 1958 to immigrants Eilish and Michael. His mother was an Irish dancer and his father chairman of the Irish Musicians Association of Chicago, the city to which they moved in the early 1960s. He was reluctantly dragged to Irish dancing lessons at the age of 11, and says he only really began to enjoy it when he realised that it was a good way to meet girls. He went on to win 168 competitions worldwide, and in 1975 became the first American to win the Irish Dancing World Championships. It was also the year he won his first All-Ireland Flute Championships - and a boxing title.
Over the next few years he released a flute album, toured with The Chieftains and set a world record for tap dancing speed. In 1993, he and Jean Butler danced to a Bill Whelan composition at the Spirit of Mayo Festival, marking the genesis of Riverdance. In 1995 he choreographed the seven-minute performance during the Eurovision intermission that turned an ethnic dance into the entertainment phenomenon of the decade, and which has been credited with bringing Irish culture to the world, and the world's money to Ireland.
He spent only eight months with the full stage version of Riverdance before an acrimonious split from McColgan and Doherty after an argument over artistic rights. It was settled in 1999 with a confidential agreement acknowledging Flatley's contribution to the development of Riverdance. In July 1996, he premièred his own show Lord of the Dance. A worldwide hit, it was later joined by a second show Feet of Flames, which played to audiences sometimes as big as 100,000 a go. By 1999 Flatley was earning $1,600,000 a week.
While both Feet of Flames and Lord of the Dance continue to tour, Flatley last performed in Dallas in 2001. It was, he admitted, a "bittersweet occasion" and he has hinted at a possible return to the stage. Now 44, however, his body may not be up to it. His nightly performances took such a toll on his legs that he would bathe in ice each night to prevent his legs from swelling to twice their size. Even now, a year and a half on, he still suffers. "No one ever really did what I did before. I was a trial horse. I did the whole thing. The hardest part for me is that my legs still shake at night. They go into uncontrollable spasms when I am lying in bed."
Since then, he has flirted with several projects. An Irish boxing promoter offered him €1 million to get in a boxing ring again. He has suggested he could run for President of Ireland. At the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, he announced plans to make Lord of the Dance: The Movie, confirming that he would play himself. "I don't fancy myself as a great actor, but I might make a hell of a movie star." It was to be co-written by Flatley and Shane Connaughton, writer of My Left Foot. "I've heard the jokes already. It'll be My Two Left Feet." Those movie plans, however, seem to have stalled.
Last year, the dancer withdrew plans for a €100 million stock market floatation of his management company Unicorn Entertainment, apparently worried over volatility in the market for smaller companies' shares. He has recently been looking into buying a hotel and casino in Las Vegas, in order to bring "a bit of Irish magic to the strip". He had been in Las Vegas in October to launch a Lord of the Dance show.
Married previously, Flatley is engaged to former model Lisa Murphy. They are now the most famous residents of Fermoy, Co Cork where he is spending €10 million refurbishing Castlehyde, the ancestral home of Douglas Hyde and the last place in the county to have featured a duel.
He is a man who likes to emphasise his class. He boasts of spending £3,000 on a bottle of wine, £10,000 on a bottle of brandy and then sips it with the finest cigars. His bed is covered with a mink bedspread and he buys fine art.
He says he doesn't like to dwell on his riches. "It's not something I give a lot of thought to," he told one journalist, before sending her home with a £1,000 bottle of Petrus 1975 wine as a souvenir.
He is also sentimental. He keeps the old boots he used to wear when digging ditches in Chicago "just to remind me where I come from".
His favourite possession is a £50 note given to him by his grandmother, Annie, in 1974, on which she wrote: "good luck with your Irish dancing". His grandmother, he has always said, was very important to him and he held a seat for her at every concert, even though she died some years ago.
Sentimentality will not resolve his current problems. This one will be down to the lawyers and that "ardent resolve". The boxer in him, though, has given him a very strong jaw. It's too early to be dancing on his grave just yet.