ARTS: EXTRACTING THE MICHAEL

`Riverdance' turned Irish dancing into a massively lucrative global industry, and made Michael Flatley a star. Then everything turned sour. Matthew Sweet hears both sides of the story

Michael Flatley wants to take over the world. Then he wants to have sex with it. And then he wants to do its accounts. Irish dancer, flautist, champion boxer, multi-millionaire businessman with a genius IQ - or, as his publicity prefers, "a mighty and many- tongued fire" - Flatley is one of the highest-paid stage performers in the world. His personal glamour and fanatical careerism have made him into the most significant figure in Irish dancing - an art he's helped transform from a stiff-armed stamping that Dublin children are forced to learn at school into a massively lucrative global industry.

Since his dramatic exit in October 1995 from Riverdance, the musical spectacle that made his name, 38-year-old Flatley has resurfaced in his own vehicle, modestly entitled Lord of the Dance. Currently on a tour of Australia, this extravaganza of Las Vegas-style Celticism has been playing to houses as packed as his dancing trousers. When I rang through to his dressing-room at Melbourne Park, his PA, Sharon, was doubtful whether he'd talk: "You're a bit previous - he's just walked off stage." But Michael was having none of that, keen to sandwich another interview between his latest standing ovation and a "meet-and-greet" with Polygram to discuss his imminent film career.

Sharon's taken aback: "That man never ceases to amaze me. He's still dripping with sweat. I'd better move my jacket otherwise it'll be soaking if he sits on it." Her boss launches himself onto the line: "It's going fabulous," he gasps, still breathless. "It's unbelievable - it's the greatest feeling in the world when the dancers are behind me and the people are standing up screaming in front. I just feel like a million dollars." And well he might, since he earns that amount roughly once a month through Lord of the Dance and its spin-offs.

Flatley's Nietzschean ambition gives him an energy and confidence that no amount of cocaine or vitamin pills could supply. His favourite subject is the intensity of his application to work, and with that comes a fondness for free-market sloganeering. "No matter what you do in life," he tells me, "the competition is fierce. That's especially true in Chicago where I come from. And if you're not willing to work day and night at it, you're not going to be the best." Flatley's success seems to have developed an unstoppable momentum, and the global appetite for his fusion of Irish dance and flamenco is a great source of pride. Today, Singapore, Hong Kong and Tokyo have all been on the phone. People, he says, "can't get enough of what we do". When the legs pack in, he could probably double his fortune by leading Nuremberg-style rallies for middle managers: "I give 120 per cent every night and I expect the people around me to give that back. And you know what - they wouldn't be happy if I wasn't there cracking the whip."

Flatley has forged a public image in the brazen intensity of his self- belief. He rarely, if ever, sleeps; he's fond of talking about his enormous wealth; he's boasted of his sexual appetite on Radio 2; he's been publicising Lord of the Dance with a semi-naked image of himself that is so troublingly totalitarian it would make Leni Riefenstahl blush. And his arrogance has earned him his critics. British reviews of Lord of the Dance concentrated on its perceived narcissism: "a display of conceit so shameless as to be risible," was the Daily Telegraph's verdict, and this paper was no more kind. But Flatley isn't concerned by such adverse comments. "I don't take it that seriously," he claims. "I was on a TV show the other day and a man brought up an interesting fact. We have had only seven less- than-favourable reviews and we've had 171 favourable ones. That's a good record by anyone's standard. I look at it this way: it's not unlike any other business and tonight we've got eight thousand people here, and they're standing up at the end of the show, throwing roses on to the stage and screaming for more. If you've got one guy in the middle who thinks it's a terrible show, who do you think is right? Who do you think is right?"

The financial arguments seem unanswerable. The Australian tour had taken A$7.5m at the box office before Flatley's plane hit the tarmac; his latest video went double platinum in its first three weeks; Internet websites constructed by adoring "Flatheads" drizzle their appreciation upon him as "the man who put the horn into hornpipe". For Flatley, the personal rewards have been great: "I'm still the highest-paid dancer in the world as far as I know. I'm probably making three or four times what I was making with Riverdance, which I suppose plus royalties would have been about pounds 75,000 a week." All of which adds up to an annual of income of somewhere between pounds 11m and pounds 15m. "Not bad for a boy from Chicago that does the jig."

His parents, Eilish and Michael - a building contractor - emigrated to Chicago in 1947, but despite being brought up in the States, Flatley has retained his father's Sligo brogue. When he began dance classes at the age of 11, a teacher told him that it was much too late to start. It's not the sort of thing you should say to Michael Flatley. In 1975 he became the first American winner of the All-World Irish Dancing Championships, and never one to underachieve, Flatley took the All-World Irish Flute Championship and a Golden Gloves award for his boxing in the same year. For the next 20 years he toured as a dancer with bands such as the Chieftains, won 120 Irish-dancing titles, and in 1991 was declared a Living Treasure by the National Geographic Society. His talent for Irish dance comes from his grandmother, who was a Leinster champion. His fierce dedication to his work descends from the male line: "My father's father was a workaholic and my father was a workaholic and I don't suppose I'm any different. But it's the only way I know how - I only have one speed. And if you show me what I have to do for the next 100 miles, I'll get started on it tonight."

And he will. The energy that powers all this success has made him an insomniac, his work ethic extending even to the small hours: "I have a difficult time sleeping, but I don't mind that because I do a lot of creating and a lot of thinking at night. And I do an enormous amount of business at night. I go through all the facts and figures and the grosses and nets. And when that's done your mind is racing so that's when I try and do some creating." That doesn't just mean conceiving new dance steps in front of the mirror. Flatley won't rule out directing his creative powers towards the novel, and an autobiography is only a matter of time. "It's something that I definitely will do."

FLATLEY OWES much of his vast fortune to two people: ex-RTE producer Moya Doherty, and composer Bill Whelan, who co-created Riverdance as an interval routine for the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest. They transformed an opportunity to visit the bathroom into what their publicists still like to call "seven minutes that shook the world". Indeed, few people can remember who won the actual contest (Paul Harrington and Charlie McGettigan singing "Rock'n'Roll Kids"). Flatley's flamboyant leadership of an enormous line of hard-shoe dancers combined with Whelan's percussive reinterpretation of traditional Irish music to wow a TV audience of 300 million. Today, the internationally successful stage-show that Doherty and Whelan squeezed out of this interlude is now a fact of global culture, a cash cornucopia for its investors and the only place you can still see bubble perms. Madonna and Meryl Streep adored it, Princess Margaret said she was "lost in a cloud of pleasure", Cecil Parkinson and Gloria Hunniford have seen it seven times (though not, I suspect, together).

Riverdance is a development of the variety-show format - "by necessity," argues its composer Bill Whelan. Using emigration as his theme, he added Russian dance, flamenco and American tap "to give as much shade and colouration as possible". However, to the writer of its pretentious programme notes, the show is "nothing less than the story of humankind - starting in a primeval dawn before speech and before writing." In contrast to such mysticism, the balance sheets tell an unambiguous tale of upwardly spiralling profits.

The media history of Riverdance is as fogged with myth as the Irish culture on which it has bummed its lucrative ride. First, there was the case of "Disappearing Jean", when female principal dancer Jean Butler's credits began to be edged off the posters by name-checks for Flatley. Then Anuna, the on-stage choir, failed to appear on the cast album amid rumours that they had been refused a fee of pounds 20,000. Most significant was the unexpected departure of its male lead, which generated a folklore of its own. The story goes like this: at the end of September 1995, Flatley and his wife Beata posed in front of the chintz for Hello!, in an article that claimed the dancer had just signed a contract for pounds 50,000 a week plus a cut of the show's royalties that would guarantee him an income of pounds 2.6m a year. No such deal had been signed. "There were figures being thrown to the press," asserts Julian Erskine, Riverdance's executive producer. "Inevitably a lot of those were subject to the contract. And as the contract was never signed because he wouldn't agree terms, they ceased to become fact."

On 29 September, days before the show was due to reopen for a second sell-out run in Hammersmith, Flatley's TV appearances suddenly became focused on rumours that he was about to walk out. "There's no way it'll happen," he grinned on The Big Breakfast, though he revealed that he was still in the process of negotiating his contract. Later that day, he popped up on the magazine programme After Five Live. Sporting an open-necked shirt and a large rack of teeth, he declared, "It's nothing to do with money." Instead, he claimed, the dispute concerned "creative control" of his own choreography.

Behind the scenes, Moya Doherty was engaged in frantic bargaining with Flatley's representatives. During negotiations she now describes as "very difficult, very painful, tortuous", Flatley faxed her 24 demands. Despite telling RTE cameras that "the best thing about our show is that all of us would do it for nothing", the dancer was reported to be asking for 2 per cent of gross box-office receipts. He demanded "creative control because this is a very unique situation and I am a very unique performer". The request, according to Doherty, "came from nowhere". Flatley's manager, Derek MacKillop, requested that his client be "treated and respected as if Michael was Dame Judi Dench". With 21 hours to go before the show's opening, Doherty opted to sack her star, replacing him with Colin Dunne, nine-times World Irish Dancing Champion. Later that day, Flatley returned to After Five Live in sober suit and tie, visibly shaken, but possessed of a tragic dignity worthy of Dame Judi.

As the Riverdance office opted for a "no comment" policy, reports that Flatley was bringing legal action against his former employers began to circulate. Julian Erskine began to resent his fax machine: "There was all this stuff in the papers about the row, and the massive claims, but for all the time that there was the most coverage of the legal row, there was nothing happening - no litigation had arrived on our desk." Flatley's lawyers only served their statement of claim two months ago.

The whole messy business was a product of the show's unexpected success. As Flatley used his media-literacy to chase some masterplan posited on an exponentially increasing fame and fortune, the Riverdance production team were left looking like naive provincials, still dazed by their big break into the international market. Until, of course, they sacked him.

Thirteen months on, Moya Doherty's decision to amputate her show's most spectacular pair of legs has been vindicated: this summer, a touring version of the show was assembled, and last week, the troupe, left behind in Hammersmith, sold their millionth ticket. Looking back, Flatley claims, "God, or fate, lent a hand when all that happened." His contention that he is entitled to a cut of Riverdance's profits is about to reach the courts. "We'll be robustly defending our position," Erskine affirms.

WHILE FLATLEY conquers Australia like some messianic Gary Glitter, the Hammersmith show's new principals seem hardly able to believe their luck. Breandn de Galla and Joanne Doyle don't have showbusiness backgrounds - he was a physics teacher and she was completing a sociology MA when Riverdance went hunting for the best amateur Irish dancers to fill their chorus line. And their attitude to success is a world away from Flatley's unblinking careerism - de Galla claims he didn't know what a "luvvie" was until he read about them in Viz. When I ask how Riverdance has impacted upon their lives, Doyle talks about moving away from home and how her dad really wants her to go back to sociology. De Galla explains that "there was a time I'd accepted I was going to be poor, and that I wasn't ever going to have a nice car". It's arriving tomorrow. They admit to doing Father Ted impressions to each other on stage; and exude just the sort of unfingermarked, next-door charm with which Riverdance distinguishes itself from Flatley's more crudely vampish alternative. In Lord of the Dance, for which Flatley recruited Hot Gossip choreographer Arlene Philips, there's much pouting and skirt-ripping. Riverdance executive producer Julian Erskine describes it as "the O'Chippendales. There is that element. Oiled flesh and women shouting in the audience." While they might not possess all of Flatley's high-kicking skills, Doyle and de Galla personify their employers' rejection of such tackiness.

Meanwhile, there seems to be no limit to the public appetite for Riverdance, and its managers have the slightly dazed air of people who've stumbled on some philosopher's stone. "What we weren't prepared for was the international enthusiasm," acknowledges Bill Whelan, who's now delighted to find himself composing film scores and planning large-scale theatre projects. "When I see the coaches arriving at Hammersmith and realise that people are coming from hundreds of miles away, it seems incredible. And I never took that for granted." Julian Erskine also seems affected by Riverdance shell shock: "It's taken over my life," he reflects. "It's a bit like jumping onto a rollercoaster, it has momentum of its own. We put it on, and before we know where we are it's sold out. We put advertising campaigns in place and then discover we don't need them. The trick is staying ahead of it all."

The shortfall between supply and demand has given the green light to others eager to capitalise on an entertainment formula that seems unable to do anything but make money. A hit at the Edinburgh Fringe this year, Rhythms of the Celts was struck by scandal when it was reported that the dancers' pay cheques had disappeared. Currently touring the UK, Dublin Worldwide Productions' Spirit of the Dance is a lookee-likee show in all but name - it was even using the word "Riverdance" on posters until its producers were forced to remove it. It offers an identikit bill: Irish dance, Russian dance, American tap. Julian Erskine went to check it out: "There's no doubt that they had sat down with the video and said, `Right, what is this combination that seems to be exciting people?' Obviously their plan was to try to harness that, and to be honest I didn't think it worked." But, worryingly for Erskine, this exercise in money-spinning Eiresatz is doing very big business. "I went to see it in Leicester, in a hall that was absolutely packed. And I would firmly believe that most of the people had paid because they saw the word `Riverdance' very strongly on the poster and thought, `This must be it, let's go and see it'." Despite repeated calls to their PR office, representatives of Spirit of the Dance professed to having "no interest in speaking to the Independent on Sunday". Recently, the show brought the Cambridge Corn Exchange to its feet - when the audience found that the rake of the seating meant that they couldn't see the dancers from the knees down.

The producers of Legend of the Dance were similarly reticent. Opening in July 1997 for a 17-week season at the Grand Theatre, Blackpool, this third clone show offers the Irish All Star Dance Ensemble, the Ukrainian International Cossack Dance Company and the Hot Shoe Tappers. Much to the amusement of Bill Whelan and Julian Erskine, "the Music of the Three Tenors" is also on the bill. However, Erskine is having to contend with more obvious examples of piracy: "Last week in Abu Dhabi there was a show going on actually called Riverdance. It was a direct, deliberate rip-off." News of its appearance reached him on 8 November, when members of the Irish community in Dubai started to ring in to RTE. "They were horrified, it was absolutely awful. They thought they were going to Riverdance, and had met with this thing that was no more than some Irish dancers and a ballet group. It was an evening like you'd get in a pub in Ireland." And it's competition like this, rather than local attempts to jump on the bandwagon, that worries Erskine: "It'll cut across us, because by the time we get to go there, these people will have a sour taste in their mouths."

Such events are a logical consequence of Irish dancing's transformation into a giant commercial operation, as inevitable as fake bottles of Chanel. But while the producers of Riverdance puzzle over the problem of controlling copyright on a generic entertainment, Michael Flatley has sidestepped the issue by turning his work into a one-man show, marketing himself as aggressively as if he were a soft drink. When I comment that he has turned his art into a global industry, Flatley is tremendously pleased: "That's a good point you're making. I'm an artist but this is a business. You have to look at yourself as a product. So if I go out and I run across the stage and I act a little over the top or wear glitzy clothes, that's part of what makes this whole thing sell. Now I don't wear those clothes when I go to the pub or go out for a walk in the park, this is the face for the business." For a moment, there hovers the prospect of some ironic distance between Flatley and his stage persona. But he's off again, instantly on a high-speed mantra of his success: "I went out on a limb creating this new dance form. I stuck my neck out, I'm a little cocky on stage, and if I've bent the rules a little, I'm willing to take the heat for that. And don't forget, I'm employing 80 people who travel around the world and are making a living out of what they love to do."

His invasion plans for Hollywood are well on their way to fruition. "The film is a terrific story," he enthuses. "I can't go into details but there'll probably be four or five dance numbers that I would create and choreograph. It won't be a musical, it will be a love story and dance will be part of it." And he disappears to talk to Polygram and Disney about a five- movie deal he's hopeful of securing. If he meets and greets as single- mindedly as he does everything else, tonight should bring him one step closer to what it is that he's after. Everything.

! `Riverdance': Apollo, W6 (0171 416 6022), to 18 Jan, then touring. `Lord of the Dance': UK tour starts at Newcastle Arena (0191 401 8000) on 29 Dec.