Michael Flatley, of course, was an unstoppable force of nature. Everybody who knew Michael believed that he’d be back. He had too much talent, genius, passion and drive to fade away, despite being dropped by the sensational new dance extravaganza, Riverdance.
Sure enough, when I phoned Michael that Sunday night in March 1996, he told me he was putting a new show together. He sounded very upbeat and full of enthusiasm.
‘I’m going to Ireland to hold auditions for dancers and I’d like to have a meeting with you,’ Michael said.
By coincidence, I was going to be in Dublin for the All-Ireland Championships in Malahide on the north side of the city at that particular time, so we arranged a date and time to get together at an airport hotel.
Ian drove me over to the hotel on a Sunday afternoon and left the two of us alone to talk.
When Michael walked into the room he looked like a guy who had just won the Lottery. He was all fired up with excitement. He told me that after the whole Riverdance saga he went off on a trip with some of his close pals and ‘got lost for a couple of weeks’ to clear his head. That was a good decision, as he returned invigorated and full of ideas for a show that would become Lord of the Dance.
‘If you are around tomorrow Marie, I’m holding auditions for the show in the Digges Lane Dance Studio here in the city,’ he said.
Then he put his hand on mine and added: ‘Would you be interested in working on it with me?’
I wasn’t expecting that – and my facial expression obviously said as much. ‘Would you at least come in and see how it goes?’ Michael added with that endearing smile of his. I nodded and said I’d be happy to do that. Michael then relaxed and began asking me about ideas. We talked about a storyline and things that weren’t in the other show, Riverdance.
As we bounced off each other, I felt we had a very good rapport.
‘I’m going back on the late boat tomorrow night,’ I added. ‘So I can spend the day at the auditions in Digges Lane.’
Michael was very happy with this arrangement, standing up and giving me his familiar warm hug before we went our separate ways.
When I went back to the All-Ireland Championships that afternoon I discovered that a lot of the older dancers were going to the Michael Flatley auditions the following day. There was a buzz of excitement among them as they talked about the auditions and what it might mean.
I overheard the conversations, and then piped up: ‘I’ll see you at the Michael Flatley auditions tomorrow.’
Heads swivelled in my direction, like I had announced some incredible news story that had just occurred. All eyes were on me.
‘You’re not going to the auditions, are you?’ one dancer eventually exclaimed, breaking the silence.
‘Oh yes I am,’ I told her, adding: ‘I’ll see you all there tomorrow.’
Then I strolled away, leaving a troupe of female dancers totally perplexed.
* * *
The Digges Lane Studio was down a side lane not far from Grafton Street, Dublin’s upmarket shopping area. I didn’t know what to expect as I made my way up that famous thoroughfare on a biting-cold Monday morning. I certainly wasn’t prepared for the sight that met my eyes. There was a queue of young men and women that seemed to stretch for miles.
Michael Flatley was equally surprised by the turnout when I met him.
‘Wow! Have you seen the line out there, Marie?’ he asked.
I nodded.
Derek McKillop, who was right-hand man to Michael’s then manager, John Reid, wandered over from a corner of the room. Then we all stood in the middle of the studio looking at each other and wondering where we were going to start. It was a very daunting experience, I have to admit.
Then I snapped out of the moment and quickly got my organising hat on. I had them file into different rooms and line up in an orderly fashion. We set about taking all their names, with poor old Derek being assigned to this task along with other people in the crew.
As the day went on, my excitement and confidence in what we were doing grew and grew because of the quality of the dancers. They were the crème de la crème, world champions or of that standard. I could also see that many of them had very high opinions of themselves, with justification of course. There would be attitude and ego to deal with, I realised.
And I was the one who would be dealing with it.
It would be me telling them what to do.
The first thing that had to be done, of course, was breaking the news to the young hopefuls as to who was staying and who was going home.
‘Derek, you’ll have to go out and announce the names of the people who are coming back,’ I told him, as I just couldn’t face the disappointment on the faces of those who didn’t get the call back.
Derek looked mortified.
‘Thank you for that, Marie,’ he said facetiously, as I gave him the list of dancers for the starter group who would be joining Michael Flatley’s brand new creation for the world stage. Ian and I then went off on the overnight boat back to England, but by then I had committed to working on Michael’s new show, with rehearsals beginning the following Monday.
On Thursday of that week we travelled to Coventry for my classes with Danny’s school. When I arrived, there was a message on Danny’s phone from Michael Flatley.
Michael told me that they had decided on a music composer for the show. His name was Ronan Hardiman.
I would later learn that Ronan, a small, slim, studious-looking man with round glasses, had been in a rock band during his early career, and had also composed music and jingles for film and TV. He had written the title music for RTÉ television’s main evening news, the jingle for top Irish broadcaster Pat Kenny’s radio show on RTÉ, as well as a number of commercials for Guinness products and the Irish National Lottery.
Ronan had also done the score for RTÉ’s natural history TV series, Waterways. He was well known and hugely respected in the worlds of music and media at the time. Later, when I met him, I discovered that Ronan was also great fun with a fabulous sense of humour.
‘Maybe you could give Ronan a call, Marie,’ Michael added after telling me that he had signed up this talented composer. ‘He has come up with some starter bits of music and I’d like you to listen to it and have some ideas on it.’
Michael gave me Ronan’s number. I called him from Danny’s house, introduced myself and then we had a brief chat about Michael’s vision for the show.
Then Ronan said: ‘I’d like you to listen to some music that I’ve composed for the top of the show. If I play it down the phone can you record it?’
I put the phone down and spoke to Danny. He didn’t have any recording device in the house. I really needed to have Ronan’s music so that I could have some ideas for the choreography when I went back to Dublin on the Monday.
Eventually, we came up with a solution. Ronan would ring Danny’s house phone and play his piece of music on the answering machine. Each recording had to be done in a minute.
So that’s how it went.
Ronan would call, play his piece of music, which started with gongs. Then he’d call back and do the next piece.
Later that day, I got a recording machine from Danny’s class, took it back to his house, and we re-recorded the music on a tape by playing all the phone messages.
From those humble beginnings a worldwide hit show would eventually blossom.
Two of the chosen dancers, Catriona Hale and John Carey, were in Danny’s class at that time. They were the first dancers I worked with, and the first to hear the show’s music.
‘You guys are going over on Monday – listen to this,’ I told them.
So I played them the music and spoke about the idea of the gongs and the opening with a group on the floor. That’s how it started.
When I went over on Monday morning we had our starter team of dancers, which was about half of the full troupe. This was early March and we were booked to open at The Point in June.
Having taken time out
with Ian to smell the roses, I was now back in dancing on a bigger scale than ever.
The Sacred Heart
I found myself living in Dublin again when rehearsals started for Michael’s new show. Ian and I stayed with my brother Seamas and his wife Betty at their home in Hazelbrook Drive, Terenure. We were there for a short time before the company rented an apartment for us.
Every morning, Ian would drive me to work, and then for a period he’d go off exploring the city to pass the day.
One time my sister-in-law Betty asked him: ‘What do you do when Marie goes into rehearsals?’
‘I go to either the church in Whitefriar Street or Gardiner Street and say some prayers,’ Ian replied.
This was a surprise to me, even though I knew that he was quite spiritual. Ian had been baptised, at his own request, in Kansas before we married. It was the church his friends, Ruth and Paul, attended. Later, he started coming to the Catholic Mass with me after we wed.
‘I’d like to see what all this kneeling down and standing up is all about,’ he explained at the beginning.
One of my favourite Dublin churches to reflect and pray in is Whitefriar Street Church, run by the Carmelite Order. In keeping with their contemplative tradition, it is an oasis of calm and prayerful silence in the midst of a bustling city, and an even busier lifestyle in my case. It’s a really beautiful church with all kinds of different altars.
Whitefriar Street Church is also noted for having the relics of St Valentine, which were donated in the nineteenth century by Pope Gregory XVl from their previous location in the cemetery of St Hippolytus in Rome.
It also has the relics of St Albert, a Sicilian who died in 1306. On his feast day, 7 August, a relic of the saint is dipped into the water of St Albert’s Well and is said to grant healing of body and mind to those who use the water.
Another Dublin place of worship, peace and tranquility I fell in love with is St Francis Xavier Church, or Gardiner Street Church as it is popularly known.
So, I took Ian along to those churches and they obviously had an impact on him too, particularly the one on Gardiner Street. ‘When I drop you off at rehearsals, I go to the church that you took me to on Gardiner Street and I pray to the Sacred Heart,’ he told me.
I didn’t know why he chose the Sacred Heart. I thought maybe it was the fact that most of the statues in churches are of Jesus with the heart on the outside, representing His divine love for humanity.
When I asked Ian why he prayed to the Sacred Heart, he joked: ‘Well, you should always go straight to the top man.’ In Kinsealy I had a big statue of the Sacred Heart, which had belonged to my grandmother. It was passed on to my Aunt Em, who passed it to my mum, who passed it to me.
When I sold my home in Kinsealy and was moving my possessions to Prudhoe, a friend of mine spotted the Sacred Heart statue among the pile and said, ‘I’ll have Him!’
Ian instantly piped up: ‘No, He is coming with us!’
So the Sacred Heart emigrated with me to Prudhoe.
‘Where will I put Him?’ I said to Ian one day as I was organising my things.
‘He should be in our bedroom,’ Ian replied.
And that’s where He took up residence.
I think Ian found great comfort in religion and, ultimately, in the Catholic Church, despite his run-in with the priest in Kinsealy putting him off it for a time.
There was a Catholic Church called St Agnes’s in Crawcrook, the next village to Prudhoe, and he would always come with me to Mass there without being asked. When I discovered the name of the church in Crawcrook I thought it was a good omen.
St Agnes is also the name of my parish church back home in Crumlin, Dublin.
* * *
I was now saying lots of prayers myself as I found myself back in the rat race, and busier than at any other stage of my life. I was also working against a clock that seemed to be ticking down time faster than it should, as we prepared for the opening night of Michael Flatley’s new show.
It was the deadline, rather than the actual staging of the show, that gave me sleepless nights. The show was no hardship to me because all my past experience then came into play. It was then I appreciated what I had learned when I was putting on shows in the Dublin national schools, and on the road at festivals around Europe with Inis Ealga. Now I was using all those skills in my new role with Michael Flatley.
The show was created in different ways. Sometimes Michael put rhythms together and we’d show them to Ronan and say, ‘Will you put a tune to that?’ Other times Ronan would send us music and we’d put steps to it.
For a short time before we got apartments, we were staying at the luxurious Westbury Hotel off Grafton Street. One day, the phone rang while I was taking a shower and Ian answered it.
‘Ronan has some new music for you to listen to,’ Ian said, popping his head into the bathroom.
I quickly dried off and raced to the phone in the bedroom. Ronan then played me a piece of music that would turn out to be ‘Breakout’, or ‘strip jig’, which was our pet name for it because it’s the dance scene where the girls whip off their skirts in the show. It was an appropriate piece of music at that moment given my state of undress.
‘Is this time alright for you for this number?’ Ronan asked.
‘Hold on,’ I said as I started dancing to the music in my birthday suit.
‘Up a bit,’ I said, as I took some steps.
‘Okay, down a bit.’
‘A bit faster.’
‘Now slower.’
Ian was doubled over with laughter in the corner of the room.
I was just glad for Ronan’s sake that we weren’t on Skype.
* * *
Michael brought Irish dancing several steps down the line in Riverdance, but he took it into the stratosphere in movements, sexiness and costumes with Lord of the Dance. However, it took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to create that vision.
It was Michael and dance captain Daire Nolan who put the guys through their paces every day, while I trained the girls. But I would have both the guys and girls in from early morning for rehearsals and, of course, ‘the Marie Duffy exercises’.
At first, there was resistance from the big, tough young men who had been dancing all their lives in competition without a warm-up regime.
Their attitude was: ‘You want us to do this girlie stuff, like stretching!’
It took a lot of persuasion on my part to get them into that mindset. I pointed out to them that every other form of dance at the highest level had those exercises at its core. Eventually, they did listen when their bodies started to rebel.
This was dancing on a scale that they had never experienced before. It was totally different to competitive dancing. They had to retrain in so many ways. From being still and stiff with arms down by their sides in Irish dancing, they now had the challenge of expressing themselves in all kinds of ways, both physically and emotionally. They were now using their bodies, their arms, their expressions, as well as dancing. It was a totally new discipline.
Soon they were all struggling with aches and pains and sore muscles. And pain is a great way to get attention. They then saw the importance and the benefit of ‘the Marie Duffy exercises’.
We had a very good team: Daire Nolan as mentioned was the male captain, while Catriona Hale filled that role among the females. We were still trying out different leads, with top dancers like Bernadette Flynn, Gillian Norris and Areleen Ní Bhaoil. One day Michael would like one, the next day he would prefer the other.
Michael kept the storyline of the show simple. It was the age-old tale of good versus evil; the bad guy and the good guy; the temptress and the good girl. Because we were starting from scratch we took it number by number, with whatever piece of music Ronan had ready.
Ronan had his own way of composing music, so it took us both a while to find a common language to marry the music and the dances.
It was an inspired move by Michael to hire Ronan, who was then a new kid
on the block. He created his own style in his own way and put his stamp musically on Lord of the Dance.
Michael was the creative genius who would paint a picture of what he wanted, and Ronan would go off and talk to myself and the dance captain, Daire, as he tried to figure it all out. Then we would tweak it in the dance studio, working together as a whole team.
We became a tight little unit.
In the daily routine, I worked with the dancers in the morning and then Michael would come in and work with us in the afternoon and we’d finish around six in the evening.
There was a very lively entertainment venue called Break for the Border next door to the Digges Lane Studio, and it obviously had some kind of a magnet that occasionally pulled in our dancers. With Michael’s zest for life, of course he was the ringleader. He was all for young people having a good time. However, occasionally they had too much of a good time for my liking, particularly with a heart-stopping deadline on the horizon.
One particular morning I arrived into the studio to find that all the dancers had turned into Martians. At least that’s how they looked to me – they were all green in the face. Inside I was fuming when I saw the state of them. I had warned them so many times about not overdoing their partying when they had downtime because there was so much work to do in a very short period of time.
At first, I considered sending them all home in disgrace that morning. Then I had a better idea. I thought, well, you don’t listen, so now you got to learn by paying the price. And I put them through their paces ten times harder over the next few hours.
It was around noon when Derek McKillop popped in to see how things were going. He had obviously peeped in and felt that everything was fine and dandy. Judging by the smile on his face, he had no idea that a torrent of abuse was about to be unleashed on him – by me!
‘Look at the state of the people in this room!’ I said, summoning up my inner witch from hell.
Derek suddenly looked very sheepish. He stood and listened to my rant for a couple of minutes before exiting the studio when I ran out of steam.
Lady of the Dance Page 11
