THE SHOW WENT on.

In the face of howling wind and rain, financial issues and multiple legal wranglings, Michael Flatley’s Lord of the Dance played to a packed crowd last night in the 3Arena in Dublin.

It almost didn’t happen. Just two days before the event, Switzer Consulting, the events company contracted to run the Lord of the Dance shows, said the performance had been called off with “immediate effect”. 

Last week, a legal order barring Flatley from engaging with the production was overturned, and this week he was granted a temporary injunction against Switzer. The two parties told a Belfast court that they had reached an agreement on Wednesday, and a new set and costumes were delivered in time for last night’s performance.

Forget all that legal stuff – let’s freaking dance! Crowds braved near gale force winds to watch the 30th anniversary show.

There were some empty seats, but there were far more full ones, and it’s not even tourist season. It was very much an Irish crowd, showing that Irish people – as much as anyone else – love to see their own traditions glammified, Americanised, and sold back to them as pure spectacle. Sure didn’t we know that already?

Since it first debuted in 1996 in the same venue – back then The Point Theatre – Lord of the Dance, as well as its various sequels and offshoots, has become a worldwide sensation, bringing scantily clad, high kicking, fast-footed men and women to countless stages.

At the heart of all this is Flatley. The Irish-American first click-clacked onto the international stage as the leading man in Riverdance at the 1994 Eurovision, wowing the world with his fast feet and arm moves, and innovating and altering the dance form as he did so. He has been at it since.

And make no mistake – this is Flatley’s show.

Yes, there might have been 30 or so incredible dancers rehearsing to within an inch of their lives and absolutely stamping their hearts out on the stage with drilled-in choreography. There might have been a very impressive new leading man – the charismatic Macauley Selwood – but it is still all about Flatley.

Before the dancers took to the stage, the man himself emerged to a roaring round of applause from the besotted crowd. 

“It’s been a rocky road to Dublin,” he said, to laughter and claps. “But I’m still standing.”

“The story of The Lord of the Dance is the story of good versus evil. And I promise you the good guys always win.”

Flatley on stage last night.

Shut up and dance

And boy did they! You know the drill, and you either love it or hate it. Irish dancing is at the very core of Flatley’s project, and all the participants are incredibly accomplished Irish dancers, but at times Lord of the Dance feels about as Irish as Darby O’Gill.

The show emerged out of the iconic Riverdance, which took the world by storm when it was first staged and introduced Irish dancing to a whole new audience.

Flatley was the star of Riverdance, but parted ways with the company over creative differences and control. Whereas Riverdance took the forms of traditional Irish dancing and added scale, theatricality and panache, repackaging it for an international audience, an unleashed Flatley dialled the whole thing up to 100.

A preternatural talent and a born showman, Flatley knew that what general audiences want most is physicality and to have a good time, and he always endeavoured to deliver both. Tonight, a whole new cast worked to do the same. The show was pure, unadulterated spectacle.

We won’t get into the story and the names (Planet Ireland, Morrighan, the Temptress, etc.), but like the man himself said, it is a simple good and evil affair, steeped in quasi-Celtic imagery.

There is a sprite pretending to play a diamond encrusted tin whistle. There are about 30 fit, beautiful men and women in various skimpy costumes and states of undress. There are two leading women, one blonde and pure, the other dark haired and sultry. There is an antagonist in a riot helmet. There is the Lord of the Dance. And there are endless glittering sequins.

All of this is really just an excuse for the dancers to flit and fly and stomp and kick and twirl across the stage in different scenes over the course of about two hours (with an interval in the middle).

Everything is a dance: conflict, introductions, love, military posturing, fighting, death, grief, bullying, all of it, just an excuse to dance. The kind steward helping people to their seats was dancing, there were people dancing in the aisles. Dance. Dance. Dance!

Pure spectacle 

We hardly need to say that what was happening on the stage bore little to no resemblance to the traditions of Irish step dancing, practiced in dance halls and kitchens. It was the skeleton of this form injected with steroids and a particular blown-up, US sensibility.

At times, it was hard to understand what was happening. The women onstage, not wearing much to begin with, at one point stripped down to what was basically their underwear. The men duly followed by ripping their shirts off. The entire cast came out at one point dressed fully in Jane Fonda style 80s workout wear.

Was the intention or a result of all the legal issues and last minute preparations? A new set was promised in the promo for the show, but the set wasn’t really a set, just some steps and a duo of screens with some graphics that wouldn’t be hard to recreate with basic AI. Even the famous click-clacks of dance shoes on flooring were audio recordings. All meaning seemed to be swallowed whole.

But Flatley and Switzer and the crowd tonight were lucky that the cast were all so driven and talented, carrying the show off with incredible footwork and moments of physicality. One can only imagine how much training and rehearsal must have gone into those performances and there is just something about the movement and traditional music (turned up to 100) that gets the heart pumping.

There was also a duo of dancing fiddle players and some Disney musical versions of beloved Irish classics. The crowd absolutely loved it.

At the end of every sequence, the audience erupted into applause and whooping, with some people standing regularly to show their appreciation. Naturally, the show ended with a standing ovation (the tagline “30 years of standing ovations” almost dares you to stay sitting down), before we were treated to another montage of Flatley’s achievements and a trio of Flatleys dancing onstage. Flatley. Flatley. Flatley!

Finally, the dancers returned to the stage one last time, and there he was with them: the Lord of the Dance himself. Michael Flatley wearing a glittering purple cloak was back to direct the dancers onstage and he even threw out a few steps himself, showing that at 67 years of age, after it all, the man can still move. Take these broken wings and learn to fly.

The whole place went ballistic. By the end, Flatley, the dancers, the audience were all still standing and smiling. At least for the time being.