Michael Flatley has confessed he would “still be out there” on stage if it wasn’t for a series of health issues. Having first risen to public prominence thirty years ago when Riverdance blew the roof off the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest, he has gone on to have a stellar career.
However, The Lord Of The Dance star was forced to retire from performing in 2016 and admits he still misses it. Speaking exclusively to Express.co.uk in advance of the new Lord Of The Dance tour, entitled A Lifetime Of Standing Ovations he opened up about why he hung up his dancing shoes.
“I did my last show when I was 58 years old and if it wasn’t for my back and my neck and my legs, I’d still be out there but my body couldn’t take the damage anymore,” he said sadly. But of course, I miss coming down the steps at the back of the stage in front of 18,000 people standing up screaming. What’s not to love [about that]?
“It’s just impossible to explain the buzz and when I’m in front of that dance troupe of dancers, you can imagine 50 dancers in a line dancing as fast as they possibly can, trained to perfection, each one of them hitting the floor several times a second at exactly the same time.”
“It’s an unbelievable feeling. It raises the hair on the back of my neck. It’s as loud as a Concorde taking off and every one of them is exactly in time,” he enthused.
While Michael may not be taking to the stage on this tour, he is still very heavily involved in the production and has numerous other projects on the go. It is clear retirement from dancing hasn’t slowed him down as he reels off his current workload.
“I’ve got a new Christmas show coming out – Michael Flatley’s Christmas dance spectacular,” he revealed. “It’ll be coming hopefully this Christmas if we can get a venue in the UK and if we can get a venue in Ireland and maybe Scotland and Wales. I finished creating it 10 years ago, but it’s only last year and this year that I put the final touches on it and gave it to the dance troops.
“So by the end of September, I’ll have two troops on the road because the demands are so big. By Christmas, I’ll have three troops on the road.
“Plus I have just launched my new Irish whiskey in honour of my Father, God rest his soul, so that’s a big job and I have to do mountains of press and things for that. A lot of meet and greets and all the business that’s associated with that.”
“I [also] have a new documentary about my life that is coming out later this year. Although I haven’t seen it, I’m hoping and praying it’s good,” he said. He also revealed that he has been approached about more movie work following the release of his film Blackbird last year.
Ironically, it could all have been so different if he had listened to people, including his own mother, who was not convinced by his idea for an Irish dancing show.
He remembered: “I told everyone I was gonna have a big Irish dance show and they laughed so hard. They called me names I never heard of. My mother pleaded with me to get a real job even though she was a believer and she loved me and she knew I was a world champion.
“I was a driven man, but they just couldn’t understand, and then when I went to tell people that promoters anybody, [they said] ‘No chance zero chance. Are you crazy?'”
“But Riverdance hit like a hammer, and I felt like a loaded slingshot beside the stage when it came time because I was so prepared. I’d been dreaming about it on construction sites swinging a sledgehammer. Finally, I got my chance and that took off,” he smiled.
Michael Flatley’s Lord of the Dance: A Spectacular returns to UK stages with A Lifetime Of Standing Ovations Tour which begins in Edinburgh on July 16 and takes in cities throughout the UK until November 3.
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