Having created and choreographed the international blockbusters “Riverdance” and “Lord of the Dance” in the 1990s, the flamboyant dancer Michael Flatley says he will hang up his tap shoes after a limited run on Broadway later this year. His new show “Lord of the Dance: Dangerous Games” will play the Lyric Theatre from November 7-January 3. It will be a valedictory for the 57-year-old entertainer who rode to global fame and untold riches — he’s reputedly worth more than $600 million — by introducing Irish dance to a world that didn’t know it had an insatiable appetite for Irish jigs. Of course, Flatley dressed it up with smoke, mirrors, glittering costumes, epic song, and mythic narratives of which he was the dashing, bare-chested, leather-panted hero. Critics tended to turn up their noses at the spectacle featuring an ensemble of 40 dancers, but audience flocked to his shows, selling out 6000-seat arenas before you could say “Erin go bragh.” Not bad for the Chicago-born son of Irish immigrants who, at 17, was the first American to win an international dance championship in the art form of his ancestors. A few years later, he toured with the Chieftains, a traditional Irish band, drawing the attention of producers who asked him to put together a show that would evolve into “Riverdance.” Ever pugnacious and a self-admitted control freak, Flatley bitterly parted ways with the producers over creative differences. He retaliated with a lawsuit and the creation of “Lord of the Dance.” When I interviewed him for the Los Angeles Times on the eve of the show playing the Universal Amphitheatre, the scrappy dancer said, “I did it my way, which may be more flamboyant than the [critics] care for but it’s typically American. This is the country of Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan. They pay a lot of money and they want to see somebody out there walking the line, walking the edge.”That the end of the line has come for Flatley is somewhat surprising, considering that he has often claimed that he would usher out of this life on tap shoes. “I will be a dancer to the day I die,” he said. But he has sustained a number of injuries through the years and he has proven himself over and over again. In his farewell engagement at the Lyric, Flatley will come on stage for the finale with his dancers. His winning formula in translating Irish dance into a global phenomenon was a question of instinct. “When the music starts and I can hear the dancers moving like a powerful locomotive, my heart starts beating and I feel something passionate and ancient and deep being uncovered in me,” he said. “Frank McCourt [author of “Angela’s Ashes”] told me a story in which a father is saying goodbye to his son and not finding the words asks for them to dance together. The Irish dance to reveal something that can’t be expressed in words, all the pain and joy and passion.”
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