By Courtenay Martin
Special to the Express-News

Maybe it's the headbands and the leather pants.

Maybe it's the legions of screaming fans.

Maybe, just maybe, it's the cocky media persona cultivated since "Riverdance" was still just a six-and-a-half-minute blip between acts at the Eurovision Song Contest. Whether you love or hate the man, you have to admit Michael Flatley has a heckuva cyberlife.

The world champion Irish dancer, champion chess player, Golden Gloves boxer and famous persona has attracted a lot of attention over the last four years ---and not just due to that "billion taps per second" world record thing.

A simple Internet search query of the name "Michael Flatley" on Yahoo churns out over 2,000 sites devoted to the accomplished Irish dancer. Many are carefully crafted shrines complete with pictures, illustrations, links, love letters, Flatley-related fiction and best wishes.

Then there are the foes of Flatley, who maintain their own Web sites. Click "Lard of the Dance," "Bored of the Dance" or "Michael Fathead" and you'll launch headfirst into the kind of unabashed diatribe usually only found online -- insults, derogatory cartoons and all.

A line has been drawn in the cybersand regarding Flatley, whose choreographed extravaganza "Lord of the Dance" has been touring for a little over three years, a little over one without him. As he stepped out of the spotlight to get the new "Feet of Flames" ready to tour, his image was still headlining in a cyberworld all its own.

Baryshnikov and Astair never had lick like this.

A sampling of the pro- and anti- Flatley site:

SEARCH: MICHAEL FLATLEY AND FANS

"I've seen 15 live performances, about half with Michael Flatley dancing," said Bernadette Price, creator of the Celtic Cafe, an online meeting place for lovers of all things Celtic. "I know of some people who have seen 50, 60 or 70 shows, and have worn out their videotapes (of Lord of the Dance) and had to replace them because of frequent replays."

She met some of them through a community of Flatley fans that sprang up around the Visitor's Book -- or "VB" as it's known among cyber-Flatley fans -- on the official "Lord of the Dance" publicity site. Flatheads (as Flatley fans call themselves) started meeting in the site's chat room on a daily basis to talk about their lives, "Lord of the Dance" (aka LOTD) and Flatley.

Especially Flatley.

"About 100 of us from the LOTD VB went to Dublin for Michael Flatley's last three regular performances with "lord of the Dance" in June of last year," Price said. "Over 50 of us just from the Celtic Cafe community met in Rotterdam last May to see LOTD, Troupe One, without Michael Flatley, and there were 10 countries represented. By this time, our gathering was as much for meeting up with the good friends we made in the Celtic Cafe chatroom as it was for the shows."

SEARCH: MICHAEL FLATLEY AND WRITING

Velvet Durano calls her novel "Awaken the Lord of the Dance" and an entire Web site has been devoted to the tale of Flatley and his production.

"I've only seen the show twice, once here in Los Angeles and once in Las Vegas," said Durano, a massage therapist by profession in Los Angeles and current Web mistress of Celtic Cafe. "I went (on the VB) and got to meet a nice little clique of fans and I decided that I was going to make my view (of "Lord of the Dance") known."

Durano said the novel was nothing like any of the work she'd created before -- "I make specialized poetry for uplifting people." After writing a prologue detailing a fictional "dark night of the soul" when Flatley decided to create LOTD, she realized that the subject gave her a ready made online audience waiting for each installment.

"Many people found the show to be a great transformative experience," she said. "And I intended it for the fans of the show."

Writing it takes a lot of time and energy. Durano hasn't been able to work on it for a while -- she's been too busy with her Celtic Cafe duties and other writing projects.

"I did a lot of research to find what would be accurate for the surroundings of the time," said Durano. "I had to temper my language because the age range of the audience is about 13 and up."

For a short period, she pulled the story from the Net, fearing copyright issues regarding her work and the show. "I don't mention Michael Flatley's name until the last chapter and I'm still undecided on that," she said. "And for a while, people had started creating offshoots of my own story."

Durano put the site back up after fans of the show started clamoring for it.

"Everybody's going to have their own view," she said.

SEARCH: MICHAEL FLATLEY AND MASTERPIECE

One of the more unusual sites is "Michael Flatley By The Masters", which plants Flatley in famous and contemporary art masterpieces. Rusty Clark, a Web page designer based in West Springfield, Mass, created her online gallery after seeing the LOTD show in Connecticut in 1997.

"At the time I was doing a lot of computer graphic cut-and-pste stuff," she said. "And I could just see Michael, who has a wee bit of a reputation as an egotist, you know, as Blue Boy -- the dandy with head held high.

"Monet was a natural for the former "Riverdance" star, 'The Awakening of Narcissus' with Blarney Castle in the background shouted to me, the Matisse dance, a great Titian piece called 'Venus and Adonis' plays with Michael's reputation as a ladies' man," Clark said. "Then after I read up on Flatley and realized that he was also a boxer, chess master, etc., etc., the contemporary popped up with Michael 'On the Waterfront,' Michael playing chess against Big Blue, ABSOLUT Michael and my tribute to my two favorite Irish dancers: Michael Flatley in 'Singing in the Rain.'"

Clark considers herself an ordinary fan with a particularly nice fan page.

"I still get some chuckles out of it," she said. "There's some good natured ribbing going on there but nothing I wouldn't show Michael."

Continued, click here