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SEARCH: BORED OF THE DANCE OR LARD OF THE DANCE "It is pretentious, I think," said Sara Fisch, a local writer who encountered the Flatley phenomenon when on a business trip to Las Vegas, where the show toured. "There's this whole 'Solid Gold' kind of aspect of the show -- I think it's the headbands -- that makes me think an 8-year-old in 1979 would find sexy." An entire Web site devoted to detractors of Michael Flatley called "Bored of the Dance" offers up the same judgment. Fish said she didn't notice any too-ardent fans during her stay at the New York, New York Casino, but she did find a television channel devoted to clips of the live show. "I just can't look at this guy and teethy-ness, which was all over the place, and take it seriously," she said. Fisch, who is part Irish and spent a year in Dublin, points to two reasons Flatley has such rigorous detractors: "I think there's a whole aspect to Irish and Irish-Americans who want to rip down anyone who's gotten too successful or too big for their britches. And I think there's a big age gap here. For those of us who are Generation-X, college-educated quasi-hipsters, it's really easy to see Michael Flatley as a big balloon who needs a little pinprick. It's the sentimentality factor about the show." |
SEARCH: MICHAEL FLATLEY AND REAL AND HISTORY "He was always kind of the way he is now," said Emir Ni Mhaoileidigh, a choreographer, former world-champion dancer and dance teacher from Dublin who runs a school of more than 150 students in Austin and Dallas called the Irish Dance Center. "He was always very much a professional, he always had a presence." Ni Mhaoileidigh knows a little bit about the presence. She holds a world record for the most major dance awards won in a year, including the All-Irish, World Championship, All-American and others. Flatley used to compete in the boys' categories of the same competitions, and is one year younger than she. "When you're on the top like that, there will always be a lot of people who want to pull you down and rip you to pieces. It doesn't surprise me that he's gone full-blown -- he was always something special."
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