Lord of the Jungle

Celtic Tiger at the Celtic Cafe

“That's one thing I've always admired about you Irish-Americans. You carry your love of country like a flag, right out in the open. It's a great quality.” – from the movie “Yankee Doodle Dandy”, 1942

One Giant Leap

From his first interviews promoting the new show, Michael Flatley asserted that Celtic Tiger would be “totally different” from his earlier work; just how different depends on how the show is viewed. The dancing and choreography have set new standards, while the production values (and aspirations) transcended new limits. The production values are heavy on flash, glitter and showmanship, technological wizardry and stage magic. But the choreography itself emphasises complexity, sophistication and style under the flash and showiness. On a technical level, the dancing is a showcase of virtuosity across diverse styles: as a troupe, the dancers are a many-feeted single entity, able to do anything and make it look good.

The choreography has taken long strides beyond Lord of the Dance, building a remarkable edifice on that foundation. Beginning with a more comprehensive integration of upper-body movements with traditional Irish dance style, as well as the addition of more complex patterns and syncopation to the traditional footwork, Celtic Tiger goes on, as Riverdance did ten years ago, to bring different dance styles together in vital combination. Shifts in time signature and tempo are now old hat; shifts in style and genre are the new challenge.

But Celtic Tiger has leapt far beyond the rather simplistic variety-show approach of the seminal production. This is no mere line-up of a few folk dance styles selected for the sake of a high energy level, but a rich exploration and celebration of common roots and elements, reflecting on the central theme of immigrant community. The culture of the home country contributes to the vigour of the new in an ongoing and ever-renewing cycle. The kinetic vocabulary has been applied to a different kind of subject here: Michael has taken for his theme, not the hero-tales of mythology, but the Irish-American experience (and by extension, the essential experience of crossing between cultures). It’s a broad subject, and he paints with large strokes and in bold primary colours. This is the same palette he originally developed in Riverdance and Lord of the Dance, now wielded on a very different scale and to different effect, and with an added decade of accumulated experience.

Michael Flatley’s dance style, like his choreography, has also changed. If this is partly attributable to the inevitable toll of gravity and entropy on a dancer’s body, this is hardly surprising: Baryshnikov, who still dances at the age of 58, changed his dance style and genre nearly twenty years ago in part to accommodate his growing physical limitations. But if advancing age is trying to “ground” Michael, the attempt has failed. The head-high kicks and sky-high leaps tossed off so profligately in early years now appear rarely, as powerful accent marks rather than entire phrases in the dance; in their place is a deeper and richer complexity, an even more breathtaking precision and razor-edged perfection, and a vibrant streak of wicked humour.

And Celtic Tiger is new and different on a level far more fundamental than choreography or even style. The show’s themes are darker and more complex and controversial, the handling of the material more intricate. The evolutionary distance from the earlier shows is particularly felt at a visceral level: the energy differs in pacing and the show differs in dramaturgical structure. Where the early shows opened in a blaze of glory, the first number of Celtic Tiger is literally danced in the dark. The first act in particular addresses a tremendous weight of historical pain, ending at last not with a rousing dance, but with a chorus of voices raised in song, and a spirit more ferocious than celebratory. Those who attend the show expecting a repeat of the experience of Lord of the Dance and Feet of Flames will find themselves on a different roller-coaster, and may be taken by surprise at the drops.

No Irish Need Apply

New works in any of the major and established art forms are assessed within the context of their genres; but as a nascent art form, having only just passed its tenth year of existence, Irish dance theatre has been inventing its context as it goes.

Since the birth of the Irish dance show as a genre, constant and often virulent criticism has been directed at the shows in general and Michael in particular: the scale of production, the uninhibited enthusiasm and sexuality, and the flash and spectacle of the shows have been denounced, while the dance itself has been dismissed, more than once, as being too restricted to have any future as a major art form. Given that the show style of Irish dance began as a breakaway from one set of restrictions, this is an extraordinarily self-defeating assertion. As the genre’s founder and its seminal choreographer, Michael has never admitted defeat or recognised limitation; the essence of his work begins in that denial.

In his key innovative breakthrough, Michael took Irish dance, a complex and demanding form devoid of emotional content, and made it expressive without giving up any of its complexity. In doing so, he established a dance style that taps directly into the pure potential of musical expression. Music possesses an essential and visceral emotional power; music expressed physically and directly, with the entire body, has the power to communicate across any boundary and transform what it touches.

It is a power embraced by devotees of pop music, but curiously neglected, even shunned, by most styles of professional dance. Ballet aspires to a refined aesthetic that denies even the weight and substantiality of the body, and minimises emotions to a delicate essence; modern dance tends to strip away emotion, as well as context, content, and everything else, in pursuit of pure form. Accustomed to this approach and unfamiliar with the history of Irish dance pre-Riverdance, dance and music critics have never known how to respond to Michael’s work.

Moreover, art, and artistic critique, tends to maintain its own self-enforced mythology – to be serious and legitimate, an artist must suffer and express suffering; works that convey a positive message or conclusion are relegated to inferior status or entirely dismissed as “pop art”.

Possibly Michael’s greatest offense, by these lights, is his optimism, or even worse, his success. He appeals to all ages; his work crosses cultural and international borders without loss; he has not only made a fortune, he still visibly delights in what he does, and celebrates the accomplishments of those around him. If the best revenge is living well, it is clearly also an unforgivable crime and a sin against art.

Lord of the Jungle

How, then, will this show be greeted as the tiger commences its new season on the prowl? From Europe, the tour is bound for Asia, where the buzz-phrase “Celtic Tiger” had its origins. The show seems determined to carry its message to as many countries as possible – in Tiger Feet, Michael speaks optimistically of rounding the globe. It should be no surprise that the show looks to such broad horizons: a complete world tour is no more than an even match for the show’s ambition and artistic scope.

Although the show’s specific ethnic and historical content might work against it before a global audience, the underlying theme and energy – the immigrant experience, identity caught between two cultures – will resonate in any corner of the shrinking globe. And the show itself blazes a path beyond the specific: Act I is a sequence of historical events, interpreted more or less freely; Act II abandons historical sequence altogether for artistic and stylistic montage. Act I recalls a series of struggles, Act II is unadulterated celebration. Celtic Tiger takes a complex approach to an essentially simple theme, exploring the idea from every side at once, and at the same time simply celebrating it directly. The show combines the fierce stubborn pride of Ireland with the incandescent patriotism of the expatriate.

At its core, the show carries an important element common to all of Michael’s work: it reflects Michael’s essential optimism and offers a path by which the audience can join him. Where Lord of the Dance transcended cultural differences, Celtic Tiger recognises and celebrates them, crossing borders rather than erasing them.

To cross from one culture to another – even cultures as close as Ireland and America – to retain the vital energy of the past without being crippled by the unhealed wounds that are carried in the tragedies of every country’s history, while at the same time embracing the opportunities of the new world; and to defy that same new world to force onto the emigré any new limitations that might stunt the expansion into the future of so much unfolding energy. This is the leap that the Celtic Tiger is making, in utter confidence that it will land on its feet.

Many of the critics, who made up their minds about Michael’s work years ago, have found in Celtic Tiger no reason to change the depth of their collective sneer. But this show isn’t for them. Michael demonstrated, in its first preview performance, who it was he created this show for: the professional Irish dancers whose world he made possible, the new students of dance who dream of the expanding horizons his free gestures have opened up, and the fans who remain willing to discard cynicism for a few hours – or longer – and enter a world of pride and possibility, where the homeland is celebrated and remembered with joy while the future is embraced with confidence.

Author: Louise Owen

Special thanks to Ann Keller, Bernadette Price, and Melissa Karnosh. And to Michael, of course.