Michael Ryan Flatley was born on July 16,1958 and is an Irish-American dancer.
58 Facts About Michael Flatley
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Michael Flatley became known for creating and performing in Irish dance shows Riverdance, Lord of the Dance, Feet of Flames, Celtic Tiger Live and Michael Flatley's Christmas Dance Spectacular.
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Michael Flatley's career includes work as an actor, writer, director, producer, and philanthropist.
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Michael Flatley is credited with reinventing traditional Irish dance by incorporating new rhythms, syncopation, and upper body movements, which were previously absent from the dance, as well as including influences from tap and contemporary dance.
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Michael Flatley formerly held the Guinness World Record for tap dancing 35 times per second and his feet were at one time insured for $57.6 million.
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Michael Flatley retired from dance in 2016 due to constant spinal, knee, foot, and rib pain.
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Michael Flatley was a plumber from County Sligo, and Eilish was a gifted step dancer from County Carlow whose mother, Hannah Ryan, was a champion dancer.
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When Michael Flatley was two months old, the family moved from Detroit to Chicago's South Side.
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In Chicago, Flatley began dance lessons at age eleven with Dennis G Dennehy at the Dennehy School of Irish Dance.
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Michael Flatley attended Brother Rice High School, an all-boys Catholic private school.
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In 1975, at age 17, Michael Flatley was the first American to win a World Irish Dance title at Oireachtas Rince na Cruinne, the Irish dancing championships.
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In 1975 and 1976, Michael Flatley won twice in the All-Ireland Fleadh Cheoil concert flute competitions.
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Michael Flatley stated that he continued to flirt with the idea of becoming a professional into the early 1980s, but ultimately stayed with a career in dance.
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Michael Flatley later became a philanthropic donor to the Golden Gloves organization.
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In 2023 Michael Flatley was one of four fighters to be named a Titan of Chicago Golden Gloves Boxing during their 100th Anniversary celebrations.
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From 1978 to 1979, Michael Flatley toured with Green Fields of America.
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Michael Flatley performed a 7-minute show titled "Riverdance" for the interval act of the contest, which was held in Ireland.
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Michael Flatley's creation debuted in February of 1995 at the Point Theatre in Dublin.
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In September 1995, after the show sold out, Michael Flatley left Riverdance to pursue what would eventually become Lord of the Dance.
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Michael Flatley had been in a dispute with the Riverdance producers over his salary and royalty fees.
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Michael Flatley was fired the night before the show was set to begin its second run in London and replaced with Colin Dunne.
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Immediately after the Riverdance split, Michael Flatley decided to create his own show, Lord of the Dance, which was capable of playing in arenas and stadiums aside from traditional theaters.
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In 1998, Michael Flatley created an expanded version of the show called Feet of Flames which served as its one-off performance and his final performance in Lord of the Dance.
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Michael Flatley's next show, Celtic Tiger Live, opened in July 2005.
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Michael Flatley wrote "I will be a dancer until the day I die" in the program book of the show.
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On November 15,2006, prior to the autumn and winter tours of the show, Michael Flatley was admitted to a private London hospital with a viral infection.
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Michael Flatley was discharged two weeks later and cancelled said tour.
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Michael Flatley performed the solo "Capone" from Celtic Tiger on the show.
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Michael Flatley was the host of Superstars of Dance, an NBC series that ran for 5 episodes in early 2009.
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Michael Flatley performed on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, during the 1997 Academy Awards ceremony, and was interviewed on Piers Morgan's Life Stories in 2011.
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In December 2009, Michael Flatley returned to the stage for a limited run of the "Hyde Park" version of Feet of Flames in Taiwan.
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In 2011, Michael Flatley released On A Different Note, a flute album.
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Also in the same year, Michael Flatley created a revised spin-off of Lord of the Dance, entitled Lord of the Dance: Dangerous Games, which featured a similar storyline with new numbers, as well as new music by Gerard Fahy, who previously served as a bandleader and musical director in Michael Flatley's shows.
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In November 2015, Michael Flatley's show Lord of the Dance: Dangerous Games premiered at the Lyric Theatre, a Broadway theatre.
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In January 2017, Michael Flatley introduced his troupe for a performance at the inauguration of Donald Trump.
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In 2018, Michael Flatley wrote, directed, financed and starred in Blackbird, a spy film set in Barbados, Ireland and the UK.
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Blackbird was scheduled to receive its world premiere in a private showing at the Raindance Film Festival in London, where Michael Flatley was a member of the Festival Jury.
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In 1988, Michael Flatley received a National Heritage Fellowship, the highest folk-related honor awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts.
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In December 2001, Michael Flatley became the first recipient of the Irish Dancing Commission Fellowship award and was made a Fellow of the American Irish Dance Teachers' Association.
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In 2003 Michael Flatley received a special award from Prince Rainier of Monaco for his charity work, and in March 2003 Irish America magazine named Michael Flatley Irish American of the Year.
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In 2004, Michael Flatley received an honorary doctorate degree from University College Dublin, and that same year received the prestigious Ellis Island Medal of Honor in New York.
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On October 24,2013, Michael Flatley received the Lifetime Achievement Award at The Irish Post Awards on Park Lane.
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In July 2021, Michael Flatley received the award for Best Actor at the Monaco Streaming Film Festival for his role in Blackbird.
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In June 2006, Michael Flatley began dating Niamh O'Brien, a longtime dancer from several of his shows.
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Michael Flatley and his wife have a son, Michael St James, born in 2007.
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Michael Flatley has undergone surgery and is in the care of an excellent team of doctors.
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Michael Flatley has invested a significant portion of his wealth in Berkshire Hathaway.
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In 2006, Michael Flatley released Lord of the Dance: My Story, his autobiography.
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In 2010, Michael Flatley dedicated the Garden of Memory and Music in Culfadda, County Sligo, the village his father left to seek a new life in America.
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Michael Flatley has hosted annual Christmas fundraisers for vulnerable children at his estate.
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In 2010, Michael Flatley participated in the fundraising JP McManus Pro-Am in Adare, County Limerick, Ireland.
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Michael Flatley is a supporter of the Irish Fund for Great Britain that provides social support for Irish citizens living in the UK.
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Michael Flatley has spent time as an advocate for cancer research.
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In 2021, Michael Flatley was named an Ambassador of Culture for Co Saolfada, a cancer research advocacy program.
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Michael Flatley himself was diagnosed with malignant melanoma in 2003 and has since recovered.
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Michael Flatley has advocated an anti-war sentiment - in 2003 he performed the anti-war piece Warlord before an audience of national leaders meeting in St Petersburgh.
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Michael Flatley has been parodied in several US television series, including Friends, where Chandler Bing expresses his fear of Michael Flatley due to the fact his "legs flail about as if independent from his body".
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Michael Flatley appeared in a 2005 episode of The Simpsons, entitled "The Father, the Son, and the Holy Guest Star", in which Marge Simpson dreams of a group of Flatley look-alikes welcoming her into Catholic heaven, and in 3rd Rock from the Sun, 90's sitcom with Jane Curtin and John Lithgow.