Bare chested men in leather pants, women with long tresses and short skirts, lines of dancers stamping in unison - this is the image that Michael Flatley's tap dance extravaganzas evoke. Critics sniff at the shamelessly flashy Vegas-style pageantry and purists are repelled by what is thought to be a bastardized rendering of a once-obscure art form, but millions of fans cheer Flatley's lordly presence. Feet of Flames, recreated for this Taiwan tour nearly 10 years after its legendary premiere in Hyde Park, London, is a dance blockbuster that mixes contemporary choreography, Celtic dance and music with pyrotechnics, explosive visual effects and video displays designed to overwhelm.
Flatley's story is well-known. The son of a Chicago construction contractor who immigrated from Ireland, Flatley was brought up in a house with a solid work ethic and two champion Irish dancers - his mother and grandmother. With an almost manic drive to raise himself up in the world (Flatley once reportedly said that he didn't have time to read anything other than self-help and motivational books) the then-aspiring lad managed to become the first American World Irish Dance Champion at 17. His first big break came when he scored a gig with the Chieftains in the 1980s, which eventually led to an interval act for the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest. The seven-minute prototype of Riverdance performed there was expanded into a full-length production and made Flatley an instant star. Flatley left the production amid a bitter dispute over the copyright of the Riverdance routines and went on to stage The Lord of the Dance in 1996. The rest is history.
Dubbed the turbo-charged reworking of Lord of the Dance, Feet of Flames was created in 1998, following the same storyline but doubling the number of dancers and adding new music, numbers, sets and costumes. The dance spectacle is representative of Flatley's updated and popularized version of traditional Irish step dancing.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF KHAM
Credited to Irish parish priests who developed the dance style due to concerns about lascivious bodily display, step dancing involves a stiff torso and rigidly held arms juxtaposed against quick, precise movements of the feet. In the skillful hands of Flatley, the staid dance was turned into a showbiz spectacular glazed with full-on sexuality and expressive choreography.
For those who aren't familiar with the story, Feet of Flames recounts the perennial tale of the battle between good and evil, represented by the Lord of the Dance and Don Dorcha, the Dark Lord. A lusty romance sub-plot spices things up with Irishwoman Colleen Saoirse winning the heart of the Lord of the Dance from the wicked temptress Morrigan.
Flatley himself will not dance in the Taiwan shows, and the lead role will be played by Damien O'Kane, who played Flatley's original role when Lord of the Dance visited Taiwan in 2004.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF KHAM
According to Yang Yu-tsun (楊玉存) of Kuang Hong Arts (寬宏藝術), restaging Feet of Flames in Taiwan after its world tour ended seven years ago was made possible by the almost insatiable thirst that Taiwanese audiences have for Flatley's shows. Lord of the Dance, which was staged here in 2004 and 2005, and Celtic Tiger a year later, all proved enormously successful.
"When Flatley came with Celtic Tiger in 2006, we suggested the possibility of bringing Feet of Flames to Taiwan since so many people love his shows," Yang said. "After six months of communications and persuasion, Flatley finally agreed to re-stage the production in Taiwan."
The two-hour show has cost over NT$100 million to stage in Taiwan, and every effort has been made to match the grand scale of the original London production. Nearly 100 dancers will sashay, prance and leap on the multi-tiered stage against displays of pyrotechnics and rear-screen projections. Around 20 crew members have been flow in from the UK to construct the set with the aid of local theater technicians. The troupe has been rehearsing intensively in Kaohsiung for the last two weeks, but requests for interviews were rejected.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF KHAM
Performances in Taipei and Taichung are nearly sold out. Tickets for the Kaohsiung and Tainan shows are selling quickly. Flatley may have taken his last curtain call as the Lord of the Dance, but the show he created and continues to direct still works box office magic.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF KHAM
Recently the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and its Mini-Me partner in the legislature, the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), have been arguing that construction of chip fabs in the US by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is little more than stripping Taiwan of its assets. For example, KMT Legislative Caucus First Deputy Secretary-General Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) in January said that “This is not ‘reciprocal cooperation’ ... but a substantial hollowing out of our country.” Similarly, former TPP Chair Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) contended it constitutes “selling Taiwan out to the United States.” The two pro-China parties are proposing a bill that
March 9 to March 15 “This land produced no horses,” Qing Dynasty envoy Yu Yung-ho (郁永河) observed when he visited Taiwan in 1697. He didn’t mean that there were no horses at all; it was just difficult to transport them across the sea and raise them in the hot and humid climate. “Although 10,000 soldiers were stationed here, the camps had fewer than 1,000 horses,” Yu added. Starting from the Dutch in the 1600s, each foreign regime brought horses to Taiwan. But they remained rare animals, typically only owned by the government or
It starts out as a heartwarming clip. A young girl, clearly delighted to be in Tokyo, beams as she makes a peace sign to the camera. Seconds later, she is shoved to the ground from behind by a woman wearing a surgical mask. The assailant doesn’t skip a beat, striding out of shot of the clip filmed by the girl’s mother. This was no accidental clash of shoulders in a crowded place, but one of the most visible examples of a spate of butsukari otoko — “bumping man” — shoving incidents in Japan that experts attribute to a combination of gender
Last month, media outlets including the BBC World Service and Bloomberg reported that China’s greenhouse gas emissions are currently flat or falling, and that the economic giant appears to be on course to comfortably meet Beijing’s stated goal that total emissions will peak no later than 2030. China is by far and away the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, generating more carbon dioxide than the US and the EU combined. As the BBC pointed out in their Feb. 12 report, “what happens in China literally could change the world’s weather.” Any drop in total emissions is good news, of course. By
RSS