News 26. 5. 2010
The Lord of Irish Dance – Michael Flatley Takes A Step Back
Unusually for Irish families, I don´t have a large number og aunts and uncles as my mother Eilish is an only child. Her parents, Patrick and Hannah Ryan, came from Dranagh Co Carlow and Brownford Castle, Kilkenny respectively. It´s from my grandmother Hannah ryan, herself a Leinster champion dancer, that I get my love of dance.
My mother and her parents also emigrated to America in 1947 and settled in Detroit. My parents met and eventually married there in 1956 and began married life in poverty. Theirs was a daily struggle to put food on the table as my father worked at whatever he could find. They shared a one room apartment with my gerandparents for first two years of their married life and only moved out after the second (me) of their five children arrived.
Our early life in Chicago wasn´t any easier at the start but eventually, through my parents´hard work, the family started to get ahead.
For someone who was born and lived most of my life in America, my Irishness runs to the core of me. I was always aware I was Irish. I was raised in an environment of never giving up, of strong family, and of course, music and dance everywhere. I believed that through hard work, I coul achieve anything. I grew up listening to my father whistling old Irish tunes as he played LPs of Tommy Makem and the Clancy brothers, flutes and fiddles, Seamus Tansey, Matt Molloy and the rest.
I was only four when my Grandmother Hannah started showing me dance steps and was very lucky in my childhood to be able to travel backwards and forwards between our tough neighbourhood in Chicago and my granmother´s beautiful farm in Carlow. Myself and my brother Patrick and sisters Annie, Liza and Thoma, have very fond memories of our Irish summers when we got to run wild, play with the local kids and be back where we truly belonged. It´s wonderful for me that my brothers and sisters now visit Ireland with their children and come to stay at my home.
I consider myself more than fortunate to be born into wealth of culture, history, language and literature that we as an Irish race are seeped in. As a performer, I´ve drawn on all of these in creating my shows, Lord of the dance, Feet of Flames and Celtic Tiger.
I have houses all over the world but my home is in Ireland. Castlehyde, near Fermoy Co Cork, has been my home for the past ten years and to where I always look forward to returning. When I first saw the ancestral home of Douglas Hyde, the historical aspect of it was unknown to me – it was the house and location that drew me in. Since then, after many years of restoration, I´m delighted to have brought a little bit of the 18tj century back to life. This St Patrick´s Day, as usual, I´ll sink a couple of pints and thank my blessings for the wonderful life I have. Together with my wife Niamh and son Michael St James, we´ll celebrate the great Saint´s day together with other family and friends, wherever in the world we happen to be.
This article is from IRISH ROOTS Magazine issue No 73 and uses here with prior permission of publisher (Julie Phibbs)- www.irishrootsmagazine.com
Václav Bernard
