Lauding it up: Michael Flatley

Type the word "ego" into Google along with the name Michael Flatley and you will get nearly 10,000 results. Actually to be strictly accurate it was 9,710 at the last count but then again that was several days ago. When they handed out virtues such as modesty and diffidence "one of the world's most accomplished and innovative artists alive today" must have been standing behind the door. The description in parenthesis is not mine. It comes from Flatley's website which also proclaims that his "path to stardom proves what the human spirit can accomplish when relentless drive and determination converge with dreams". He is nothing less than "an inspiration to all who face overwhelming obstacles and challenges along the road to success", the man who "liberated Irish dance from generations of rigidity, incorporating arm movement and heart-stopping rhythm into traditional steps", it says.

Superlatives litter the seemingly endless list of his achievements. "Powerful", "fantastic", "electrifying", "spellbinding", and "an awesome sight" are just a few as Flatley taps his way from one standing ovation to another, at record-breaking speed, of course. The thing is, it's all true. He did revolutionise the quaint, staid traditions of stiff-armed Irish dancing and turn it into a worldwide phenomenon. He is personally worth a conservative £350 million (Dh1.9 bn) with luxury homes all over the world, including a castle in Ireland and a mansion in Beverly Hills.

He did create Riverdance, Lord of the Dance, Celtic Tiger, Feet of Flames and spawn a host of copycat dance troupes and he's undoubtedly one of the world's highest-paid dancers. You just wish he was a little, well, quieter about it all. Michael Flatley's Lord of the Dance is coming here from 23 to 26th June and will undoubtedly play to full houses at the Abu Dhabi Hall. It's a sensational show, full of Irish mysticism and folklore, eerie and atmospheric lighting, evocative music and of course the electrifying sound of 40 or so taps in unison with spectacular solo performances by the principal dancers.

The only thing missing will be Flatley himself. His response to the question "Why aren't you coming" takes the breath away. He only plays arenas, he tell me. "If they have an arena, if they have a big enough venue I'll be there. You tell them. Any time they want I'll be there," he says without a smidgeon of irony as he talks about his incredible comeback tour in some of Europe's biggest arenas. "We have two companies that tour full time, one that tours in Europe and Asia and another one that tours the USA, Canada and South America. They've been going for 14 years. The third company plays only in 15,000 to 18,000 seater arenas so the show that I do is more of an arena style show. I only go with the very big shows."

With his 52nd birthday next month (16 July), a skin cancer scare behind him along with a tussle with an energy-sapping virus that laid him low for months, a happy marriage to a beautiful dancer and an energetic three-year-old son to cope with one can only ask why he feels the need to prove he's still the best. He's almost twice the age of the majority of the dancers in his company and could be forgiven for putting his feet up. His legs, incidentally, are insured for £25 million.

"Most of my dancers retire way before they're 25, but you know what they say, 'the old dog for the hard road and the pups for the path'", he says "I never think about how hard it is. I love what I do. It's a thrill for me to be able to do it and I've been touring the world for years. I toured all over America with Celtic Tiger five or six years ago. And just before Christmas I toured Taiwan, we sold out five arenas and three football stadiums and I danced eight shows in six days and felt like a million bucks."

It would make any normal person feel tired just to think about the punishing physical schedule. The success of the Taiwan tour simply spurred Flatley to put on his dancing shoes again for yet another marathon of performances. "I came home, called my business people and said 'what's on the table' and they said what about Europe, the UK and Ireland. It's my favourite area to tour in. I'm really looking forward to touring in it, I'm buzzing over it."

He brushes off questions about the effect of such a punishing schedule on 52-year-old ankles and knees with mild irritation. "It's a logical question, I've had a lot of injuries but nothing worth bragging about. Everbody gets hurt in every job every day. It's the cost of doing business and I don't mind it. I'm so lucky to be doing it. You get aches and pains but that's part of what I chose to do with my life. I never focus on the negative, I only focus on the positive."

There's a lot of that when you try to scratch the surface of the Chicago born Irish American. Anything remotely negative is spun like a pirouette. For example the reasons behind his 1995 split with ex-RTE producer Moya Doherty and composer Bill Whelan, co-creators of Riverdance, amid accusations of diva demands and battles for a greater cut of the profits. The seven minute routine, created for the interval of the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest, electrified an estimated global audience of 300 million and formed the basis of the full length show. Few people remember who won the contest that year. It was all about Riverdance and Flatley, who even then was ruffling feathers with his relentless drive for self-publicity.

Today he puts it all down to 'creative differences' although he does concede that people seldom mention Riverdance without associating it with himself. "Obviously I'm not connected with Riverdance although people certainly seem to connect me with it. To be honest with you now it's way too long ago to be talking about the past. We're too much in the future now. "It's what I do. It's what I love to do. When I first created Riverdance and people weren't expecting it I don't think people believed that Irish dancing could be so successful. I'm bursting with ideas. Lord of the Dance came flying out of the gate. Feet of Flames was right on the back of that and Celtic Tiger the same. It's who I am.

"Irish dancing wasn't fashionable back then. Today we have thousands of dancers waiting to get into Lord of the Dance. We have Hungarians, Dutch, Asians, Russians and people from everywhere. There's one dance school in Moscow I understand, with 700 kids in it and they all learn from our video tapes. It's remarkable. I can't believe it," he says. "In Taiwan, China, Tokyo it seems Feet of Flames is the show they love whereas the States went crazy for Celtic Tiger. Whatever they call for we're happy to deliver."

Flatley has hands on control of every aspect of the various shows including the finances, checking out the venues and making the deals. "I handle all the business end as well. I love that. I check out all the arenas personally making sure the venues are OK," he adds. It is a formidable workload by any standards and must surely have contributed to his health crisis five years ago when he almost died.

He was left fighting for his life in a hospital bed on the eve of a European tour with Celtic Tiger, a sell-out show which had to be cancelled. Doctors ordered complete rest for several months although they never actually discovered what caused it but he believes he was simply 'burnt out'. "It was really bad. They brought in doctors from around the world. The only thing they could confirm was that it was no known virus of any kind. Typical that I should have had something nobody else had. You didn't know whether to laugh or cry. They came back time after time saying 'you're perfect, you're perfect' and I could hardly move."

Eventually he retreated to his Irish home Castlehyde where he says he was cured by energy healer Michael O'Doherty. "I took about 20,000 pills and threw them down the toilet. I hate pills so I got rid of them. Basically I stayed inside for six months without leaving the house. All my life I've had positive energy people around me. To begin with I had a wonderful lady who did massage and reiki. In London I had another doctor who worked on me. When you're in these positions and you don't know what to do you tend to go inside. The deeper I dug the more I realised it was right to go back to your positive energy.

"So next thing I invited over a man called Michael O'Doherty, an energy healer from County Clare who was recommended by a close friend. He was trained in the Far East and he doesn't touch you, he just works on the energy field around your body. He worked on me for about an hour. Then I fell asleep on him and woke up two hours later and I can honestly say I was better immediately. I went out for a walk a couple of hours and the next morning I got up and went out for another long walk and it's just got better. My body healed itself, no pills, nothing.