Irish Dance: Steps of Freedom

>> You can tell the condition of a man's kingdom by the state in which you find the dance there.

>> Irish dance was born out of oppression.

It's such a raw form of expression.

>> We were colonized for 800 years.

That's bound to make a mark on how we dance and how we see ourselves as dancers.

>> People respond to oppression by resisting.

People were determined not to be swallowed whole.

>> The Irish have developed a style of dance that is so intricate.

The fastest footwork of all the folk dances in the world.

>> Percussion is the heart of it.

It's not only dancing to music, but dancing as music.

>> It's something that's deeply human.

I've always been awed by the beauty and the sheer joy of being alive coming out in motion.

>> Irish dance has been hugely influential.

It has become part of global popular culture.

>> A lot of the best Irish dancers are no longer from Ireland.

They're from Australia or North America or Canada.

And they can take Irish dance to a new place.

>> The big question is how and why the traditional dance of the Irish people has grown to become a worldwide phenomenon.

>> We have to think about why the dance was happening, the way it was happening, who the people are that made the dance at that time, what the social structures were at that time, what the political structures were at that time.

That all feeds into Irish dance.

>> Dance won't be captured.

It flies free.

[ Birds squawking ] [ Siren wailing, horns honking ] >> My name is Morgan, Morgan Bullock.

I'm a schoolteacher in America and an Irish dancer.

For me, dancing is something that I do almost naturally.

It does just give me a sense of freedom.

Some people ask, how come, seeing as I'm not Irish, I choose to dance in the Irish style?

Well, the answer to that question begins a long time ago in Ireland's ancient history.

Percussive steps are the heart of Irish dance.

But where did this foot-battering style come from?

Did the Irish invent it or did they absorb it from far away?

>> I look at Irish dancing, and it definitely looks more like African dance to me.

Percussion is the heart of it.

It is one of those forms that is both music and dance.

It's not only dancing to music, but dancing as music.

And that's, you know, very common around the world, whether that's flamenco in Spain or kathak in India.

>> If you look at a map, you see there's a straight line going down from Ireland to Northwestern Spain, Galicia, Portugal, West Africa.

The Spaniards traded with the Irish through West Ireland and also with the Africans and the Arabs.

Personally, I think that's where you find that connection.

>> Is his dance the precursor of flamenco?

Even the remote ancestor of Connemara dancing?

>> That's the thing with dance, isn't it?

You carry it in your body.

So if your body moves, the dance form moves with it.

>> Even this Connemara dancing could be explained away as being related to flamenco.

In Connemara, it's called the battering.

>> Better than anybody else.

>> The thing is that the Irish have managed to make something quite prominent out of their step dancing.

It has an intrinsic spectacle about it, the hard drumming of the feet and the swiftness of it.

And that is really special for Ireland.

>> What's important to understand is, the floor in a lot of the old cottages was made of mud.

So you couldn't hear the sound of the dancer's feet.

>> So they used to take the door off the hinges and put the door down on the floor.

And they would jump up on the door and dance.

>> If we were dancing on, like, a flagstone floor or even the stones, like, you won't... [ Quiet tapping ] You won't hear it as strong compared to here.

[ Loud tapping ] And when you have that sound and there's a musician right there playing for you, you know, that relationship, that sound really drives the music on, which in turn drives the dancer on, as well.

Whoo!

Hey!

[ Both laugh ] You were nearly dancing yourself.

>> In 1649, during the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell leads his army into Ireland to suppress the Irish Catholic Confederacy.

Cromwell's army lays waste to Ireland, ushering in unprecedented dispossession, land confiscation, and the forced resettlement of the Irish.

>> We are here to carry on the great work against the barbarous and bloodthirsty Irish.

>> Cromwell was probably the most hated man within Ireland.

He comes to Ireland for some very strategic reasons.

He wanted to make Ireland English, trying to bring English people in and bring Ireland under the control of England.

There are very memorable sieges where there are massacres of people.

Between 1649 and '53, 600,000 people were killed or they die of disease or they leave Ireland.

And that's out of a population of around 1 1/2 million.

So that's a 40% decline in a handful of years.

Cromwell basically rounds up a lot of people as indentured laborers and sends them off to the West Indies.

>> Indentured servitude is a time-limited version of slavery.

So, what you do is, you get them to sign a contract which basically just says, "I'm your slave for --" Usually, it was for seven years.

And then you work them like dogs while you have them for those seven years.

There were many, many hundreds of thousands of Irish indentured servants.

>> The 17th century also witnesses the mass enslavement of Africans.

Between the 17th and the 19th century, millions of Africans were sold or born into chattel slavery across North America and the Caribbean.

>> People, for their own reasons these days, often call the Irish and the African experience similar.

Well, we weren't.

The big difference between indentureship and chattel slavery is that under chattel slavery, the body and the progeny are owned completely by the slave master.

[ Whip cracks ] Even in indefinite indentureship, only the labor of the person is owned, not the body and certainly not the progeny.

That's a huge difference.

It's a fundamental difference that has to be stressed.

>> Literally beside the African slaves in those plantations were Irish indentured servants and the overseers.

And these became the cornerstones of the plantation economy in sugar, cotton, and tobacco.

>> Both enslaved people and indentured Irish servants would work all day and then dance all night, dancing around the campfires.

>> When you're all kind of down here, being pushed down, then the energy goes this way, because it can't go up.

>> In America, Africans and Irish continued to work side by side, often on the toughest jobs.

>> We took over a lot of jobs and sometimes shared a lot of jobs with African-Americans.

Anywhere there was construction going on, Irish- and African-Americans met.

>> Oppressed, suppressed, depressed, compressed people blended, you know?

And what came out of that blend is something miraculous.

>> I'm from the Zambezi Valley, Southern Africa, Zimbabwe.

>> I am from Limerick City, and I now live in County Clare.

I've never met you before.

>> No.

>> And we had kind of a -- We didn't even know -- We didn't even practice anything.

>> No.

>> So that's the beauty of dancing.

We found similar steps that we do.

>> Mm-hmm.

>> There was a time when you did -- I think it was a Clare step, and I said, "My grandfather used to do that."

>> [ Singing in native language ] >> It happened a lot along the waterways.

And it was on ships.

It was on boats.

It was, you know, in labor camps.

It was on the railroad.

It was all of these places.

So what did they see in each other?

It wasn't just that they were both at the bottom of the totem pole.

>> Both people shared the notion of diaspora.

Both hear the drums and the melody of the place they left, mixing with the place that they arrive at.

>> [ Singing in native language ] >> We can forge a bridge over anything, but it's so much easier when there's already recognition.

And I think that that was just going on all over the place.

>> Of course there was shared culture.

People were looking at one another all the time, copying, imitating one another.

>> They're sharing rhythm and polyrhythm.

The Irish is contributing meter, 4/4, 6/8 time.

The other is contributing polyrhythm, the overlaying of rhythms within a meter of music.

The dragging of the beat from one meter of music to the next.

It is the first emergence of a strange and wonderful crossover between Blacks and Irish.

>> A new way of dancing was born in those work camps which would one day develop into one of the most famous dances in the world.

200 years ago, America was a tough place for all those immigrants and former slaves, who crowded into the slums of the big East Coast cities, often in difficult circumstances.

>> You got to remember, at that time, the Irish and the Africans, they weren't friends.

You know, the Irish were definitely opposed to the Africans because of the way that they were taking their jobs.

So it wasn't a necessarily friendly relationship.

>> Save your money, folk Savin' money is a joke Go to work when I am broke Rollin' cotton bales >> This was the time when the minstrel shows began.

White men blacked their faces and performed onstage, often side by side with the African-Americans they were mimicking.

>> Irish-Americans were always involved in minstrelsy from the very start, and they blacked up.

>> Minstrel shows are racist, absolutely, absolutely, but you got to understand that, you know, at that time, what wasn't?

Racism was profitable.

You got to remember what the minstrel show was.

It was an imitation of the African slave.

And a lot of those were Irish performers who could imitate the African slaves the best because they had already had some relationships with the Africans.

So, as before, where the dance was mainly about interchanging cultures, is about telling stories, now it's become, "Okay, this is actually a way for me to live."

It became about what money you can get and how you can advance yourself in this new country.

>> In the 19th century, we find Irish- and African-Americans dancing off against each other in the bars and on the streets.

>> Oh, come on, now!

>> What these people were doing is undoubtedly influenced by Irish dance.

It's called jig, so it's some kind of local adaptation of dances that had been brought by the people who are here.

And people who are here are coming from Ireland.

They're also from the African diaspora.

>> Money could be made from dancing onstage or in face-off competitions.

Always the game was to show off, to be king of the dance.

[ Cheers and applause ] >> A match has been made between John Diamond and Master Juba by some of the sporting community.

The stake is large, and an unparalleled display will be the result.

>> The contest that we love to talk about the most is the contest between William Henry Lane, who was called Master Juba, and John Diamond.

John Diamond was an Irishman.

And he was the leading Irish contest dancer on the P.T.

Barnum circuit.

>> He was a White man, but he was famous as the king of the Negro dancers, because what he did was dance in blackface.

That was his specialty.

>> William Henry Lane was a free Black man.

The first records of Lane are of him dancing in Irish pubs for coins at age 15.

Now, a young Black boy dancing in an Irish pub at age 15 better dance his ass off or he wouldn't make it out the front door.

So Juba had to be pretty good.

>> Single shuffle.

Double shuffle.

Cutting across.

Spinning about on his toes and heels.

In what walk of life or dance of life does man ever get such stimulating applause as thunders about him?

[ Cheers and applause ] >> The dance-off prize fight that the great showman P.T.

Barnum staged in 1843 between Master Juba and Master John Diamond was a major event.

>> They were each supposed to dance 16 dances inside the competition.

That's a lot of energy.

That's a lot of dancing.

>> Whoo!

>> A lot of pounding, a lot of gyrating, a lot of jumping, a lot of twisting, a lot of contortions.

It was a free-for-all, and it was brilliant.

>> The tap-dancing story, and I think of it all as proto-tap.

There are many names for it -- jig dancing, breakdown.

>> On the first day, Diamond wins, hands down.

But on the second and third day, Juba overcomes him in what are called the conundrum dances.

Dancing on glasses, dancing with a glass of water on your head, dancing while you jumped on either side of a rope.

And Juba won the title King of All Dancers.

Diamond called himself authentic, and Juba called himself genuine.

Each embraced this amalgamation between Blacks and Irish.

They, to me, are the great-great-grandparents of what we call tap dance now.

[ Applause ] >> If you look at the origins and the history of tap, I can't say there's nothing Irish about it.

But becomes complicated, especially with African-Americans, just because so many times over and over again, things have been taken.

And even when we do create things, history has been written to say that we weren't a part of it or we didn't create it.

And so, sometimes, it can be hard to watch someone doing something that you know is part of your culture and you being written out of its history.

>> This is not an idle fear.

There's a long history of Whites taking credit for Black innovation.

In fact, Whites imitating Blacks and taking credit for it is American culture, from minstrelsy, through jazz, through rock 'n' roll, through hip-hop.

I mean, it happens over and over and over again.

>> I have stopped looking for the edge of where it ceases to be African and begins to be Irish.

Tap dance is a new form that emerged out of the concurrence, collision, and competition between Blacks and Irish.

All art is assimilation.

All music is assimilation.

All dance is assimilation.

>> The dancer drives the tune.

If the dancer doesn't come down on that beat, there's no driving.

I would tend to learn the tune and embody the tune so that I have the tune inside of me.

And then I let the head go and let the feet take over.

When I dance, I'm someplace else.

I go off to this place and I don't see anything.

It's like I'm tuned in to a different frequency, and then I transport my body into that different frequency.

I'm dancing.

It's an expression of freedom.

And it's such a lovely place to be.

>> Probably the worst episode in Irish history was the Great Famine of the mid-1800s.

It would have huge repercussions for America, as millions of Irish immigrants came here to start new lives.

It would also have a massive impact on how Irish dance came to be what it is today.

>> So fond are the Irish of music that, in some form or other, they must and will have it.

In spite of oppression, they laugh and sing free as the mountain air.

>> Asenath Nicholson says, when she came to Ireland, that she had a pain in her head from all the talk, that everywhere you went, there was people talking.

There were people singing.

There were people dancing.

>> By the mid-19th century, Ireland's population had reached 8 million and was growing fast.

>> So, at the very period when Irish people were poorest, there were more and more people spreading into areas that had never even been settled.

And Asenath Nicholson also says, the little children, they were surrounded so much by the music, could dance before they could run.

>> The famine was a watershed in Irish history.

It originated from the blight, which arrived in Ireland in 1845.

There was a great pungency upon the potato within Ireland from those who were very poor, and this was repeated failure, year after year after year.

>> The scale and suffering of the famine were compounded by British mismanagement.

Belief in laissez-faire economics and divine providence ensured that the government intervention was kept to a minimum.

Britain was probably the richest country in the world at this point, but ideology meant that her Irish subjects were largely left to fend for themselves.

>> It is no man's business to provide another.

>> The famine leaves 1 million dead, and over 2 million people emigrate within a decade.

>> How many dancers and singers and musicians died at that time?

How many songs did we lose?

How many steps did we lose?

How much music did we lose?

>> We footed all the night, weaving olden dances, mingling hands, and mingling glances till the moon has taken flight.

>> After the famine, there's that remarkable change in the late 19th century that Irish culture kind of shakes itself, kind of said, "Okay, we've got to get up off the canvas here.

We've been absolutely flattened, but if we don't get up and if we don't take responsibility for ourselves, all this is over."

>> In the late 19th century, cultural revivalists establish organizations like the Gaelic Atlantic Association and the Gaelic League, and in the words of Douglas Hyde, these aim to de-Anglicize Ireland and to reinvent Irish culture.

>> The Gaelic League organized social and cultural events, and these ranged from literary talks on Irish literature, historical talks, and also dances and ceilidhs, which provided a social platform to bring people together.

>> Irish dance became iconic of Ireland, almost an embodiment of Ireland.

>> Well, although the Gaelic League was originally founded as a non-sectarian and apolitical organization, we know that many members became more politicized in it.

>> At the Gaelic Leagues, ceilidhs, and feiseanna, ideas would have been discussed -- ideas to do with rebellion, ideas to do with resistance.

>> So, for people like Patrick Pearse, Eoin MacNeill, Gaelic League events and activities brought them into contact with others who were more in favor of a militant form of nationalism to rid Ireland of British influence.

>> There were reports of rebels dancing in British prisons and in prisons in Ireland, like Kilmainham Gaol.

[ Tapping ] >> In the jails, they did dance as a way of keeping physically fit, but also as a way of kind of saying, "You're not cowing us" or "You're not bullying us."

Dance now becomes an expression of nationalism now, but also with that very rigid body posture.

People respond to oppression by resisting it.

>> If you look at the ambition of the Gaelic League to instill a sense of pride in our culture, are you going to present something that isn't other than what the Irish-dancing body is presenting, which is absolute control?

>> It's a kind of a martial stance.

It's an expression of pride.

>> This rediscovering of what it meant to be Irish is completely crucial to the transformation of Irish politics in the decades that were to come.

It started off with the Home Rule campaigns from the 1880s, but then it accelerated into something much more significant.

After the Easter Rising of 1916, this turned into a mass movement for independence from Ireland, which of course, results in the Treaty of 1921 and the creation of Ireland, the 26-county entity that exists today.

Because by 1921, Ireland had gained independence from Britain.

>> When a visiting dignitary rolled into town in the early years after the foundation of the state, the three things they could probably be guaranteed were the national anthem, a benediction, and a nice performance by some Irish dancers.

>> What can be more pleasing to the eye than the dancing of lasses and lads?

For there, we have the beauty of the perfect step.

>> The Gaelic League sets up a new organization in 1930 called An Coimisin Le Rinc Gaelacha to oversee and further the development of Irish dance.

>> An Coimisin is the governing body of the Irish step dancing globally.

And it was set up as a committee to basically regulate Irish dancing.

>> They set up rules and regulations in relation to feiseanna and ard fheis, which would have been the competitions in Irish dance.

>> Out of that came the interminable and incessant desire for medals and competition.

>> The young Irish dancers looked like superannuated Prussian field marshals with hundreds of medals clanking on their chest.

>> It became the raison d'tre of the Coimisin dancing schools -- winning competitions.

>> Dance became much more an expression not so much of joy but of technical accomplishment.

Can you do these steps?

Can you dance to a time?

And it becomes competitive, you know, where you're being marked.

>> The notion of time and step and execution of step and posture all could be measured.

This made it more feasible for adjudication purposes.

How straight are you?

Are you in time to the music or are you not in time to the music?

>> Irish dancing, as we know, was an invented tradition, to a certain extent, by An Coimisin and the Gaelic League.

It codified the form.

It molded the form into being.

>> The Irish-dance teachers and the Gaelic League, they were anxious to portray a proper image of the Irish.

So the dance masters told the dancers to keep their hands by their side.

So it was reinforced in competition.

>> We have no movement from the waist up.

And all the movement and activity happens from the waist down.

When I mention that to people, they find that fascinating.

They've never thought about that.

They've never wondered why Irish dancers keep their arms at their sides.

>> And also, crucially, you now begin to wear a special costume.

>> The costumes portrayed their Irishness.

There were certain symbols and things that you had on your costume.

Like, we adopted the Tara Brooch.

And in the earlier days, the embroidery reflected shamrocks and even leprechauns to some extent.

>> Eileen Battersby brilliantly described the Irish dance uniforms as looking as if they'd been bespattered with "The Book of Kells."

>> The annual procession of the Eucharist.

Almost the entire Catholic population is marshaled to join in this public act of homage to the King of Kings.

>> Another facet of the rise in cultural nationalism was the growth in a strict moral code.

And we see this reflected in the influence of the Catholic Church on appropriate public activities for young males and females.

>> The dances are unmistakable incitements to evil tosh and evil desires.

>> Dance was seen as an occasion of sin.

And the agents of The Wicked One would come along and mingle amongst the dancers.

>> Dancing halls have brought many a good innocent girl into sin, shame and scandal, and set her unwary feet on the road that leads to perdition.

>> The next thing you know is that the dances the clergy favored most were the safe Ceilidh dances and the pure competition style of An Coimisin.

>> Ceilidhs were very much controlled by the local priest.

The men on one side of the room, women on the other side of the room.

And everybody would be watching.

>> It was George Bernard Shaw, at least it's accredited to him, who said that dancing was a vertical expression of a horizontal desire.

Now, in Ireland, there was going to be none of that.

>> You didn't hold somebody closely.

It was hand across the body, you know?

The hand would separate you.

The hand would always separate you.

You could swing like this or you could swing like that, holding in the hand, but you didn't get too close.

>> As they used to say, I think, in Irish America, you know, when kids were dancing in high schools, "Leave room for the Holy Spirit."

>> The straight-backed posture seems, to me, anti-sensual.

No funny business going on here.

It also splits the body into the top half, which is rigid, and then the bottom half, and pay no attention to this part in between.

>> That does tie together, I think, with this church-and-state control of women, of premarital sex, of contraception, divorce, and many other social issues.

>> It was like as if it was another planet, but, no, it wasn't.

This was real.

>> [ Speaking Irish ] [ All speaking Irish ] >> In reality, there are two wellsprings of Irish culture in the early 20th century.

One is on the island of Ireland itself, but the other is among Ireland's sprawling diaspora.

And nowhere is this more evident than in the United States.

>> There are about 40 million Americans who declared themselves to be of Irish descent.

That's a lot more than is on our own little speck of an island.

>> In America, Irish dance was on a very different path.

It was becoming part of the mainstream.

>> Dance was really important, because it displayed Irishness.

And the dance schools and the dance music is a really vigorous part of the culture.

>> I think Irish dancing masks a certain trauma for the Irish diaspora.

It allows people to stay connected to their homeland and allows them to almost forget that they're not there, that they had to leave not by choice but by necessity.

My mom first started me out just to keep some culture in the family tied to the Irish roots.

You know, since she moved to America, she just wanted us to have a bit of Ireland in our home.

>> Most of the people have emigrated through the years, so it's their history.

They really want to keep up the traditions of the past.

In my case, my parents never did Irish dancing, but they made sure that we all did Irish dancing, like it or not.

[ Laughs ] Give yourselves a hand there.

>> The Irish stick together in the United States.

They work hard and they climb the socioeconomic ladder.

They rise in blue-collar jobs, in the police force, and in politics.

They're grafters and they're networkers.

And many of them rise in the entertainment business, becoming Hollywood and Broadway stars.

>> The Irish-American presence in Vaudeville right away, Hollywood is very strong.

There are important figures who happened to be Irish-American, like George Cohan, Gene Kelly, and Jack Donohue.

>> In Boston, the kids didn't worry about what they were going to be when they grew up.

You were either going to be a dancer or a fighter.

>> A lot of these Irish-American dancers, they were hoofers.

Most had to graft and hustle to make their way to the top.

>> Turn 'em over.

>> Speak!

>> Camera.

>> I read a lot about Jimmy Cagney growing up on the Upper East Side of New York.

And you proved you were a man by being able to duke it out and also by being able to outdance the next fellow on the next block.

That was Irish dancing in the Irish-American tradition.

>> I learned how to dance from learning how to fight.

It was fake, duck, quick dance around your opponent, on your toes mostly, then shoot out the arm like a bullet.

>> Keep that camera going.

>> In this culture, dance is a kind of sport.

It's like boxing.

Both of those are avenues of mobility.

They are open to the Irish-American.

>> A man who couldn't dance couldn't fight, and the man who couldn't fight couldn't dance.

>> Big dancers like Cagney, like Gene Kelly, you know, you put the fists up or you danced it out.

I think that's pretty much gone from Irish dance now.

Nobody expects you to put up the fists after, you know, winning the regional competition.

>> Oh, the Irish have been dancing like this for many, many years -- head proudly held high, shoulders back, arms stiffly down at the sides.

Their dancing is based completely on the movement of the legs and the sound of the feet.

[ "Singin' in the Rain" playing ] >> People want to know about "Singin' in the Rain."

He always said it was just a simple Irish clog dance that anyone can do.

He really studied Irish dancing.

He was very proud of being Irish, and I think he felt a real identity with the dancing.

>> I'm dancin' And singin' in the rain >> One of the biggest drivers of change in evolution in Irish dance in the past 50 years was the setting up of the World Irish Dancing Championship in 1970.

>> In the 1950s, Irish dancing was very popular in Britain.

And they traveled to Dublin to compete at the all-Ireland championships.

And, lo and behold, they actually beat the Irish.

We realized, "Wow, there's this wealth of Irish dancing all over the world."

And we opened up the world championships and found out how much of a wealth there was.

>> Irish dancing had been moving around, of course, people immigrating, so there was Irish dancing in so many countries now.

So creating the world was bringing these people from these countries back to the homeland and back to their heritage and Ireland and competing with it.

>> It becomes more and more about the contest, speed, percussion.

>> They're always looking for something to push out the boat a little bit more, to get the adjudication to look at me -- tiaras and headgear, everything.

>> Everybody knows the dress of a young girl who is in an Irish-jig competition.

That skirt is designed to open like a bell.

And everything about her, except for her curls, you know, that bob and weave, is about keeping that geometry of form.

>> It's a big, huge industry.

And the wigs are now a serious element.

And you cannot dance in any of those competitions unless you're wearing a wig.

>> Now they have just rhinestones glittering from one end to the other.

The philosophy is anything that glitters will attract attention.

>> It's not just about glitter and wigs.

Competition has brought whole new levels of skill, dexterity, and athleticism to Irish dance.

>> People are so much more into fancy footwork and all this twisting of the ankles, which is great, where years ago, a few years back, it was the highest jumper, who could lift the highest.

And every time, it changes to a different thing.

>> It's a solo form and it is about distinguishing yourself from others.

And I think of the fact that Irish dancers don't have the use of their upper body to leap into the air.

They don't have the pli, a softening of the knees to actually get higher into the air.

So we're defying gravity and we're resisting doing things that we wouldn't be expected to do if we didn't have our hands at our sides.

>> It's of a brave young highwayman this story we will tell His name was Willie Brennan, and in Ireland... >> The 1960s and '70s were a time of radical change for Irish traditional music.

The era of the Ceilidh band began to wane, and a new generation deeply influenced by developments in America and Europe arrived to shake things up.

It was kind of a revolution.

>> What happened with Irish music was that there was a young group of people who started to play around with it.

Certainly with people like Donal Lunny, Andy Irvine, Sweeney's Men, The Chieftains, those musicians who began to play bouzoukis and mandolins.

They invited a contrapuntal accompaniment of the tune.

So it was that period that suddenly was explosive, and it felt electric.

[ Cheers and applause ] Every generation throws up a phenomenon.

It's just the way that art is.

People emerge and astonish everyone.

>> Michael Flatley bursts on to the scene in the 1970s, and he was the first Irish-American to win the worlds and would soon become the first Irish dancer to become a global star.

>> Michael Flatley is from Chicago, a working-class guy who comes up in the competition realm.

At one point, he won the Guinness World Record for 29 taps per second or something like that, reaching the limit of human possibility and then pushing that limit.

[ Cheers and applause ] I think Michael Flatley is absolutely part of this Irish-American tradition of pugilism and dance being connected and dance being a competition, dance being a macho kind of thing.

>> And, actually, Michael did some boxing in his early life, and he did connect the two.

He was as light as a feather on that floor and could fly around that room the same way on the ring.

He could move and fly.

>> You started seeing him moonwalk.

You started seeing him doing all these different styles of dance with Irish dance and saying, "I'm going to be the best and the biggest in this culture and in this dance."

[ Cheers and applause ] >> Michael Flatley wasn't the only rising star in the Irish-American scene.

In New York, Jean Butler was learning her steps from dance master Donny Golden.

>> Swing two three, then swing two three, then swing to the back for five, six, seven.

When Jean even came to class as a beginner, she just had this so erect look and so intent in class, like, so serious to get everything exactly right.

That was like, "Wow, this kid has got something going for herself."

As soon as she walked onstage, you just kind of say, "Okay, this kid's going to be good."

>> In the 1970s, I started the group the Green Fields of America.

I knew, from the audience response, that there was an appetite for it.

And through Michael Flatley and then Donny Golden and Jean Butler, who were all part of our group at one point or another, the music and the dancing, certainly in my life, all came together.

>> It's important to note that it was the musical act that people came to see, and they weren't expecting dancers.

And when the dancer did come flying out from stage left, it was an enormous energetic response, because something just happened that they weren't expecting.

[ Cheers and applause ] >> Then, in 1994, a catalytic event occurs that will have a dramatic impact on Irish dance.

Ireland was by now enjoying a newfound confidence.

Producer Moya Doherty brings Michael Flatley and Jean Butler together with a troupe of award-winning competition dancers and composer Bill Whelan to create the interval act for the Eurovision Song Contest.

And following its success, with director John McColgan, they go on to create the stage show Riverdance.

>> This show had the potential to be a world show, to have international application.

And we both felt that we could take what was a basic folk dance, make it exciting, make it modern, and excite a modern audience.

[ Jazz music playing ] I grew up listening to Dave Brubeck.

So here's this guy, Dave Brubeck, playing jazz, but he's using mixed time signatures.

So instead of four beats to the bar, where you go, "One, two, three, four, two, two, three, four, three, two --" Instead of that, you go, "One, two, three, four, five, one, two, three, four, five, one, two, three, four five."

So the downbeat that we all kind of beat along to is happening somewhere a little bit odd.

And when I did Riverdance, what I tried to do was to create attention by writing a piece which had 6/8 and 4/4 together, in honor of Irish music, because Irish jigs are divided into threes -- "tiggida, tiggida, tiggida, tiggida -" and reels, which are 4/4 -- 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4.

But I mixed the two of them and I went, "Tiggida, tiggida, 1, 2, 3, 4.

Tiggida, tiggida, 1, 2, 3, 4.

Tiggida, tiggida, 1, 2, 3, 4."

>> Ladies and gentlemen, Riverdance.

[ Cheers and applause ] >> Can anybody ever forget Michael Flatley coming onstage, strutting his stuff like a peacock, absolutely sexualized male body but incredible energy?

>> He's bounding on the stage and he's not embarrassed.

He might be embarrassing, but he's not embarrassed.

I think that pride is really what the innovation was.

That was what people responded to.

Drawing on some of that American cockiness and combining it with his Irish heritage.

>> That moment in Riverdance could not have happened with Irish-born dancers as the lead dancers.

It had to have happened with Irish dancers in America because they had that long history of other percussive dance forms, like tap dancing.

>> The Irish have traveled out to other cultures, and there is a cross-fertilization between Vaudeville tap, old style American tap, and Irish dance.

There is a rhythm relationship in the music.

>> When I saw her flying out onstage, you know, my heart raced and I got goose bumps and I got chills.

I was so proud.

I was just thrilled to death.

>> And then, of course, Jean Butler coming in, sexy in black and whatever, and you've got an adult form of Irish dancer.

And I think it was such a revelation to people, because as I say, it had been, in some respects, juvenilized and desexualized.

Riverdance essentially put the sex back into Irish dancing.

>> It's not only a rupture from the rules but could also be seen as a recapturing of parts of the tradition that had been neglected or forgotten.

>> I can't tell you the thrill, for me, dancing with these 30 Irish dancers.

They're the best in the world.

>> Of course, Riverdance wasn't the only show taking the world by storm.

Shows like Feet of Flames and Lord of the Dance also reached audiences of millions.

>> It's the culmination of hundreds of years of evolution.

They didn't just drop out of the sky.

All the countless musicians, singers, and dancers who had gone before them went into creating those shows.

[ Cheers and applause ] >> Since the 1990s, Irish dance has exploded across the world in ways that would have been unfathomable before.

Before then, Irish dance was just not cool.

Now it is seen as a cutting-edge dance form.

>> It came from the streets.

It came from the crossroads.

It came from the kitchens.

It came from the houses.

It's not something that you can put into a box.

Everybody who does a freestyle dance, they put a part of their own spirit and their own soul into it.

It's an expression of freedom.

>> Patrick Kavanagh said the spark of creativity strikes on memory and on understanding your tradition.

And, you know, creativity isn't moving outside your tradition.

It's bringing it on, literally taking the next few steps.

And if you look at the dancing masters, they did pass on their style and their ethos that way.

For a living culture, you've got to keep innovating.

You've got to keep inventing.

You've got to keep moving forward.

>> It's about the music and giving the music a beat and the rhythm and a lift.

People are still doing that part of it.

They're just changing it around and adding doubling and tripling and doing so many things with the rhythm and trying to do so many triple clicks and so many you name it these days.

>> Irish dancing especially is something that is, you know, made to be shared.

It's something that was born out of oppression, and it's such a raw form of expression.

There are people from so many different cultural backgrounds who are able to express themselves through Irish dancing and enjoy the fun and the love and the passion for Irish dancing.

From ancient roots, Irish dance has grown and spread its branches over continents.

Today, Irish dance belongs to the world.

>> Lightnin' Hopkins, an American blues musician, says, "God approves of us when we work, but He smiles on us when we dance."

You know, this dance is a heaven-sent kind of thing.

I don't think we need to take it apart to see how it ticks.

I think we just need to love the fact that it ticks, you know, and that ticking sets our feet in motion.