Feet of flames

A standing ovation from 15,000 people on the grassy hill below the floodlit Stormont building brought six encores from Michael Flatley and the cast of his new spectacular Feet of Flames on Saturday. Clearly, he has realised his commendable ambition to bring dance to new audiences. Judged artistically, however, his success is less clear.

Credited with script, production, direction and choreography, Flatley must himself have chosen to sacrifice taste and originality for crude mass appeal and special effects. His plot, such as it is, is a repeat of Lord of the Dance with names (though few of the cast) changed. Helen Egan is now The Jester (instead of The Little Spirit), captured by masked baddies in black and rescued by Flatley, with single combat between himself and the baddies' chief.

Again good blonde and dark temptress vie for his affections; skirts are whipped off repeatedly; Ronan Hardiman's attractive score is subservient to excessive dramatic emphasis and the plot is interrupted by Anne Buckley singing Carrickfergus and I Dreamed I Dwelt in Marble Halls, or the dancing electric violinists Mairead Nesbitt and Cora Smyth. The only innovation is the questionable costuming of the electric guitarist as a terrorist and Flatley himself playing An Cuilin on the flute in an onstage music spot.

Not that I can fairly comment on what took place on stage. From where I sat I could not even see the dancers' heads, let alone their feet. I viewed proceedings on two huge screens, which were not switched on until Flatley's entrance. His dancing is as brilliant as ever, but his choreographic limitations are beginning to show. There is nothing swanlike about his Swans, though Siamsa Tire proved swanlike movement can be created using traditional footwork, while his attempt to combine Arabian body and arm movement with traditional footwork is risible. Yet who could have foreseen 15,000 people in Belfast screaming for Irish folkdance!