Spectacular feet from a gamble

Producer David King tells GREG DIXON he gambled everything on a dance extravaganza.

The Irish dance craze really must rate as one of life's more curious mysteries. How did this traditional folk hoofing, essentially convoluted tap dancing en masse, become a worldwide phenomenon?

What's more, from River Dance to Lord of the Dance, how did Michael Flatley's feet manage to dance up a miraculous money-spinner while the rest of his body stayed still?

"Traditional Irish dance is really like an ironing board jumping up and down," concedes David King, the effusive English producer, composer and multimillionaire creator of yet another Irish-influenced dance show, Spirit of the Dance.

This may explain why there's not a lot of classical Oirish dance in King's hugely successful production, which begins a month-long run in Auckland this month before moving to Wellington and Christchurch.

Spirit of the Dance is more United Nations dance-athon than Emerald Isle jiggery-whatsit. Although it begins with a flash Irish dance number it also features tango, salsa, flamenco, ballet, country and western, tap, jazz and many more "dance experiences" as the main character searches the world for true love.

Hokey? Maybe, but it's worked. The nearly six-year-old show has 250 dancers in six troupes, which means that on any given night up to six performances of Spirit of the Dance can be taking place in different corners of this funny old world. Everywhere it goes, King says, it sells out.

But you can't help wondering whether Spirit of the Dance is little more than River Dance: The Rip-Off. King's well-honed reply suggests this has been put to him before.

"There was absolutely no point in me copying River Dance, because it would have run for three months and then run out of steam," he says by phone from Miami.

But the 45-year-old classical pianist-turned-theatre-director is happy to admit that, having seen London audiences go wild over River Dance, he figured something similar might go down equally well outside the West End.

"River Dance at that time just had one show and they were resident in London and they weren't going anywhere. Everybody was screaming for it, and they [River Dance] weren't interested. They'd just had a big bust-up with Michael Flatley, who'd walked out.

"When I was trying to raise money for the show and get investors in, including some of the biggest names in the business, they were saying it would never last."

How wrong they were. But it took all King's self-belief and cash to prove it. King says he and his wife gambled everything they had to get Spirit of the Dance up and jiggery-whatsiting.

"We finished up selling the house, the car, the family silver ... everything."

The show premiered at the Bristol Hippodrome in September 1996, after King had poured in £200,000 ($652,000) of his own money and run up another £400,000 ($1.3 million) in debt.

"I was petrified, nauseous. I threw up a couple of times before the first show. But at the end the audience stood up and cheered and cheered and cheered for about five minutes solid and I stood at the back with tears streaming down my face, holding my wife and thinking, 'Thank God, at least we can sleep in a bed tonight'. It was a very scary time."

Spirit of the Dance is King's first big show - and maybe his last. While he has plans for another, he's not sure he wants to gamble again.

With the luck of the Irish dance craze still holding, he probably shouldn't bother.

* Spirit of the Dance: St James, Wellington, from April 16; Civic Theatre, Auckland, from April 30; WestpacTrust Centre, Christchurch, from May 28.