Nenaghs princess of dance has the world at her feet

Reporter

Peter Gleeson

speaks with former St Mary’s Secondary School pupil Bernadette Flynn, who is wowing audiences all over the world as a lead part in Lord of the Dance

Life is just one amazing experience after another for a world-class dancer performing in one of the most renowned and celebrated dance extravaganzas on the globe. And Nenagh’s very own princess of dance, Bernadette Flynn, should know.

The leading lady who has strutted her stuff alongside super hoofer Michael Flatley in the latter’s sensational creation, Lord of the Dance, is back home for an extended break, following an unbroken seven month globe trotting experience the rest of us can only dream about.

Since the start of the year her pivotal role in one of the three separate troupes travelling the world to perform Flatley’s classic has brought her to Taiwan, Germany, France, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Oh, and then there was Dubai for 10-days, which, she says, “was more a holiday than anything else”.

“It’s been hectic,” gushes Flynn, exuberantly recounting the helter-skelter, exotic lifestyle she lives in a world that has become her oyster.

Eight years on, she still exudes the same sparkling excitement she experienced when she quit transition year in St Mary’s Secondary School after being chosen by Flatley himself to fill one of the two lead female roles in the inaugural and memorable tour of his renowned show.

Securing such a coveted role caused its own wide-eyed amazement for the then 16-year-old, but it was no surprise to everyone else in the dance world. After all, Bernadette already had six world Irish dancing titles to her credit. Her victories at this level proved she had stylised talent from the hips down, which is where most of it counts for traditional Irish dancing.

But the Nenagh beauty needed to have more than just panache and grace of feet. Expressive, sensuous all-over body movement were the ingredients required for the erotically charged atomic-sexy bomb that was, and still is, Lord of the Dance. Everyone knew you needed to be sublimely talented to be granted

the honour of dancing alongside Flatley, the king of dance himself.

Bernadette vividly remembers 1996 when, as little more than a child, she had her first lessons with the dance tutors of the soon-to-be famous show and having to break out of the mould and strictures, which years of traditional dance had placed on her.

“Literally I went in with the 30 to 40 other dancers that were picked out. We started learning the numbers and then the tutors starting playing solo music and told us to just free range dance around and to use our hands. I started getting picked out at rehearsals and then two of us were called out to do solos with Michael.”

Obviously, Flatley liked what he saw and Bernadette

and Gillian Norris, the other female co-star to be, were chosen for the two leading female roles for the first run of the show.

For four years Bernadette danced alongside Flatley in Lord of the Dance at packed venues all over the world, culminating with an open-air performance of an even bigger version, Feet of Flames, in Hyde Park in London in 2000.

That power packed performance, involving a massive crew of 150 backline dancers, was to mark Flatley’s retirement for dancing – even though he did return for a few other guest performances and danced with Bernadette in subsequent years, including one final half-hour show last year in Monaco for Prince Albert.

Currently, Bernadette is the

dance captain of one of the three troupes performing Lord of the Dance around the globe. Now, her particular troupe has just finished up a long and exhausting stint in South Africa, made all the more difficult when a backroom member of the troupe, Darryl Kempster (37) was shot dead in a mugging in June.

“We did not know Darryl as well as other members of the crew because he had been with us for only about two months,” says Bernadette. “We never thought something so tragic could happen. It affected everybody in individual ways; it’s not something you expect to happen.”

Despite media reports that the cast flew home following the shooting, they all actually decided that staying on to fin

ish off the tour was the best thing to do. “Everybody pulled through it together. The people in South Africa were amazing to us, because they were ashamed and appalled at what had happened in their country,” says Bernadette.

Spending your life performing on stage all over the world sounds glamorous, but there is also another side to it. “It is a tough life,” says Bernadette. “In South Africa we were doing 10 shows a week. You somehow get through it when you put your whole body into it, but I found the last three days the hardest because I knew I was going home.

“It’s great to get the break now. I’ll do no dancing for a few weeks while I’m at home, but I’ll go to the gym to keep up some stamina. The rest suits

me. I go to bed at about 10 and get up about nine and do a bit of work for mam and dad. It’s a big relaxation to be home. When I’m living in a hotel I miss the normality of cleaning the house or my room. I miss my family life more so now than ever. When I started I was just 16 and life was a big adventure, and still is. I love dancing, but when you go away you appreciate what you have at home.”

Bernadette’s parents are Andy and Mary, who run a very successful pub and bed and breakfast establishment in Sarsfield Street. She has an older brother Andrew, who works in drama, a sister Elaine, an accountant in Friar Street, and two younger twin sisters, Catriona and Maire, who have just sat their Leaving

Certificate.

Last Thursday Bernadette jetted off to Newcastle in England to be bridesmaid at a weekend wedding of two former members of her troupe. Indeed, evidence would suggest that the show is a place where love stories begin, as Bernadette herself has met the love of her life in her troupe. He is 27-year-old Damien O’Kane, a Derry man who has danced in the show since its beginning and who is now a lead dancer with Bernadette in place of Flatley.

For most of that time the two have been an item. “We did click pretty much from the start after being best mates for a while first,” she reveals. “It’s great to have each other on tour because I don’t think a relationship could be handled if the

other person was on the outside. It would be a very lonely life if I did not have Damien on tour to experience the ups and downs with.”

The couple plan to get married in December next year. Last October she bought a site in Youghalarra, situated just 100 metres from the shores of Lough Derg. Soon she hopes to build a house where she and Damien can eventually settle down.

“It’s such a lovely spot, you can see the lake from the site,” she says. “We’re so lucky here. I don’t think I would live anywhere else but in Ireland. I was driving home from Shannon Airport by Killaloe the other day and I said, ‘I swear, there’s nowhere like it’. Just a few days before I had been on Table Top Mountain in South Africa, which was beautiful, but I preferred Killaloe – I am a home girl really.”

With an eye to the future, Bernadette and Damien are looking at the possibility of setting up their own dancing school when they eventually retire from Lord of the Dance, but that scenario could still be some time away. “I think I would find leaving the stage pretty hard after eight years. Even if I leave the show I

would still like to do some dance theatre on a part-time basis.”

Bernadette, who is now 25, says her dancing career so far has been fulfilling and financially rewarding. “It’s been good to me in terms of money and it’s given me a good standard of living, but I’m certainly no millionaire. For a young person like me it’s been a dream come through, because I would never otherwise have seen all the countries I have been to.”

She still recalls the wise words of her school principal, Gerry Cronin, eight years ago when she was deliberating on whether to stay on to finish school or grab the opportunity afforded her by Flatley. “Mr Cronin said I would never find what I was going to do in books, and he has been dead right. All the travelling has been an amazing experience.”

Bernadette returns to Lord of the Dance next October with performances in Milan and Rome. Then it’s on to France and Switzerland and Holland, before a stint in Taiwan, and back again to France before a Christmas break with family back in Nenagh.

Life sucks for some, doesn’t it?