PAPER TIGER.(Michael Flatley)(Celtic Tiger)

In 1999, Michael Flatley, the Irish-American step dancer, launched a new production by rising from the depths of a fiery lake on the grounds of a German castle. In his current show, "Celtic Tiger," which stopped for one night at Madison Square Garden last month, he merely danced onto the stage--accompanied by maybe forty or fifty other clattering tappers and a gigantic video projection of what appeared to be sunrise over Stonehenge--in a backless Roman-gladiator outfit. The crowd would no doubt have preferred a burning lake, but it roared anyway, and with reason. Flatley is an extraordinary dancer. According to his press bio, he has clocked thirty-five taps per second. I don't know how that's possible, but suffice it to say he's fast. More important is his musicality. Flatley can't walk, can't turn his head, except in relation to the beat. He is also a natural charm-boy: happy onstage, at home in his body. He looks like Bill Clinton, and if, like Clinton, he's had a few too many doughnuts, well, he's forty-seven now, and, to me, the embonpoint just makes him more appealing.

But, as those who saw his prior show "Lord of the Dance" will not be surprised to hear, "Celtic Tiger" is an orgy of flash and cheesiness. The basic content is supposedly Irish step dancing, and that alone is what is good in this extravaganza. Step dancing is a highly specific style: restrained in the upper body (arms down, spine straight) and wild in the lower body (wagging swings of the leg, sudden kicks and hops, not to speak of the stepping). Flatley, according to his program notes, has liberated this style from its "rigidity," adding arm movements and "heartstopping rhythm." I didn't hear any heart-stopping rhythms; next to African dance, this is kindergarten rhythmically. As for the freed arms, they eliminate what was once an exciting contrast: containment upstairs, commotion downstairs. Another layer of nuance has been stripped away by Flatley's practice of having what seem like all his step dances done in hard shoes--that is, as tap dance. (Traditionalists perform some numbers in soft shoes.) In sum, everything subtle has been removed, in favor of everything knock 'em dead. Yet Flatley's version of step dancing, whether it is done by him solo or by his ensembles--in great, whirling arcs, in stage-wide lines of women crossing through lines of men--is still a thrilling business.

That is only a small portion of "Celtic Tiger," however. For much of the show, the dancers did dumbed-down Astaire or Fosse, or worse. At one point, four women in red lace body stockings slithered forward on the floor with their mouths open, as if they were about to perform an expensive sexual service on us. Then a group of priests ran in, grabbed the women, and threw them down a smoking hole in the stage, whence they presumably went straight to Hell.

What this had to do with the history of the Irish people, which was supposedly the subject of "Celtic Tiger," I don't know, but amid the show's technological assault even the historical numbers ("The 1916 Rising," etc.) were hard to get your brain around. The music and the stage floor were miked to the point where you felt you might need a doctor afterward. The performing area was flanked by two enormous video screens which, this being Madison Square Garden, projected in closeup what the audience might have difficulty seeing on the stage. And most of the acts looked better on the video screens than on the stage. From what I can figure out, this wasn't primarily a live production. It was material for a video. (Flatley does very well with the videos of his shows. His press kit says that one had "sales in excess of nine times platinum.") The spirit, too, was that of TV: the relentless excitation, the boringly pretty girls, the unsexy sex. And, oh, the flag-waving! It all looked like something from Vegas or Disney World--no surprise, since Flatley has created productions for both those venues.

"Celtic Tiger" had one passage that I will never forget: Flatley dancing alone, for maybe a minute or two, in an enlarged ...