DANCER Daire Nolan would probably have jumped off a cliff if Michael Flatley had built that into his plans for Lord of the Dance. Not that Daire - who plays the Evil Dark Lord in the show - is a weak-willed follower, it is just Michael has an almost unique power.

"He just told us what was going to happen and we just threw ourselves right into it - there just was no doubt in anyone's minds," says Daire. "I've been working with the show for three years and it has been brilliant."

When you think the whole show was put togeth-er from scratch in a few weeks, the need for dedi-cation is clear under-statement.

"He had us working 10 to 12 hours a day - we literally got used to doing that, having something to eat, going to bed, and getting up to do it all again," Daire says.

"But no-one complained, because Michael made us know that this was going to be big."

It is hard to fault the spell that Flatley can clear-ly cast on people, bearing in mind Lord of the Dance broke Wembley Arena's box office record with sell-outs on 21 con-secutive nights, and was the biggest grossing world tour in 1997. And when it comes to Daire, although he had been doing danc-ing all his life, he was willing to throw in a very lucrative job in computers for the gig.

"I remember meeting Michael in a restaurant back in 1986 and we spoke very briefly, but from there I knew I had to work with him at some point," Daire says.

"He always wanted to do this show, it has been with him for years - but he needed Riverdance to give him that big break to help it into reality."

While Michael - not Irish as you might imagine, but from Chicago - is not in the show, he remains its artistic director.

And as audiences flock to Bournemouth's BIC in the summer to see the show in its six week residency, other dance troupes will be in other parts of the world at the same time, spreading the Lord's influence.

See Lord of the Dance at the BIC from July 22 until September 5. Box office 01202 456400.

Converted for the new archive on 25 January 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.