Happy Birthday, Michael Flatley!

People of the internet: please join us in wishing our commander-in-chief, the legendary Michael Flatley, a happy birthday today!

This isn't just a birthday. This is a birthday during the 25th anniversary year of his billion-dollar creation: #LordOfTheDance, the commercial flagship of the #IrishDance industry.

Michael's rags-to-riches story is so completely unbelievable that if it were a work of fiction, no one would accept it as plausible: a blue-collar Irish-American construction worker raised in poverty on the wrong side of Chicago, who up until his mid-thirties was just a skinny guy with a weird obsession about an obscure folk dance, became an "overnight" sensation after decades of backbreaking hard work, unleashing his art form overlaid atop #IrishDancing and creating an entire genre of entertainment -- the Irish dance show -- out of it.

Then, after he gets fired from his first show (which continues to use his choreography), he risks the most audacious gamble in the history of show business: a bigger, louder show to prove he is the creative font of the nascent genre -- a show in which he is the creator, director, principal choreographer, star, and financier:

Lord of the Dance.

One-billion dollars, sixty-million people, and countless stadiums later, the rest is history.

Today, an entire generation has grown up in world in which commercial Irish dancing has existed. Today, Michael -- retired from the stage since 2016 -- is the de facto Stan Lee of the Irish dance world. But the simple truth is this: without Michael Flatley, commercial Irish dancing wouldn't exist.

Read that again and let it sink in.

Without Michael Flatley, commercial Irish dancing -- a genre of entertainment which has employed thousands (perhaps tens of thousands) of people, dramatically expanded the number of Irish dance schools globally, and served as a remarkable cultural export which reinvigorated an entire country's national image in a way that can actually be measured as a percentage of GDP -- would not exist.

"Greatness is never appreciated in youth," wrote Joe Straczynski, "called pride in midlife, dismissed in old age, and reconsidered in death."

Today, tickets have gone on sale for Lord of the Dance's new show: 25 YEARS OF STANDING OVATIONS. This video is a reminder of the massive juggernaut this show still is, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. Planet Ireland arises; it's time to rediscover the magic once again. (24hr Ticket Hotline: 0844 249 2222, or go to bookingsdirect.com)

Today, on Michael's birthday during the 25th anniversary year of his greatest achievement -- Lord of the Dance -- let's celebrate this man and what he has done for all of us.

#FollowYourDream