Lord of the Dance: Cry of the Celts -- Side By Side (featuring Michael Flatley and Matt Smith)

The Lord of the Dance title belt is a statement: *this* is as good as it gets.

For Michael Flatley, that's easy: aside from being the show's creator and choreographer, when he made his debut as the Lord of the Dance in 1996, he was already acknowledged as the greatest dancer in the world. Like Muhammad Ali shouting "I am the greatest!" as he swaggered into the ring and won, there was simply no question in anyone's minds as to what they were witnessing.

...But what about everyone who comes *after* Michael? After all, he may have retired in 2016 after giving the world twenty years' notice, but his *show* goes on with him behind the curtain. If Lord of the Dance is to endure as an entertainment experience, whomever wears that title belt needs to be the greatest. This isn't "Sort of the Dance" -- this is LORD of the Dance. The billion-dollar dance show. The biggest-selling dance show of all time. Built to sell out stadiums. The audience didn't pay to see someone come out and apologize to them; they paid to see the GREATEST.

Let's finally confront the elephant in the room: when it's time for the opening solo, and the male lead bursts out onto the stage, there's a small voice in the back of your mind that for a second says, "...But it's not Michael, is it."

*That's* the challenge every professional male Irish dancer faces today. All of them. Everywhere. Because no matter what clothing you wear, no matter what rhythm patterns you perform, no matter what music you dance to, no matter how you move your body, you're inevitably going to be compared to Michael. Period. When it comes down to the ultimate litmus test -- whether or not you would spend your own money to sit through Irish dancing as a two-hour headline-act show -- the cold truth is that it is his art form overlaid atop Irish dancing which dresses it for commercial success as a mainstream product; it is his choreography, his rhythm patterns, which continue to sell out venues all over the world without him even being present.

Don't believe it? Ask yourself this: if you were to stop the average person on the street -- not a hardcore fan of the genre, but a typical layman -- and ask them to think of Irish dance shows, how many could they actually name? Probably just two -- and both of those are synonymous with Michael.

Remember, Lord of the Dance was originally created as a rebuttal to Michael's first show: an atomic-bomb sledgehammer that refutes the specious argument that "the show is the star" and instead celebrates and encourages star performers to *shine.* The ultimate challenge for a professional Irish dancer today, therefore, is to *earn* that title belt.

Think about it: to be the Lord of the Dance means that you're willing to study not just conventional Irish dancing but also Michael's art form atop it. You put in decades -- literal decades -- of *brutally* hard work to hone your technical skills and stage presence, and have to have the sheer *confidence* to go out there and win over an entire stadium full of people who, when they first see you, are ever so slightly disappointed because -- whisper it -- you're not Michael Flatley.

The old joke about Ginger Rogers is that she had to do everything Fred Astaire did -- only backwards and in heels. Today, if you're the Lord of the Dance, you have to do everything Michael Flatley did, *plus* put your own spin on it *and* win over an entire stadium. Every. Single. Night.

This is doubly true now, with the impending debut of Michael's 25th anniversary show, 25 YEARS OF STANDING OVATIONS. That audience is wearing some *thick* nostalgia-tinted glasses, and you have to enthrall them to the point where they leave the venue saying, "I don't know who that new kid is, but I'm buying tickets to see HIM again."

*That* is what it takes to be the Lord of the Dance.

And *that* is Matt Smith.

Matt is one of only two active Lords of the Dance in the world at the time of this writing, the other being the equally brilliant Cathal Keaney. Both Lords have been handpicked by Michael. Both continue blazing the trail started by Lord Emeritus James Keegan, who is now the show's creative manager and Michael's right-hand man: to carry the torch forward, and demonstrate that Lord of the Dance as a live entertainment experience is just as thrilling now as it has ever been.

And so, to demonstrate this fact, we're doing something we've never done before: showing a current Lord performing side by side with Michael. Same routine. Same exact stage set. Same exact venue. Same camera angles and cuts (as close as we could make them, anyway, considering the videos are more than a decade apart). Nowhere to hide. This is literally as close to a side-by-side comparison as we can create.

Matt Smith isn't Michael Flatley. He's not *supposed* to be; there will never be another Michael Flatley. But Matt Smith IS the Lord of the Dance. Matt Smith *is* the dancer that entire stadiums are paying to see RIGHT NOW. Find out why for yourself.