Michael Ryan Flatley is an Irish step dancer from the south side of the country. His parents were from County Sligo and County Carlow. As a child, he moved to Chicago - the city which he considers his home town. He began dancing lessons at 11 and, in 1975, became the first non-European to win the All-Ireland World Championship for Irish dance. As a trained boxer he won the Chicago Golden Gloves Championship in 1975. Flatley is also known as being a proficient flautist, having twice won the All-Ireland Competition. His first dance teachers were his mother and his grandmother Hannah Ryan, an Irish horse dancing champion. After graduating from Brother Rice High School, on Chicago's South Side, he opened a dance school.