Show Notes

• Growing up in America
• Early start in Irish dancing
• Moving back home
• Riverdance explosion
• Rigors of being the best
• Pope Francis in Ireland
• Dancing to pop music
• Transformational COVID pivot
• Performing together
• Advice for aspiring dancers

Connect With The Gardiner Brothers

✩ Website – https://gardinerbrothers.com/
✩ Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/gardinerbrothers/
✩ Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/gardinerbrothers
✩ TikTok – https://www.tiktok.com/@gardinerbrothers
✩ X – https://x.com/gardiner_bros
✩ YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@gardinerbrothers

Summary

Michael and Matthew Gardiner, known around the world as “The Gardiner Brothers,”  are the dynamic duo revolutionizing Irish dance! These 5x World Champions have captivated global audiences, amassing over 8 million followers and 1 billion+ views on social media. The Gardiner Brothers share the story behind their incredible success, and what it means to share Irish dancing with the world.

Full Transcript

Brian  

Welcome to another episode of LifeExcellence with Brian Bartes. Join me as I talk with amazing athletes, entrepreneurs, authors, entertainers and others who have achieved excellence in their chosen field, so you can learn their tools, techniques and strategies for improving performance and achieving greater success. Michael and Matthew Gardiner, known professionally as the Gardiner Brothers, are the dynamic duo of Irish dance. These five time world champions have over eight million followers and a staggering one billion plus views on social media. They travel the globe, entertaining and perpetually pushing the boundaries of Irish dance. Michael and Matthew are also former dancers in the world famous show Riverdance, where they became the first brothers ever to both become principal dancers in the show. The Gardiner brothers aren’t just dancers though, they’re speakers, performers and content creators who are redefining Irish dance with their modern flair and athleticism on stages around the world. For Michael and Matthew, it’s not just about the dance. The Gardiner brothers weave powerful life lessons into their performances, inspiring audiences to think deeper about what they’re rooted in, and to take action. With their infectious Irish charm and boundless energy, they have their audiences laughing, dancing, and learning valuable lessons along the way. Michael and Matthew are not only amazing dancers and performers, but as you’ll soon discover, they are also two of the kindest gentlemen you’ll ever meet. Welcome guys, and thanks for joining us on LifeExcellence.

Michael  

Hey, thanks so much for having us, Brian, that was an incredible intro. I mean, you’re too kind.

Brian  

Well, I could have gone on and on, but I have lots of questions and other things that I want to talk about, rather than using the whole show to talk about your accolades. You two, your parents are both Irish, but you were actually born in the US, in Denver, Colorado. What brought your parents to America? 

Michael  

That’s right, yeah, mom and dad are both Irish and but they a huge idea that they had after they fell in love and they got their degrees in Trinity. They always wanted to take that leap to America and both of them happened to get great jobs at the same time. Mom got an amazing job. She worked as a regional manager with a pharmaceutical company in Denver, and she just said, look, let’s try Denver out. They were supposed to go for about a year, or maybe 18 months, and decided to stay for 16 years, and they had three kids. It was just, history started itself there. So the Gardiner family kind of became rooted in Denver.

Brian  

Now, I know you come by your Irish dancing roots naturally, and you’ve both been dancing since birth, I think .How did you get started in Irish dancing? Were your parents dancers?

Matthew  

No, neither of our parents were dancers, actually, but they both had a keen ear for music. And mom was an amazing fiddle player, and still is. She still plays the fiddle, traditional Irish fiddle, and she was actually in a band called The Chancellors, who played every weekend in Denver, which was amazing for us to go to and listen to our mom play growing up in Denver. And dad also dabbles in the guitar. He loves music, and he’s always had a keen ear for that as well. So neither are dancers themselves, but they wanted us to grow up with some of that Irish culture in America. They put our older sister, Anna, in first, and she paved the way for Michael then who came next, and after that, I didn’t really have a choice. I was just kind of put into Irish dancing, and it was because the Irish music scene in Denver at the time wasn’t as big. They put us into Irish dancing and to really have something, again, that rooted us in the Irish culture as well, because they’re both Irish. They wanted us to grow up with something like that. 

Michael  

If they were going to raise their kids in America they wanted them to be rooted in their Irish heritage and their Irish culture. The Irish dancing was the best way to do that and little did they know like that. They put me and Matthew and our older sister, Anna, into dancing at a very young age. It’s still a big part of our life nearly 30 years later, it’s incredible.

Brian  

It’s obviously blown up for you two, especially, and I’m not sure where Anna fits into that, we’ll talk about that more. So you were growing up dancing, living a great life in Denver, Colorado, and then when you were ten, I think Michael – so, Matthew, you must have been six or seven – your parents decided to move back home to Ireland. How did you feel about that when you heard the news? And what was that transition like as young kids?

Michael  

Well, for us that was a huge moment. I think for two young boys, it was like a really exciting thing. It was more about being excited. And I don’t think we realized the impact that it was going to have. For us, it was more of an adventure, I think. That was the best way to think about it. We had been to Ireland a couple of times as young kids, mom and dad had always been very good for being able to get us home to visit our grandparents.

Matthew  

And that kept us familiar with it. It wasn’t like a strange land for kids to come into and not know anything about. It was honestly our other home as well. 

Michael  

We did know it so it felt like more of an adventure. However, I don’t think we realized how tough it would be. I think it did take a toll on the family to an extent, because your roots are in Denver and your roots are in America, and then all of a sudden, whatever, about mom and dad. But our sister Anna definitely struggled. She had amazing friends in Denver, not that she didn’t have amazing friends here but she was 13. It was a tough age to move. And then for me it was a similar thing; I was moving over at ten years old. I think Matthew kind of just thought that’s what you do in life, and that was fine. But something that we always talk about is that Irish dancing actually was the only kind of catalyst, or the constant that kept us going throughout it. I mean, we were Irish dancing in America and then we’re Irish dancing in Ireland, and it kind of helped the family get through that period in our life.

Brian  

Yeah, it sounds like Matthew didn’t really have a choice, growing up, about anything, so…(Michael:  He still doesn’t!)[Laughter.] how he participated and where he was going to live…he still doesn’t. [Laughter.] So you had started dancing in Denver and taking lessons, I’m guessing, and then you moved to Ireland, and you continued taking lessons again, I imagine. How did you evolve from taking Irish dance lessons to actually competing? Had that started in Colorado, or did you not start competing until you were in Ireland?

Michael  

Yeah, well, the competition starts very early. I mean, you join the competition scene from a very young age. In America and Ireland now, you can join at five or six years old, but you don’t have the opportunity to qualify for a world championships until you’re ten. It starts to get really a little bit more serious at that age, but for me and Matthew, we did have a talent for it at a young age, and we were very lucky to be able to say that we had a talent for it. So we were competing as kids across America, and we have these very fond memories of dad driving us 15 hours to Tucson, Arizona for a feis, which is what you would call an Irish dance competition. They call it a feis. And then, like I said, when we moved to Ireland, the competition just kept going. We joined the Hessian School in Galway, which we always love to shout out, because we wouldn’t be who we are or the dancers we are without them. We were so lucky to land in the best school in the world. I know it sounds very biased, but we were very, very proud. Under their tutelage, we just were able to become the dancers we are. And we kept competing. That’s when we were at the age of, like I said, competing for world championships and trying to qualify, first of all, and then seeing where you land amongst the rest of the competitors in the world, and then all of a sudden you’re aiming for the top spot.

Brian  

Give us a sense of how big Irish dancing is around the world. You talked about world championships, you talked about competing around the world, I have some specific questions about both of those things but how many dancers are there in Ireland and in the US and around the world, competing in competitions like the world championships?

Matthew  

I mean, Irish dancing has just exploded since Riverdance came on the scene in 1994. Exploded like globally, to the point where Ireland has been taken out by other countries. I mean, I know we have a smaller population, but like per capita as well, the number of dancers coming from Ireland would be smaller than the States, maybe smaller than Australia, maybe England. 

Michael  

Now that’s not to say it’s small either. Like I would say, I don’t know the exact number, Brian, but I would say there are at least 100,000 if not more. It’s between 100-200 thousand dancers across the world who would be competing in all their different levels to try and get to world championships eventually. We can go into this further, but you whittle it down to about the top 100 or 200 dancers in each age group. So when you get to that point, every dancer that’s even thinking about the world championships is at an unbelievably high level.

Brian  

You two certainly are. Michael and Matthew, both of you have achieved phenomenal success competing across Ireland, and as we’re talking about it, around the world. You’ve won 40 major championships between you, and five world championships. Help us to understand what it takes to achieve that level of success in Irish dancing. What do you two do that other dancers don’t do that’s resulted in your extraordinary level of achievement?

Michael  

First and foremost, Matthew and I have been very lucky to have an incredible team around us from the very get go. I mean, our parents put us into the right classes. They gave us the right opportunities. They gave us everything we could possibly need to succeed. We were lucky enough, like I said, then to get into the right school with the right teachers. We wouldn’t be anywhere where without them. But then it’s that dedication and that love. Matthew and I are fortunate enough to really love what we do, and we often, one of the biggest things that we could advise people to do, especially when you’re competing for something, is to make sure that you love the process of it rather than loving the result of it. People speak about that all the time, setting goals but having a system. Matthew and I love the process of breaking down a step and breaking down every single minute detail of a step in Irish dancing to make sure it was perfect. And then you’re piecing together thousands of pieces to put together one number for the world championships, it takes hours and hours and hours. There’s that number that people talk about, that 10,000 hour level where you cross over from being really, really good to maybe elite, I think, is the word that they would use. It takes hours and hours of dedication. When we were competing for a world title, it was two hours a day every single day of the week, and a competition on Sunday. And it would be every Sunday from September until April.

Matthew  

To put it into perspective for some other people, like a good example is heats at an Olympics. (Yes) There’s 100 meter final, but to get there, you have to go through so many heats. And so out of world championships, there are three rounds and you’ve been practicing all year. You’ve been training your body to be ready for maybe a minute and a half or two minutes on stage, and that’s all you get. If it doesn’t go your way, you have to wait until next year at the world championships and so it’s high pressure. It’s like that 100 meter sprint. They have ten seconds to make it right, and you have to be ready for your day. That is why it takes such precision to go through each and every single one of your steps and make sure that you have the technique right, but also make sure that you have the fitness to get all the way through. Your a minute and a half or two minutes of very high level, high intensity exercise without looking like you’re failing and tired at the end, which we have. I mean, we’ve done that over and over. It was one of our biggest problems, fitness, towards the end of our career. Then we started thinking of ways of well, how do we do extra so that on the day we’re going at full throttle all the way until the end, and just nothing can go wrong. So it’s that kind of level of perfection that you’re striving for.

Brian  

So is it that you become more physically fit or that you’re better able to mask the exasperation and spent energy by the end of the thing?

Matthew  

Definitely a little bit of both, because at the end of the day, it’s a performance as well. So yeah, you’re up there smiling, even though the lactic acid might be up to here inside, but you’re smiling. You’re like, I am so fit. But most of it is that you’re just more physically fit. Let’s say if we need to do two minutes on stage, we would try and train our bodies to be ready for three or four minutes at least, so that we know we can guarantee to ourselves and we can go into the competition feeling just so confident that we can get through it.

Michael  

That’s a great point, and in fact, a huge challenge for Matthew and I, for the for anyone that was listening or watching, a big comment we get is, when people first see us is they don’t realize how tall we are. So Matthew and I are both, well, I’m six foot four, Matthew, six foot three. A huge challenge for us when we were competing was understanding how to move your body. When you’re 16, 17, 18, 19, and you’ve just grown into a six for four body, it’s a tough challenge to figure that out. So we had all those kind of challenges of figuring out how to move your body, but how to get it fit enough at the right time. And I think Matthew and I were actually just discussing a couple days ago with our dad that we both made a decision when we were about 16 or 17 that we had to be the fittest in the competition, because otherwise we’re just not going to be able to do this. So it was a decision. A lot of people can win it on just technique or just skill. For us, we had the technique and the skill, but we never had the fitness for such a tall dancer. And so it was just one of those decisions you have to make, and we were going to be the fittest in the competition. It took a while to get there, but we got there.

Brian  

I’m guessing that didn’t happen at the same time for both of you. A lot of people mistake you for twins, but there’s actually what, three or four years difference between the two of you? I think you’re fairly close to the same height, and maybe we can show a picture of me with you. I’m 5′ 10″ so I’m not short, but I look like I’m standing next to two basketball players, dancers, but you probably went through those growth spurts at different times and had to adjust to that differently. Did you have a period in your lives when you grew like six inches in a year, or was it sort of a gradual growth and continually adjusting to being taller and having to be fit with your new height?

Michael  

We definitely went through all those different growth spurts. I think for me, I mean, you can even see it in my world championship results every year. I’d get second and the next year I’d have a massive growth spurt, and I’d get ninth, and then I’d get third, and then I’d get seventh, and I’d be all over the place. I really struggled with really quick but tall growth spurts. I think Matthew might have grew a little bit more consistently, but still had to deal with the growing pain. Still had to do all that.

Matthew  

We had our fair share of of injuries because – nothing major, thank goodness, and we still haven’t had anything major, and hopefully we won’t – Michael definitely had a little bit more quick growth spurts, and we ended up having Osgood-Schlatter disease in our knees and things like that to overcome, which is definitely hard as a dancer when we’re using our knees so much to try and jump off that floor and we’re pounding our legs into the ground every single day for two hours.

Michael

It’s an intense sport but worth every second of it.

Brian  

Well, you’ve had an incredible life, and what an adventure, especially as young people, and you’re still relatively young, but as kids traveling the world and competing, you’ve performed together, and you’ve also been a part of touring companies, including the world acclaimed Riverdance. You’ve danced at venues like Radio City Music Hall. You’ve appeared on television shows, probably around the world, but in the US, on the Today Show and The Late Late Show. And you even perform for Pope Francis’s visit to Ireland in 2018. What performance or achievement is most memorable for you, and what are each of you most proud of having accomplished? You might have the same answer. You might have different answers.

Matthew  

That’s a great question. Well, I mean, Pope Francis’s visit to Ireland was very special. We were invited in to choreograph a special piece with Riverdance and to put together a troupe of dancers to dance specifically for Pope Francis and a packed out Croke Park of 90,000 people. So that was a huge honor, an honor to be asked.

Michael

And our faith is very important to us so it was just a very, really special moment in our life, and it was the first time we had done something on that scale, where it was like we’re doing something for 90,000 people, but we’re also in charge of the choreography and having to figure all that out. So that was an amazing moment, I think, for each of us. Our first lead performance with Riverdance was something that we’re unbelievably proud of, but also it’s going to be something that always sticks in our brain. When – for anyone out there that has seen Michael Flatley from 1994 – he jumped out and he just kind of changed the world of Irish music and dance – it’s something that we had wanted to do since we were little boys and we both, again, to be brothers and to both get the opportunity to do that was incredible. And I think each of us were as proud of the other getting to do it than themselves almost, in a way. It was really incredibly special and I’ll never forget getting to do it. I’ll never forget getting to watch Matthew do his first one, and all of them, but his first lead performance was amazing.

Matthew  

And we knew there was a chance that… we were both going for the lead role, we knew there was a chance that obviously one of us might not get it, we might both get it. We might both not get it, and one of us might get it and one of us might not. That was all part of the journey. Thankfully, both of us got it, and that was amazing. And to add on to that, we were able to both perform the lead role in Denver in 2023 when we were on tour, which is obviously the first place that we saw it as little boys. And our parents were able to fly out so that was just a full circle moment. We were able to accomplish that dream with our parents watching. That’s definitely one that’s deep in our hearts.

Michael  

I think the final one then for us, in terms of a very memorable moment, was when the Gardiner brothers got to perform at the Rugby World Cup. We were performing as an opening act before the Ireland South Africa game. Rugby is huge in Ireland, and we’re big rugby fans. Ireland is either the number one or number two right now. They’re absolutely phenomenal. And we got to go out there and perform in front of about 10,000 people, which was incredible. I think that was a big one for us.

Brian  

How does sports rank for you, between rugby football and American football?

Matthew  

Oh, well, it’s tough to find a balance, isn’t it, during rugby season. I mean, it can be pretty crazy here in Ireland, especially because we have a great team. We do have a strong tie to American football, like we’ve always loved it; big Denver Broncos and big Denver Nuggets fans as well.

Michael  

You can see our big Broncos helmet up here. I think for me, there’s just a strong tie to the Denver Broncos, Denver Nuggets. There’s a little bit more on the heart string but we’re always so proud of the Irish teams as well. And we’re very, very proud to support the Irish open team and Gaelic football and hurling all of that. I mean, we’re sports mad in this house. 

Brian  

Sounds like it. You mentioned choreography just a minute ago, and your record on the competitive circuit is probably unparalleled, certainly among siblings. But to me, what’s even more impressive is your performing and choreography outside of the competition environment. I had the pleasure of course, of seeing this in person when we met, and I was able to see both of you perform in Austin, Texas last year. It was so exciting, first of all, to see you showcase Irish dancing, but then also to mix it with music from modern day pop stars like Michael Jackson. You’ve created choreography for a long time to modern dance music going back to your pre-teen years, I think. How do you take something like Irish dancing, which is such a traditional art form, and innovate within that rich tradition? How did you even think to do that first of all, as kids?

Michael  

Well, again, we grew up with amazing taste in music. Our dad gave us an amazing taste in music. I mean, he was listening to the likes of Paul Simon, Art Garfunckel, that kind of stuff growing up. So we always had that love of the real, like the golden era of music, as we would call it. I think that was kind of always ingrained in us. And then our dance teachers in Ireland always wanted us to explore, it wasn’t just about winning titles. That’s not what it was about for them. It was about creating dancers and choreographers, and I think they could see something in us, that Matthew and I were both very, very creative, and we wanted to be creative, and we loved Michael Jackson, we loved listening to Smooth Criminal. So one day, our dance teacher said why don’t you dance to that instead of Irish music? There’s nothing wrong with Irish music, but just try that out. And so we did, and we performed at a wedding in the west of Ireland, and a video went up online, and it got something like four or five million views, and from there, it just kind of struck us that, well, we should do that again. So then we tried different things. And as young teens, in our spare time, we just danced to music that we liked and pop music.

Matthew

Originally, every year the Hessian school here in Galway would have a Christmas show, and we might perform a different piece just as part of the show, but something that we made up, a creative piece, whether it was to Avicii or Michael Jackson, as you said. That really kept our juices flowing and that was something that we could look forward to performing, a piece that we created on stage in front of people, even as 15 or 16 year olds. Then we always had the vision that it could be bigger and continue to push the boundaries of the art form and innovate it, bringing it to new heights. Social media came at the right time for us and then from there we haven’t looked back.

Brian  

You mentioned social media. You had been on social media prior to COVID in 2020. You mentioned the Michael Jackson video that went viral, and that was certainly before the pandemic, but the global pandemic would dramatically change the trajectory of your careers. Tell us how you were forced to pivot during COVID. What you were doing leading up to COVID and then where you went, and what you ended up doing and where you are today because of the videos that you’ve really been creating ever since but certainly we’re doing very, very intently during the COVID lockdown.

Matthew  

You were probably supposed to be speaking to a civil engineer and an architect before the pandemic. We always would have been dancers, obviously, but those probably would have been our full time jobs now.

Michael

Matthew and I both have our degrees. Matthew has a degree in civil engineering. I qualified as an architect in 2019. Right as the pandemic was hitting, I was on my year of just having fun. I went on tour with Riverdance again. We were in New York City and Radio City Music Hall when the pandemic decided that the world had to shut down for two weeks. So we said, okay, we’ll go home for two weeks, and that’s fine. And Matthew was doing exams in college.

Matthew  

Yeah, I was finishing my final year in university. Very, very different sides of the planet.

Michael  

Yeah, we were sent home. And on the first day that we were allowed to be together – because I did a two week quarantine, obviously, coming home from New York – we just said to each other on the first day, well, we’ve got two weeks, why don’t we just fill the time with dancing? Let’s just post a video on social media every day for two weeks, because the whole world was told we’re going to be two weeks and we’ll be fine, and then it turned into two months, and then it turned into two years, and we had kept posting every day. Matthew and I, we have this mission of showcasing how modern and versatile Irish dancing can be, and we wanted to continue pushing the boundaries of Irish dancing and honoring that tradition, honoring the past, but innovating for the future and how can we change this. How can we push this to new boundaries? We always thought, as young kids, even growing up, that we knew that Irish dancing could be on a pedestal where brands should be collaborating. We were looking at the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo or Tom Brady getting these sponsorship deals with Adidas. And we thought why can’t Irish dancers do that? It’s just as incredible. It’s just as… I mean, here we are. It sounds very biased, but why not? And so we started posting, not even with the intent of trying to work with brands. It was just because we loved it and we wanted to push the art form. And then all of a sudden, a couple of our videos started exploding, and they started getting hundreds of thousands and then millions of views, and we started getting hundreds of thousands of followers all of a sudden. It kind of happened all of a sudden. It’s like that saying, John Maxwell would say he became an overnight success 72 years into his life. But that’s kind of what it felt like all of a sudden. It was the right timing. 

Matthew  

Yeah, it was the right timing. We were, to a certain extent, lucky when the timing was correct. We had this vision in our head. Michael came back from tour. I was around because I was doing my university here locally in Galway. So we had some lost time, and we had these ideas and it was just the correct timing. I mean, sometimes that’s what you need in life, correct timing and then it worked out.

Brian  

It was really the epitome of that, wasn’t it? Once in a lifetime, maybe once in five or ten lifetime occurrence, that everything came together and allowed you to do that. I’m curious, what audience are you reaching? What’s your demographic with your videos? What has surprised you the most about your meteoric climb on social? You had planned to do that and you had done videos and enjoyed doing videos and wanted to do some of that anyway. But I’m sure, even in your wildest dreams, you didn’t imagine one billion plus views on social media – or maybe you did.

Matthew  

No, certainly not. We’ve enjoyed every second of it. Our demographic is quite wide. Our biggest country is the United States, definitely and I think that’s probably to do with… the States obviously has a strong tie to Ireland, as we did when we were there. We’ll always have a strong tie back and forth to the states. And then we have countries like France, the UK, Germany, some surprising ones, like Brazil, Turkey, the Philippines, and Italy, so like, countries that you wouldn’t think would be interested in Irish dancing. 

Michael  

Yeah, it’s certainly a wide range and then even age wise, it’s not just one age, either. It’s definitely a wide range. I think the most would be kind of the 30-35 age. But we’re so grateful for each and every one of our followers. We wouldn’t be where we are, who we are today without them. We always love to honor them, and we love bringing a little bit of joy to people’s lives and putting a smile on their face. It’s a huge part of why we do it.

Matthew  

To be able to to promote the Irish culture all over the world, that’s actually an honor. It’s an honor for us to be able to do that and to keep showing this beautiful Irish art form and modernizing it and innovating it around the world.

Brian  

Well, it’s a great success story and you’re hugely entertaining, obviously. Getting back to your college degrees, given your worldwide success, do you see yourselves going back to architecture and civil engineering? Or is that now a distant memory, given the success you’ve had with Irish dancing, some of the brand partnerships that you’ve started to create, and other opportunities that exist?

Michael  

I would say never say never. Both of us have a huge passion for it, and maybe someday, but we’re definitely grateful to be able to dance and to be able to speak all over the world right now, and we want to continue doing that, and we’re loving it. Maybe someday the Gardiner brothers will extend into an architecture and engineering firm where we’ll dance at your wedding and then design your house. [Laughter.]

Matthew  

That would be a pretty unique business model.

Michael

Yeah, maybe someday, Brian.

Brian  

Well, you’ve done some unique things, so I’m not going to count that out. We have this recorded so maybe one day I’ll come back and say, hey, remember when you spoke this into the world and now look at what you’re doing.

Michael  

There you go, absolutely.

Brian  

Guys, as you know, our show is called LifeExcellence and I wonder, what does excellence mean to both of you?

Michael  

Well, I think the first thing that came to my mind was just striving for being the best version of yourself and trying to always get better every day. You’re never at the finish line, I think. I think excellence for us is that there’s no finish line. 

Matthew  

Yeah, like Michael said earlier, enjoying the process and making sure that you love it so much that…

Michael

You’re not tied to a result.

Matthew  

Yeah, it’s not so much a measurement. It’s probably more subjective than people think, which is is tough to separate coming from a world where it’s just measured by competition. But that’s maybe where our teachers were instilling something different in us, making dancers instead of making (Michael:  Winners.) or competitors, they made the dancer first excellent and their understanding of why they love it. They made sure we understood the timing, they made sure that we understood the musicality, differentiating the different layers in the music and in the dance, so that we could combine that all together and as excellent, I guess, and then move forward with that art form.

Michael  

Always striving for more as well. I think it is. It’s like something that Matthew and I are always doing is, how can we get better? We’re constantly looking at our videos, constantly critiquing and saying, we could do that better, or we could change this, or we could do that. I think that’s where excellence comes from. I think it’s like Matthew and I almost would say we’re not excellent right now. We need to get better. I think there’s something interesting in that, Brian, about always trying to get to the next step.

Brian  

So maybe it’s a pursuit, not an achievement. You said earlier, there’s no finish line. You’re constantly doing it. And then one of the things that you mentioned earlier, that I think goes along with this, is loving what you do. So clearly, you have the gift of being able to do something that you love very much. You talked about your culture and being able to promote Irish dancing and to promote Ireland around the world, and how proud you are to be able to do that, but you also truly love to dance, I suspect. Maybe you’ve come across people, dancers who haven’t really loved it, and maybe they’re pushed into it by their parents, or pushed into it by a teacher, and either get burnt out or just stop doing it because they don’t love it. That’s definitely a part of excellence, I think.

Michael  

Totally. Yeah, I love that explanation. I think falling in love with it is so unbelievably important, because you’re never going to be the best version of it if you’re not in love with it. I think that could be said for everything in life, every walk in life, whether you’re studying, whether it’s relationships, whether it’s your hobby or your career. I think that’s a huge answer.

Brian  

Absolutely. Matthew and Michael, you two are obviously close. What do you appreciate most about getting to perform and growing your careers together?

Matthew  

I think we’re very lucky that we’re able to do that together as brothers. We have a deeper understanding for where we’re going, why we’re doing it, and I think that’s very special to us.

Michael  

Yeah, I think we also have a larger patience for each other. We’re obviously brothers first, but we’re also then in business, we’re also running a business together. It was something our mom and dad always talked about, but I remember our dad sat us down when the Gardiner Brothers started taking off, and he said family first, and then you can chase your dreams as Gardiner Brothers. Don’t forget that your brother is first, first and foremost. So I think it’s something that we always… if Matthew’s having a down day, I’m able to try and pick him up, or the other way around. Matthew’s picked me up plenty of days and helped me get on in the day and figure out what we’re doing. Even if it comes down to choreography, it’s unbelievable to be able to do that together, where Matthew might be full of ideas one day, and I just let him flow, it’s just unbelievable, or it might be vice versa, but it’s just amazing to be able to do that with your brother. It’s a very, very special thing. We definitely, at least, try not to take it for granted. I think there are some days when we do, but we always have to remind ourselves that we are so lucky to be able to do this. And I think it’s very easy to say that, like we wouldn’t be able to do it on our own. Gardiner Brother just doesn’t have the same ring. [Laughter.]

Brian  

Do you do each of you bring particular strengths to your relationship and to your partnership, or does it sort of go back and forth? Michael, you said some days Matthew is really creative, some days maybe he isn’t, so you need to step in and be the creative one. What does that look like? Do you feel like you bring unique strengths to the table or you’re both very well rounded, and so it’s more who’s going to do what today?

Matthew  

It can vary, honestly. I think, in terms of dancing and choreography and maybe editing, social media, videos, things like that, it can just vary per day. We’ve tried to keep it well rounded between us and the workload and the capacity and everything like that, which that took time to learn as well.

Michael  

I think that’s one of our strengths, actually, is that we’ve always had to push each other. Matthew as a younger brother was always phenomenal and so he would always push me when I was a little bit younger, and I’d always be like, God, that’s incredible. How is he able to do that? And I’d be able to, it would always push me as well. Then I think, vice versa that happened. But then when we started working together, it took that next step of, like, well, Matthew might have learned how to do a special edit in a video, but he was able to push me to learn it and then we can both do it. The same goes for choreography. But I think there’s also definitely elements that we each have that the other one might not have. Like, I think Matthew’s incredible at being able to take information and digest it really well. I think I’m a little bit more emotional in my reaction to things. Matthew’s very calm and very collected, and he’s able to say, well, hold on, now, what if we did it this way, or what if we tried it that way? It’s very calculated. Little bit more calculated than me, maybe. But you need both. You need the push and pull.

Matthew  

Yeah, definitely, neither one is right and neither one is wrong. I think that’s good. I appreciate that about Michael, and I think he appreciates that about me, and totally we try and work together as a team.

Brian  

Has there ever been conflict in your relationship, like competitive conflict? Maybe something like you mentioned, Riverdance, where you both wanted to be lead and you both tried out. Has there ever been animosity or jealousy? I mean, it seems like you guys are… I think people think that you’re twins, not just because you look alike, but because you appear to be so incredibly compatible and are compatible. Is there another side that the public doesn’t see?

Matthew  

[Laughter.] It’s funny, when we were competing… I’m obviously three and a half years younger than Michael, so I think we were far enough away in age that we never had to compete against each other. Because sometimes they would group the ages together at different competitions and we never had to compete against each other. So there was naturally never any animosity there. And I think that does come down to how mom and dad brought us up, because we’re still trying to figure that out. We’d need to bring them in here and now and ask them that question to find the answer. Then when it came to Riverdance, competing for the same spot, I mean, that’s the exact opposite. We were literally competing for the same lead role in the company. They accept… sometimes it’s only one at a time, maybe it’s two or three, and at this moment in time, I think it was four, they accepted four at that audition time and we were two of them. But we never felt that animosity, like, oh, I need to get this more than Michael.

Michael  

I think it’s an incredibly special relationship in that sense, because of that reason. I think when we were growing up, like Matthew said, mom and dad had instilled this amazing quality in us. But if Matthew won a competition at a weekend, it was never… I wasn’t going home thinking why did he win that and I didn’t win my competition. It was always if he won his and I hadn’t won mine, that would push me to be like, well, if he can win his, then I can win mine. So it was more of a pushing mechanism rather than a pulling. And then when we got to Riverdance, we just both had that understanding together of like… I think if I hadn’t got it and Matthew had got it, I would have been just as happy. I mean, I would have been disappointed for myself, but I was just as happy and proud to see him live that. Because it was still part of my dream to see him live his dream and I think vice versa. It’s a very deep relationship thing.

Matthew  

Yeah, and something that we’ve discovered and that we speak about a little bit, is that just because I win doesn’t mean that Michael has to lose, vice versa. We’re in it together and we’re better together when we both rise together.

Brian  

I love that, and I love how, Michael, you described a situation where maybe Matthew wins a particular competition, and you don’t leave that competition having won anything. But that isn’t Matthew won, I lost. It’s an opportunity to learn, to improve and and also to celebrate Matthew. I think that’s really big. I hear that theme that you are advocates for each other, and you are cheering each other on and wanting each other to be successful. And the success of your brother, your sibling, doesn’t take away from your own success. That’s really admirable, and it’s an inspiration. I’m curious what inspires both of you?

Matthew  

I think we’re always inspired to improve our ourselves. We’ve been inspired… like we said, we’re big sports fans, so we’ve always been inspired by great sports players that are also great people-people and they have great values.

Michael

Great sports people who do it right. Someone like – and this is going to sound biased – someone like Peyton Manning. He was someone who was always striving for excellence. He was striving for greatness, and he reached it, in our opinion, but he was always trying to get better, but he was an amazing person, and he was a great leader, and he was a great husband and father. He lived his excellence off the pitch as well as on the pitch so it wasn’t just an encompassing thing that took over his competition. I think that inspires us. I think being as good off the dance floor as we are on the dance floor is really important to us. Matthew inspires me, and he does every day. Matthew inspires me to be a better dancer, a better person. And I hope I could do the same to Matthew. But I think it’s about finding the right values and doing the right thing. And off the dance floor, not just on the dance floor.

Matthew  

Like, people, in general, having impacts inspire us to grow. There’s so much opportunity out there to just grow every day and it’s about looking for that growth. It’s there, yeah, just opening your eyes to it. You have to find it and being inspired by it.

Brian  

I love that you’ve established a huge following. We talked about that on social media, and also have a clearly, have a strong connection with your audience. What impact do you hope to leave on the world of Irish dancing, and maybe even more broadly, in the world?

Michael  

Well, for Irish dancing, first and foremost, we want to inspire the next generation. And we want to see – when we can’t dance anymore and our shoes are hung up here on the wall behind us – we want to be able to see the next generation coming through and and pushing the boundaries of Irish dance, and see where they, the next generation, can take it. We want to be able to give back as much as possible and see the art form that we love so much just continue to explode and to continue to grow. In terms of our social media and our videos and our dancing life and what we want to do past dancing, we want to be able to give back as much as possible and and continue to maybe impact people’s lives with the lessons we’ve learned. How can we be the people that our teachers were to us? I hope I’ve answered that question.

Brian  

You have, and I think that’s a way that you set yourselves apart from… I’m not in the dancing community, so I can’t say this for sure, but I love how there are values and life lessons that you’re trying to instill in people, not only through your own behavior, through how you act and how you relate with your audiences, but also through speaking. For example, when we met in Austin, you danced, but then you spoke. You have this – I don’t want to call it a routine – a performance that incorporates teaching life lessons and speaking and talking about values and and talking about things that transcend excellence in dancing and can really be applied to any area of life. Again, I think that makes you unique, and I also admire and applaud you. I don’t know how that developed, but I think that’s a wonderful gift that you give, where you’re able to entertain people, and they can sit and listen and watch, but then you also teach. You take on the role of teacher and sort of toggle back and forth. It was a wonderful performance. Again, it went way beyond just being entertained. There are a lot of great entertainers, but you are teaching lessons that I think are important, whether somebody appreciates dance, or enjoys Irish dancing or not, so I applaud you for that.

Michael  

Well, thank you very much.

Matthew

That’s great to hear. I mean, we really enjoy that and it’s clicked with us; that there is more to our dancing than just the dancing. There are lessons instilled within it that we’ve learned and that we’re still learning, and that we’re trying to serve others with now.

Brian  

You’ve achieved tremendous success in your careers, as we’ve talked about. What advice do you have for aspiring dancers who might be listening to or watching the show, or really, anyone striving for excellence or wanting to share their unique ability with the world?

Michael  

I think, first and foremost, continue to follow your love, find out why you love it, and continue to chase it. Matthew and I found out early on that we loved Irish dancing but it wasn’t just about loving it, we found out why. It was about collaboration, it was about innovation, and it was about that rhythm that you could make with your feet, it was just magical and it was something that stuck with us forever. So during the hard days, when it doesn’t feel like you want to do it, or don’t want to get out of bed or stay up late to practice, just remind yourself, well, no, I love this. It’s not even about the result, it’s not about the goal. It’s just the process that I love. 

Matthew  

Yeah. And the process will take you there. Then also, just don’t be afraid to persist. It’s almost frightening to persist sometimes. It can feel like, oh, I just don’t want to do this right now, I don’t have enough energy. I can’t do it. And we’ve all been there. If you can just push through that boundary and have the persistence and the tenacity to keep going, that process that you love will bring you to where you want to be.

Brian  

What’s the key to pushing through that? When you just don’t want to do it, or you don’t feel like doing it, or you get stuck, you have some kind of obstacle that you’re trying to push through, what’s the key to persistence that enables you to just push through that and get to the other side?

Matthew  

Well, I would say a huge part of it is just mindset, and you need to find a way to really hone in on your goals, and then the process, or the system to get to your goals. Sometimes for us it was writing something above our bed, where we would get out of bed in the morning and we’d see it straight away. That image would remind us that when it is tough, when we’re an hour and a half into our two hour practice, we have that image instilled in our head that that’s why we’re doing it. That’s one reason, but there are other reasons as well, whatever reasons they might be for us, we always reminded ourselves that we were doing it for ourselves. That doesn’t even sound selfish, we were doing it for ourselves, we’re doing it for our teachers, we’re doing it for our family, everything like that. So I think really just reminding you of your goals. Sometimes it’s even getting up in the morning and looking at yourself in the mirror and saying, I am going to do whatever this year.

Michael  

I was just about to say I wanted to add affirmations. Matthew and I, from a young age, I don’t think we realized we were doing it, but Matthew and I, we heard a trick from a great mentor of ours, Michael Donlan. He was an incredible mentor to us. A huge thing that he taught us was to get up in the morning, look yourself in the mirror and say, I will win the world championships – and this is before we won it – but he had this belief in us. If it’s the first thing you say to yourself and you’re looking at yourself as you say it, you start to believe it.

Matthew  

I remember thinking like, I’m not going to do that. I’m going to feel like a bit of a fool doing that on my own in the bathroom mirror in front of me talking to myself. But I did it and Michael did it. 

Michael  

And it’s a lesson that stuck with us forever and we still do it. And what’s really interesting, like when Matthew was speaking there, I was just thinking back to a moment that I had when we were doing our lead audition for Riverdance. And it was that moment where the producer was like… it was the final test, and it was like, again, again, again. This is a seven minute number that you have to do over and over and over. I had done it about eight times, and I was backstage, and I actually was, like, on my hands and knees. I was on the ground dripping sweat and everything, I just didn’t think that there was anything left. I was looking at the reflection of myself in the ground –  on Marley – that sounds ridiculous, but I’ll explain it. On a vinyl Marley (dance mat), you can kind of see a little bit of a reflection. So I was looking at it, and I literally just said, do you want to be a lead in Riverdance or not? I just looked at myself. I was like, I want to. I’m going to be a lead in Riverdance. I had to get out, and I had to do that seven minute number again. Matthew was out watching me, and it was that moment that it proved to him that I was good enough and I was going to do it. So like that has stuck with us, that little lesson of affirmations and reminding yourself of why you love it and why you want to do it, and your goal and your system and your process.

Matthew  

I guess to fully answer your question, there are different techniques, and maybe it’s just thinking outside the box to find your own technique of really just having that stuck in your mind in those moments where it’s tough to persist, to just get you through it.

Brian  

That’s fantastic. I’m just blown away by that response. And you’re right. It is important for people to find something that works for them, something that helps them to get through it, but on the other hand, you shared a little technique that actually is an extremely powerful technique, and I think one of the most important things that we’ve talked about so I appreciate you sharing that. We’ll definitely share your contact information in our show notes, but just for our listeners and viewers so that they can hear this, where can they go to learn more about you and also to see your incredible dancing?

Michael  

Well, you can go follow us at Gardiner Brothers on any social media platform:  Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, even Twitter or X. You can also go to our website at Gardiner Brothers.ie.

Brian  

Awesome. Thanks for sharing that. Michael and Matthew, thank you so much for being on the show. It’s great to see both of you again, and I really appreciate your coming on the show today.

Matthew  

Hey, thank you so much, Brian, we appreciate everything. We appreciate you having us on and we’re so grateful to be able to talk to you.

Brian  

It’s been great to have you. It’s truly an honor. Thanks for tuning in to LifeExcellence. Please support the show by subscribing, sharing it with others, posting about today’s show with the Gardiner Brothers on social media and leaving a rating and review. You can also learn more about me at BrianBartes.com. Until next time, dream big dreams and make each day your masterpiece.