Festival director J.J. Formento deserves congratulations for organising the first-ever Irish Youth Dance Festival, which attracted a capacity audience on Sunday. The remarkably high standard made it a memorable occasion.
Young professional dancers performed well. Lisa McLoughlin and Becky Reilly danced in Rebecca Walter's TEAM, best item seen in the Irish Choreographers' New Works Platform, while Niamh Condron danced her own Duet in E Sharp to the music of, and partly partnered by, cellist Eckart Schwartz Schuntz. Student groups got off to a great start with LD Dance's Calm Before the Storm, a good short piece choreographed by the five dancers themselves.
Dublin Youth Dance Company contributed three items: Impromptu by Adrienne Browne, Water Wings by Stefano Botto, part of which was performed at the opening of Dance Theatre of Ireland's Bloomfield Studio, and the interesting Bronze Silver Gold by Rachel Wynne, who also performed a solo piece by herself and Laurie Keegan, to music composed and played by guitarists Kristo Dawson and Jonathan Farrar.
Waterford Youth Dance gave two pieces by Libby Seward: Living In Our Dreams and Clublife, the dancers seeming happier in the latter, while Brona McNally choreographed to Prokofiev's music for Romeo and Juliet - a piece well within the range of the 12 students from her School of Dance. Irish National Youth Ballet's extract from the Paquita Suite, however, though admirably executed by two of the dancers, had a third who was not to blame for being asked to do something beyond her capabilities.
