The 'fancy ice-cream on Ireland's erogenous zone', also known as the Galway Arts Festival, is 25 years old. Brian Boyd samples its flavour

'If reland were to be personified and take the human form, then it's fair to say Galway would be its erogenous zone, and the arts festival would be the fancy ice-cream spread over the last two weeks in July and I . . . I would be a spoon."

Barry Après Match Murphy's wickedly funny Paul Durcan parody, which ran as the radio ad for this year's Galway Arts Festival, neatly summed up the irreverent sense of fun to be had in this silver jubilee year. Never one to cloister itself inside dark spaces, the festival runs shrieking out into the streets, waving its multi-coloured arms as it beckons you to come hither.

Although second to Belfast in terms of size and scale, Galway's festival succeeds where Belfast's fails in truly inhabiting the city, seizing control of the winding stretches and declaring its presence with a flourish. Lest you're unaware of what's happening in your midst, the gigantic projections on the city's buildings, which bear down on you as you turn most every corner, serve as a constant reminder. French artist Nicolas Tobazéon-Chevalier's Projections Monumentales use the city's buildings as a giant canvas for projected images. Lynch's Castle, the Augustinian church and the oil tanks by the docks, among others, are transformed each night into eye-catching works of urban art.

These huge faces staring impassively out into the dark are a major talking-point this year - some declare them to be Aboriginal, others think they're Cubist, others still see traces of Inca art in them. Either way, a number of letters are apparently arriving at the offices of Galway City Council requesting that these striking post-twilight images be kept in place all year round. Result.

The other big talking-point is the Macnas street parade - or rather lack of same. For the past 15 years, the middle Sunday of the festival has traditionally seen the Macnas extravaganza bedazzle the city with its assault on the eyes and the ears. To the dismay of most everyone this year, though, Macnas opted instead for presenting a series of "street scenarios", which were best described as a series of "bonus tracks" from its Grainne Mhaol stage show at the Festival Big Top. All last week, the company carried out unannounced guerrila raids around the city (Market Street, the Spanish Arch, St Nicholas's Cathedral) to a mixed but generally positive response. The stage show itself, though visually spectacular, got a less positive response locally, with a general feeling that it needed to be tightened up.

So why no street parade? It is, is it not, the backbone of the festival?

"There's only so many ways to do a parade and I think Macnas felt they wanted a change after doing it for the last 15 years" says the festival's press officer, Paul Fahy. "The funny thing about it is that even though it was very well-publicised that there would be no parade on the middle Sunday, people still expected one. It might well return next year, but this year Macnas went for the 'street scenario' option."

It was a shame in that Macnas has never been known to run out of ideas and its extravagant parade was always a unifying afternoon for city and festival, not to mention one of the highlights of the annual arts calendar. The consensus here seems to be: "Bring back the people's parade."

One Galway resident who works in the arts commented about the lack of a parade: "It's always been a big day out, attracting crowds of 80,000-plus and the real ones to suffer this year are the pubs and restaurants who do roaring business on the day, with so many people in the city. I know they were the ones complaining the most, but then they weren't the first in the queue offering Macnas sponsorship money, were they?"

The festival's artistic director, Rose Parkinson, has ensured that the festival doesn't lapse into being a "receiving" festival (merely plucking what's on offer from the commercial international arts roundabout) and this year put particular emphasis on initiating and innovating. To this end, the festival co-production with the Abbey, The Drawer Boy, was a roaring success and its cross-media co-production with Stephen Dee, Freakshow?, proved to be seriously popular.

There are two critical elements to the festival's success. The first is its willingness to commit time and energy to its artists. Both Nicolas Tobazéon-Chevalier and Denis Felix were brought over to Galway from France months before the festival opened to research and develop their work.

Felix's photographic exhibition, in the splendid surrounds of the Aula Maxima, NUI, juxtaposed his stark black-and-white head-and-shoulder portrait shots from Mali, Morocco and Guatemala with more recent work from Connemara. It was simple but very effective, and a lot more resonant than any Benetton advertising campaign.

Second, Galway has always mixed and matched art forms with a gleeful disregard for accepted practice. It wasn't just that Joe Wall (ex of The Stunning) provided an evocative soundtrack (sounding for all the world like something Dead Can Dance would produce) that soothed our way around Felix's exhibition, but the use of music also worked to a significant degree in this year's Traffic event at the Town Hall Theatre.

Arguably surpassing last year's American Noir, this year's show, The Remembered City, featured the poet, artist and actor, Tony Fitzpatrick, sparring with Steve Earle. Earle's connections with Galway and virtuoso guitar- playing made him an early favourite in this face-off (and musically he still comes across as a down-on-his-luck Bruce Springsteen), but Fitzpatrick was a revelation. Drawing on his Chicago Irish upbringing, he recounted how his great-grandmother had travelled over to New York just after Abraham Lincoln died to work as a domestic and how she had set up the first trade union of domestic workers.

With examples of his visual art flashing on a screen in the background, Fitzpatrick read some marvellously evocative poetry of the city of "Dillinger, Capone and Mayor Daly". With Earle (who looks like he's morphing into Joe Duffy by the day - I'd watch that, if I were him) punctuating the words with his bar-room boogies, the two traced their shared history humorously, recalling how they were both members of each other's fan clubs. Fitzpatrick's brilliant blank verse (particularly his poem about Babe Ruth) proved to be one of the highlights of the festival and it might be an idea if he had his own one-man show next year. He could always bring it on to Edinburgh afterwards.

THERE was a lot of disappointment over Bushfire, the Australian/ English co-production staged in Southpark on Sunday night. The backdrop of Galway Bay was an inspired choice for this outdoor show, which featured a nomadic tribe in a Mad Max-style landscape. It would be nice to report more from the show, but there was a problem with the sight lines, and many in the audience could barely see the tops of the performers' heads. Despite an interesting audience dynamic, whereby large numbers of those in the middle (who couldn't see) tried to get people at the front to sit down (it didn't work), the show simply didn't get the chance to work unless you were at the front. Despite this large production hiccup, spectacular fireworks at the end did provide a bit of a lift.

A strong physical theatre component characterised the festival, always a sign of bold programming, as dance can be among the most challenging of the art forms. The joint Spanish production by Res de Res and En Blanc, who brought Tremolo to the Black Box studio, was a headily surreal mix of Dada and Monty Python. Dealing, however obliquely, with the topics of political violence and media representation, the three dancers constantly surprised, not just with the beautiful rhythm of their movement but with their use of situationist sloganeering - "To rob a bank is bad, but to create a bank is good" and "Just when you think you haveall the answers, you find out they have changed all the questions."

Dealing with the "raw and the cooked", this show demanded, and received, full attention and left the capacity audience with as many questions as answers. Bold, enigmatic and uncompromising, Tremolo is the sort of work that proves an arts festival has the courage of its convictions.

One of the biggest surprises for all concerned was that the fastest-selling ticket of the whole festival was a little-known Icelandic ambient-rock band called Sigur Ros. The gig was due to be staged in the atmospheric surrounds of St Nicholas's Cathedral this Sunday, but the band pulled out of the gig due to "recording commitments". A great shame for all of us who would have gone to pay homage to Sigur Ros's impossibly beautiful music.

Elsewhere, though, and again at the unusual setting of St Nicholas's, Lambchop (if you think their recent Is A Woman release is a mini-classic, get a load of their far superior Nixon album of two years ago, on City Slang Records) and David Kitt blunted the disappointment of Sigur Ros's no-show somewhat. Divine Comedy perform at the same venue tomorrow night, with Woodstar as support.

You'd have to travel far to find a better comedy setting than the city's Cuba venue, which hosted Ardal O'Hanlon last Sunday night and features The Kevin Gildeas tonight. Incidentally, Cuba's new venue, The Living Room, opens on Bridge Street this evening, and promises to be loungemusictastic.

A subdued, low-key hit was at the Mulligan music shop, which featured the work of photographer Joe O'Shaughnessy. Featuring a selection of his work from the last 20 years, there was a beautiful stark stillness to the black and white work, particularly in the 'Church Gate Canvas for the 1990 Election' and the 'Poor Clare Convent', both of which were tempting to carry off at €125. As good a record shop as Mulligan is (great ambient and reggae sections, by the way), O'Shaughnessy's work deserved a bigger venue.

ROUNDING everything off with apposite aplomb was the sheer and utter delight of the Rota show at the Festival Big Top. Deborah Colker's Brazilian dance company was as skilful and as exuberant as its country's football team. Themed around the loose concepts of the atmosphere and gravity, 16 dancers performed to a well-selected and well-paced soundtrack which veered from classical to trancey-house to dub reggae.

There was an irreverence to this show which is largely missing in contemporary physical theatre, with many of the audience afterwards commenting they didn't know dance could be such fun. Working on an entirely different level to the Tremolo show (and comparing the two would be like comparing Shakira and PJ Harvey), Rota, which was recently awarded the Laurence Oliver Award for Choreography, could have played for the duration of the festival ratehr than for three nights, such was the interest generated. It helped that the soundtrack contained recognisable tracks from the likes of The Chemical Brothers which lent a bit of a warehouse "rave" feel to proceedings, but the sheer vitality would have worked even over a Gregorian chant. Or better still, a Sigur Ros album.

The exuberance and the use of humour won over the packed big tent and not many will quickly forget this dazzling display of twists, turns and tumbles. Dance - it's the new rock 'n' roll.

Galway Arts Festival continues until Sunday. www.galwayartsfestival.ie

Programme change: Mundy replaces Cornershop supporting The Frames on Saturday.