OnTheTown: Stilt-walkers, smiling monsters and Mardi Gras extras gathered in City Hall Dublin this week to launch next month's St Patrick's Festival.
Suri Grennell, Gillian Harrington and Debra Barber towered above everyone as they waved their red, orange and green banners. Their performance, with more than 50 of their Artastic street theatre colleagues, entitled Chaos in Calcutta, will be part of the parade in Dublin on Thursday, March 17th. The parade will feature 10 pageants from throughout Ireland along with 14 marching bands from around the world.
CoisCéim Dance Theatre's Muirne Bloomer and Vanessa Daws are working with 600 Transition Year students in 12 schools around Dublin in preparation for the parade. The theme of their performance will be designed around "the chaos theory of butterflies," explained Daws.
This year's festival, which runs from March 16th to 20th, will cater to different age groups, explained the two creative directors of the festival, Patricia Baker and Carina McGrail. Liberty Hall Theatre will stage the world première of Donal O'Kelly's play Cambria, during the five-day festival. A symposium to debate what it means to be Irish will run in Dublin Castle, while Luminarium (a giant inflatable maze) at Docklands will offer fun for families.
Overseas, Aisling Braiden, daughter of Olive Braiden, chairwoman of the Arts Council, says 1,000 people will take part in the parade in Tokyo.
The music of Horslips, who recently got together to re-record some of their best songs, will feature during Skyfest, the fireworks show on the Liffey. The group's lead singer, Barry Devlin, now a writer and script-writer, was at the party in City Hall, having just spoken to Bono - who is in Mexico - about a film they are working on, to be called The Virgin of Las Vegas. It's an oxymoron, he said of the title. As more surreal figures - snakes, dragons, saints - floated across the floor of City Hall's rotunda, it seemed apt.
For more information about the St Patrick's Festival, see www.stpatricksfestival.ie