Pursued by a Bear »

• If you only do one thing this weekend: enjoy some impressive exhibitionism

  May 10, 2012 @ 5:49 pm | by Laurence Mackin

  Dance: Last week I was arguing that modern dance has, perhaps out of all the artforms, the toughest sell to a general audience. It’s interesting then that the Dublin Dance Festival has something of a technological or scientific feel to it this year (Michael Seaver takes a look at this aspect in this article). The line-up has plenty to offer first-time dance-goers and enough heft to keep the hardcore dance fans happy – the Liz Roche Company and the Royal Ballet’s Sarah Dowling kick things off this weekend with a double-bill at the Beckett Theatre, while the formidable Trisha Brown Dance Company are making their Irish premiere in the Abbey. Blink and you’ll miss these performances – most are on for just two or three days, so catch this most elusive of artforms being performed by those at the peak of their powers while you can.

  
  Are ye dancing? Are ye asking?

  (more…)

• Live review: SBTRKT, Academy, Dublin

  May 9, 2012 @ 10:37 am | by Laurence Mackin

  AARON JEROME AND collaborator Sampha have been building a devoted following since the release last summer of their eponymous debut album, and their reputation has been burnished by excellent sets on Other Voices and at a gig in the Workman’s Club last year. On stage, the pair perform wearing stylised tribal masks, adding a bolt of mystery and anonymity to their urban trip-hop sound.

  On record, the band are slick and subtle, spare acoustic elements and echoey effects pushed and pulled by smart beats and slick riffs that sound minimal and effortlessly cool. Live, Jerome plays an acoustic drum kit, along with a slew of triggers and samples, while Sampha’s warm, almost soulful vocal lifts off above his keyboards and looped lines. Given Jerome’s production work, and the band’s penchant for remixes, it’s no surprise that the live tracks differ from the album – the live kit might lose some of the restless, sparring subtlety of the record, but it adds a straight-ahead groove to many of the tracks, lifting the sound into something substantial enough to fill bigger rooms than this. (more…)

• A pointless review of HHhH

  May 8, 2012 @ 6:27 pm | by Laurence Mackin

  HHhH By Laurent Binet Harvill Secker, 327pp. £16.99

  REVIEWS OF EXCELLENT BOOKS can feel pointless. They are packed with nuggets of information, prised from the cracks of the novel, that are best discovered while buried in their original pages. These shards are selfishly reproduced to serve the review: what more effective argument could be made than the utterly persuasive primary evidence of the book itself? In fact, you would be best advised to alight at the next full stop and get a copy of HHhH for yourself. You need read no further.

  In a way, this is the main problem facing Laurent Binet in his new book. HHhH is Reinhard Heydrich, the “butcher of Prague”, a man who physically and ideologically embodied the Nazi regime. His immediate superior was Heinrich Himmler, and rumours were whispered in the shadows of the Third Reich that “Himmler’s brain is called Heydrich” – in German, “Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich”, or HHhH.

  
  Reinhard Heydrich, the hangman of Prague (more…)

• If you only do one thing this weekend . . . visit the Paris of the northeast

  May 4, 2012 @ 1:58 pm | by Laurence Mackin

  Where do you even start with a weekend like this one? The May Bank Holiday is like the first festive spring of the season, when towns, cities, villages and venues up and down the country let loose their first few programmes and set up a summer of arts and music action.

  The next few days are ridiculous. Those of you looking forward to a quiet, relaxed few days – forget it. All sleep is cancelled, all quiet time is null and void, all days-in are verboten. Here are just a few highlights of what is happening up and down the country. (more…)

• Sound of the soul of African Peru

  @ 12:49 pm | by Laurence Mackin

  With her music and her politics, Susana Baca brought about a revival in Afro-Peruvian music and culture, with a little help from David Byrne
  

  SUSANA BACA has a reputation as something like a gentle force of nature. Speaking from New York, in-between flights, and with a translator and speaker phone between us, she still manages to communicate the warmth and commitment that have made her something of a national treasure in her home country of Peru, and won her many fans abroad.

  Baca is now in her late 60s. She almost single handedly brought about a revival in Afro-Peruvian music and culture, having championed the cause of the marginalised community of Peruvian descendants of African slaves, who arrived in the country in the 16th century. (more…)

• Take a chance on … dance

  May 2, 2012 @ 6:34 pm | by Laurence Mackin

  Is there any harder sell to a general audience than modern dance?

  More than any other art form, modern dance has its work cut out tempting in a random viewer who doesn’t know what to expect. You have more chance of getting a reluctant punter down the steps of a jazz venue, through a gallery’s doors, or into the stalls of a theatre than you have of making them sit still and soak up some modern dance.

  Which is odd, because a lot of it is accessible, and combines elements of dance with technology, lighting and music to make a much less intimidating package than, say, classical Greek theatre – and there is nothing in the arts world more turgid than bad Greek theatre. (more…)

• Competition: Win tickets to Dublin Dance Festival

  May 1, 2012 @ 4:13 pm | by Laurence Mackin

  THIS COMPETITION IS NOW CLOSED

  The Dublin Dance Festival takes place on May 11th to 26th, with a very impressive line-up. Among the highlights are Klaus Obermaier’s Apparition, which uses dancers and technology to form sensuous patterns of light and illusions; the Irish premiere of the Trisha Brown Dance Company; and Junk Ensemble’s The Falling Song, which looks at the nature of flying and its tempestuous relationship with falling (ouch).

  For more on the festival click here, and to celebrate we have two pairs of tickets to give away to a double bill of the festival’s opening performances. (more…)

• If you only do one thing this weekend … get down to the ‘Batter

  April 26, 2012 @ 8:41 pm | by Laurence Mackin

  This week’s selection comes from Roisin Agnew.

  Fundraiser:The lovely people of The Joinery kick off a celebration this Friday to raise some well-deserved mullah for the small joint with a big heart that keeps the faith going among the really-very-good creative souls out there. Set to Hector Castells’s visuals, the line-up seems likely to catapult one into the wee small hours, featuring Donal Dineen and Niwell Tsumbu, Patrick Kelleher and His Cold Dead Hands, Legion of Two and with a Skinny Wolves DJSet to boot.

  But if you still feel you haven’t had enough of the indefatigable Monsieur le Dineen, crawl out from your rock on Sunday and come to Listen at Lilliput for a night of new composition and music. The BYOB set up will include compositions and performances by delicious Michael Fleming, Donal MacErlaine, Laura Hyland, Arun Rao and storytelling by Oh-aisseaux. Taking place in the cosiness of Lilliput Press andy likely to feature some of the Stoneybatterites who survived Friday’s boogie, this could be the perfect soulful wind-down to the weekend. It’s all happening in the Batter this weekend. (more…)

• Louis le Brocquy: Fragments from an extraordinary life

  @ 3:07 pm | by Laurence Mackin

  Yesterday, while putting together our arts coverage of Louis le Brocquy’s life and work, there were a number of elements we couldn’t fit on the page, purely for space reasons.

  The items that made it into print were: a tribute on today’s news pages; an appreciation of his life and work by our art critic Aidan Dunne, which also features a slideshow of le Brocquy’s work; and, if you scroll down through Aidan’s piece, there is a lovely snapshot of the man himself, written by the poet John Montague. (more…)

• Book review: Best European Fiction 2012

  April 24, 2012 @ 6:21 pm | by Laurence Mackin

  Best European Fiction 2012 Edited by Aleksandar Hemon, with a preface by Nicole Krauss Dalkey Archive Press, 459pp. €11.50

  TRANSLATED BOOKS ARE a hard sell for publishers. In the same way that subtitled films rarely achieve mainstream success, it’s a challenge to overcome a general wariness towards translated novels. There is the obvious fear that cultural and linguistic differences might work against readers and conspire to keep them locked out of the heart of a book. A good translator, though, will open most doors, and if sometimes a little linguistic or cultural mystery remains, what harm is there in not knowing everything? (more…)

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