Constelaciones playing "Under the Arches" @ CJF11 (Justyna Kielbowicz)

So it’s all over for another year, and what a year it has been. Ten magical days of art, engagement, and fun …..with a modicum of frivolity and abandon! In my last blog written on day three of the festival I likened working on the festival to running a marathon and noted that while the festival ends on Sunday, the gradually diminishing team must carry through with finishing all the tidying up well into the following week. And so it has been for the last three days, taking down signage, returning all the borrowed and hired equipment and miscellaneous stuff that we use to transform nine disused premises around Clonmel into theatres and cafes for the duration of the festival. Continue reading »

Suir River Café (Berit Alits)

Le Houitieme Jour…Go N-Eiridh An Abhann Libh….May The River Rise With Ye.

Michael Coady is a national treasure. Fortunately, you don’t need to go to the Treasuries Museum in Waterford to see him. More likely, you will find him on a cot on the river around Carrick-on-Suir. Yesterday, though unavailable in Clonmel bookshops somehow, he was to be found in person at 3pm in The Suir River Cafe. Compass Point sang us a selection of songs, some of which can be found on What Quay Are We In? We were served our strawberries and cream in that little room. We were “elected”, as my old friend, James Wall, once said, in the days when it was easier to walk through Callan and laugh.

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H'Sao - Under the Arches (Berit Alits)

“Football is a part of I. When I play the world wakes up around I.” These words of Bob Marley I found in the nick of time. Don’t worry if it doesn’t happen for you in a theatre. Life is full of surprises.

This was the day when a truly transformative piece of theatre raised me and my craft onto the crest of an enormous wave, and my eyes were opened to a panorama. Just in a flash, I was in Magic Central.

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Sticks, Stones and Broken Bones (Justyna Kielbowicz)

There is a great Jim Morrison line – I believe it is from The American Prayer album – where he says “and I’ll show you every place and person that I’ve been”.

We have now crossed the half-way Rubicon.

I stood looking at the bucketing rain outside my home this morning and was peppered with phone calls that prevented me from getting out the door. And you know that feeling when you’ve been at a massive bonfire and wake up the next morning to find the embers soaking in the wet? That is how I felt. “Constellaciones” was that bonfire; a heart chakra inflammation, and a rare treat. Yeats asked “How can we tell the dancer from the dance?” Flamenco is an art suffused in rich tradition and these four artists (playing in this constellation for the first time – hence the name) were not so much performing music and dance as inhabiting them.

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