Just when you thought it was safe to go out and never, ever encounter any contemporary dance, two new dance development centres are rising from the ground. The dance centre, to which the Arts Council dedicated £1 million a couple of years ago, is being developed off Talbot Street as part of the North East Inner City Integrated Action Plan. It will be part of a mixed use complex at the junction between Foley Street and Corporation Street.
The Irish Association of Professional Dancers is working with the architects in an advisory role, and a major consultation process will also be conducted with the local community. Project Manager Paul Moloney says that it is part of an arts strategy for the area which will link the professional artists living there with other residents. The building will begin in 2001 and will take about a year.
Just the sort of news to send the dance-phobe off for a spin in the relative safety of Bloomfield's supermarket in leafy Dun Laoghaire - where another dance centre is due to open in May. Dun Laoghaire/ Rathdown Co Council had stipulated that the complex should have a cultural dimension. Now Dance Theatre of Ireland is developing a dance centre with the Arts Council and, as one of the pilot projects running under the new Arts Plan, has funding to employ a company manager and an outreach and marketing manager.
Visual artists can take little comfort from the news from the committee stage of the Government's Copyright Bill. The droit de suite, or the right of artists to a percentage payment when their work is sold on, was ruled out on Monday by the Minister for Enterprise and Employment, Tom Kitt. Ireland is one of only four EU countries in which artists do not have the droit de suite.
Fine Gael's Nora Owen was among the supporters of the droit, but she says that there is "a lack of political will to recognise that Irish artists who do original work should have some payment if the work increases in value."
The Government contends that very few artists would benefit from the droit. The subject is being discussed in Brussels in the context of a new EU directive on copyright, and Kitt says that this may, in any case, usher in the droit - but Ireland opposes it going into the directive at all. The idea that the droit should go into the Bill to be activated only if the EU directive insisted, was also opposed.
The Ulster Orchestra has announced the appointment of Swiss conductor Thierry Fischer as principal conductor in succession to Dmitry Sitkovetsky. Fischer, whose initial musical career was as a flautist, is currently chief conductor of the Netherlands Ballet Orchestra He will take up his new position at the start of the 2001 season, but can be heard in a special performance of Haydn's Creation next season. Sitkovetsky will become conductor laureate at the end of his current contract.
Conductor changes are imminent in Dublin too, where Alexander Anissimov's contract as principal conductor expires at the end of the 2000/2001 season. It seems unlikely his contract will be extended. Deliberations on the appointment of a successor are believed to be well advanced and an announcement from RTE is expected shortly.
Mairtin O'Connor, Maighread and Triona Ni Dhomhnaill, Tommy Hayes,u, Garry O'Briain, John Faulkner, Phil Callery and Sean Tyrrell are among the stellar performers who will be in Kinvara from Friday to Sunday for the Into the New festival of traditional music, to raise funds for Sam Fleming, who has been brain-damaged since he fell off his bike three years ago.
