Eurosong 2001, the song contest which will decide Ireland's entry to the Eurovision Song Contest in Copenhagen, will be one song short on Sunday night. Thom Moore and Sergei Erdenko's song, Gypsy Blue, was disqualified last week because it was considered to be the same song which was in the Dun Laoghaire Song Contest last summer, and the rules state that the song must not have been performed publicly before.
However, even before it was scrapped, the song was in trouble. Sergei Erdenko, leader of the Russian gypsy group Loyko, and a naturalised Irish citizen, had planned to reform Loyko with three new members for the song: his niece Leonsia Erdenko, Alexei Bezlepkin on guitar and Georgy Osmolovsky on violin. RTE was informed by the Irish Consul in Moscow that the new members would need a work permit to stay in Ireland and could only have visas for Saturday and Sunday. If the song had won, this would have made them unavailable to RTE for pre-production, publicity and possibly the Eurovision Song Contest itself, and so an Irish-based singer was chosen to sing the song. Eurosong's producer, Niamh White, said yesterday that she had initially understood that the original Loyko were doing the song - "We consider them Russian-Irish, but in fact, these people had never played with Loyko before and the Irish Consul said they'd never had visas before."
The Gate Theatre has an opening night tonight, but not in Parnell Square. Port Authority, Conor McPherson's latest play, is directed by the playwright himself and opens at the New Ambassadors Theatre in London. This marks a further step towards internationalism on the part of the Gate, which has toured extensively abroad, and brought its Beckett Festival to New York and London.
The Arts Council's Artform director, Dermot Mc Laughlin, has raised the issue of what contribution international touring made to the Gate's activities in relation to its difficulty securing its grant aid in 2000. Given the height of the Gate's international profile, this implies that the council considers the theatre to be investing too much in overseas activity. In the light of the council's focus on internationalism and the arts, it would be important for it to spell out when international activity constitutes depletion, and when expansion, of the "native" resource.
Port Authority will, however, play at the Gate from April 24th until the end of May.
New Ambassadors: 0044 207- 73691761; Gate Theatre: 01- 8744085
THE Lyric Theatre in Belfast is celebrating its 50th year. Not that "celebrating" would seem the right word. Its spring programme, just announced, contains only two Lyric productions. The first, Anthony Shaffer's Sleuth, opened on Tuesday; the second, a new, as yet untitled play by Gary Mitchell, is scheduled for May. The remainder of the season is occupied by three well-established bought-in shows: John Breen's highly successful Alone it Stands, coming to the end of its current Irish tour; the revival of Gemini's 25-year-old production of John B. Keane's The Matchmaker; and Des, DubbelJoint's story of the controversial West Belfast priest, Father Des Wilson, which was premiered at the company's Whiterock base last year and is currently being revived.
Since winning the 1999 Irish Times/ESB Theatre Award for Best Theatre Company, the Lyric has appointed New Yorker John Sheehan (formerly with Siamsa Tire) as its executive producer. But it has recently experienced mediocre attendances, poorly reviewed productions and the loss of two key staff members. The theatre was relieved to hear a couple of weeks ago that its £475,000 annual grant from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland had been frozen; its commercially successful neighbour, the Grand Opera House's grant was cut by £46,000.
The Lyric Theatre box office is on 028-90381081
The de Valois Centre off Capel Street in Dublin, which housed the Association of Professional Dancers in Ireland (APDI) and the College of Dance, has closed, and the building is due to be developed commercially. The Association of Professional Dancers in Ireland has moved to an office in Harrington Street and the College of Dance has moved to Monkstown.
The de Valois Centre was little more than a warehouse with a name plaque. But still, it housed the College of Dance for five years, since the closure of Digges Lane Studios. Since the average dance studio is as big as four large offices, maintaining a long term city centre base has again proved difficult. The APDI's daily classes are now taking place in the YMCA in Aungier Street where there is sometimes less than one square metre per dancer. Managing director Emma Richardson agrees that this is highly unsatisfactory but that they have little choice until the new building is completed. "Having to pay full commercial rates for space is financially crippling and although the YMCA is not ideal, it is our only option." The APDI has been part of the planning process for the new North inner city dance space being developed by Dublin Corporation, but it won't be ready for at least two years.
Surely only the Arditti String Quartet would have premiered Stockhausen's Helicopter Quartet, in which each headphone-capped player flies and plays in a separate helicopter, their contributions being relayed to an audience safely down on terra firma? How they prepared the Helicopter Quartet will be explained in Dublin on Sunday, when the Irish Film Centre screens Frank Scheffer's documentary about the Arditti's work on this most crazy-sounding of projects.
The screening is part of an innovative event which is taking place this weekend under the umbrella title "4x4". The leading quartet will give a Saturday morning master class, guiding young Irish musicians through the spare and delicate world of John Cage's Four for String Quartet, a work specially written for the Ardittis. And there's a Sunday morning workshop session about the challenges and techniques of their specialised repertoire.
At the heart of the weekend, on Saturday evening, is a wideranging concert of works by Webern, Nono, Cage, Glass, Ferneyhough and Xenakis. There's also a Saturday afternoon screening of Edna Politi's Le Quatuor des Possibles, a film described as "half documentary and half filmed poem", which was shot in Royaumont Abbey and Venice, and explores the world and influences of Communist composer Luigi Nono's Holderlinhaunted quartet, Fragmente-Stille, an Diotima. The project was devised for the DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama by Irish Times music critic Michael Dervan.
Information on 01-6719429
