On The Town/Fiona McCann:Four red carpets, fairy lights and a live jazz band kicked off the long-awaited 50th anniversary of the Dublin Theatre Festival at Dublin's Gaiety Theatre this week. With glamour and glad rags aplenty, Ireland's cultural glitterati piled into the plush venue to watch the opening show, Hibiki, a stunning production from Japanese Butoh dance company Sankai Juku.
The excitement was palpable as the lights dimmed and the visual simplicity of the set was revealed, against a powerful score by Yoichiro Yoshikawa and Takashi Kako.
Ninety minutes later, after a movingly graceful final bow from the performers, the audience filed into the venue's dress circle bar for Japanese canapés and Irish libations to celebrate the opening of what promises to be the biggest festival of its kind the city has ever seen.
Actor Niall Toibin said he found Hibiki "fascinating", although he admitted he was still trying to work it out. For actor David Kelly, his self-professed ignorance was no hindrance to his enjoyment of what he called an "exhilarating" performance.
"If it can hold you like that when your ignorance, like mine, is almost total, then it's exquisite. It was sheer elegance, and there's not much of that about, so it was a very good start to the festival, and it augurs well," he said.
For actor Rosaleen Linehan, it was the breathtaking score that really made an impact.
"The music was fabulous!" she said.
Also in attendance for the opening night was Ronan Smith, executive producer with the Riverdream production company and son of Brendan Smith, the man who started the ball rolling in 1957 when he organised the first Dublin Theatre Festival.
"It was such a good idea 50 years ago, and it's still a good idea today," said Smith, who was accompanied by his niece, Clodagh.
Also at the party was Clare Allen, who was secretary of the committee at the first festival.
But for this year's man, Dublin Theatre Festival artistic director Loughlin Deegan, it was a night to celebrate, and the culmination of a lengthy and laborious preparation process.
"It feels like a great sense of achievement, after all the work and all the travel and all the worry and all the planning, that the 50th anniversary is now up and running," he said with obvious delight.
Director Tom Creed, whose show, The Art of Swimming, has just won the Bewley's Cafe Theatre Award in the Dublin Fringe Festival, was also in attendance, along with Eugene Downes, chief executive of Culture Ireland and Mary McCarthy, arts manager with Dublin Docklands Development Authority, which this year plays host to one of the festival's plays, Small Metal Objects, to be performed at Mayor Square in the IFSC.
Gained in translation
One thousand books translated into 43 languages in 38 different countries, and all this after only 13 years - Ireland Literature Exchange had every reason to celebrate this week. Novelists, academics, poets and polyglots convened at Dublin's Merrion Hotel as Redemption Falls, by Joseph O'Connor, was announced as the 1,000th book translated with the exchange's support.
The celebrations were hosted by Minister of State Seán Power, who paid tribute to the work being done to ensure that Irish literature continues to reach as wide a readership as possible. "If we didn't have this facility it would mean these audiences would remain untapped," he said.
Speaking at the reception, Sinéad Mac Aodha, director of Ireland Literature Exchange, said the publication of its 1,000th title was "a huge milestone" for the organisation, which facilitates translations by making grants available to international publishers and by offering residential bursaries to literary translators.
"We're a small country and one of the most important art forms we have is our literature. We've got four Nobel prize winners, so our literature is central to our identity," said Mac Aodha. "It's our international calling card."
Joseph O'Connor, whose Redemption Falls was recently nominated for the Prix Femina Étranger in France, admitted that handing work over to a translator could be a risk for a writer. He recounted how a "fiddler" in his novel, Star of the Sea, was translated as a "small-time crook" in the Hebrew version. But the Dublin-born writer praised the French-language version of Redemption Falls.
"It probably gained in translation, to be honest," said O'Connor. He also commended the work being done by Ireland Literary Exchange, which is raising the country's international cultural profile. "It's hard to think of any organisation of three people that has been more productive in Ireland."
Poetry was well-represented at the reception, with poets Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Gerald Dawe and Harry Clifton all in attendance. But according to Joe Woods, director of Poetry Ireland, poetry translation can be the most difficult to accomplish.
"Translating poetry is one of the biggest challenges, but a very necessary one because poets need to listen in to other cultures and other conversations," he said.
Eugene Downes, chief executive of Culture Ireland, Prof Nicholas Grene of Trinity College Dublin's English department, and novelist Claire Kilroy were also at the reception.
Writers enjoy this Review
Seamus Heaney on the making of a poem, Anne Enright on childbirth, Colm Tóibín on Barcelona 1975, John Banville on Michel Houellebecq - these are just some of the finely crafted and painstakingly edited pieces selected from the first 26 issues of the Dublin Review and collected between the durable hard-back covers of the Dublin Review Reader, which was launched this week.
Over the past seven years, the Dublin Review has established itself as an indispensable addition to the world of Irish publishing, but now, for the first time, the pick of the periodical has been published in book form. The event was celebrated in the apposite setting of Dublin's Newman House.
Many of those who made the final cut were at the launch, including Angela Bourke, Anne Marie Hourihane and Catriona Crowe. Their fellow contributor, Maurice Walsh, had even flown in from Copenhagen in order to pay tribute to the Dublin Review. "It offers me a way of writing which very few places do," he said. "There's nothing comparable to it that will give you the same scope."
Speaking at the launch, novelist and Dublin Review contributor Colm Tóibín described the meticulous editing process to which he was subjected when he first began to write for the New Yorker, a painstaking approach that he said was unheard of on this island until the arrival of Brendan Barrington. Barrington's input had, he said, sharpened the minds of those he worked with, and helped them write better pieces.
"The editing seems heavy and becomes light," he said, introducing Barrington, as a sledgehammer struck up outside the window.
Speaking over the rattle, Barrington thanked his assistant, Angelina Lynch, and all those who had contributed to the Review's success. He admitted that the selection process for the Reader had not been easy. "It was painful to have to leave out so many great pieces, but a great pleasure to look back over all the previous work," he said, adding that the essays included in the book were ones he considered to have "transcended the moment".
Arts Council director Mary Cloake said it had been clear from the start that the Dublin Review was a project worth investing in. "From the very beginning, the quality of the project was of such a standard that we knew we could have absolute confidence in Brendan Barrington's vision and the unique editorial approach he took," she said.
Also at the launch of The Dublin Review Reader were Man Booker Prize-winning novelist John Banville, cartoonist Tom Mathews, editor of the Stinging Fly magazine Declan Meade, and writers Chris Binchy and Kevin Barry.
A chance for music lovers to wax Lyric
The Irish classical music tradition was celebrated during the launch of three new Lyric FM albums at Dublin's Clarence Hotel this week. The recordings, which span decades, are the first full-length album by composer Ciarán Farrell, an anthology of songs by late Irish tenor Dermot Troy, and Beethoven works played by pianist Hugh Tinney and violinist Catherine Leonard.
Guest speaker Colm Tóibín said: "I think it's very important to remember the amount of music there from the past, from this country and other what we might call peripheral countries, away from the main places where classical music was supposed to have been made. It's terribly important to have this music available. And what a wonderful day for Ireland to see someone as young as Ciarán Farrell having his music made available to everybody in the society in which he lives."
The novelist stressed the significant role played by Lyric FM. "Lyric FM is one of the great institutions in this country," he said. "It's marvellous that it's allowing us these moments just of pure perfect pleasure. We always talk about ourselves, for very good reasons, as a long-suffering classical music community, almost like the European Convention on Human Rights should govern us. The time before Lyric FM, it's like people in the Gaeltacht remember life before Radio na Gaeltachta or TG4."
"This is a tremendous day for Lyric," said station head Aodán Ó Dubhghaill. "These are three CDs that span the whole repertoire that Lyric broadcasts, from the old right through to the new. From Dermot Troy singing, to Hugh and Catherine's Beethoven, right up to the present day with a young Irish composer in Ciarán Farrell."
Eoin Brady, executive producer of the Lyric label, said: "The Ciarán Farrell CD promotes a new Irish composer, the Catherine Leonard and Hugh Tinney CD promotes Irish musicians and the Dermot Troy CD really tries to make the RTÉ archives more accessible to the public. Troy is acknowledged by all with an interest in classical music as being the Irish tenor that never was. He was just on the cusp of an international career when he died of a heart attack."
"The release is very exciting because it's been two years in the making," said Ciarán Farrell. "The big stumbling block was timetabling musicians, so we had to work around everyone else's timetable - but we got there in the end. Now I'm just happy to let the stuff go out there, let it find its own place."
Among those present at the event were Dermot Troy's widow, Eithne Troy, Lyric FM presenter John Allen, and Brian O'Rourke, director of the RTÉ Symphony Orchestra. Denis Clifford