IN all the excitement of Joaquin Cortes's three nights at the Point in Dublin from next Friday, we should not forget two Irish companies presenting dance premieres during the week and a dance eventtonight in Cork.
Dance Theatre of Ireland was honoured last year to be invited to open Montpellier Danse '96 with a piece by the acclaimed French choreographer Dominique Bagouet, whose visually-stunning Deserts d'Amour was enthusiastically received. Now DTI follows it with Jours Etranges, a piece Bagouet created in 1990, two years before his death. Restaged by Catherine Legrand and Olivia Grandville of the Lyons-based Les Carnets Bagouet, Strange Days takes an affectionate and humorous look at the passions, innocence and sensuality of the 1960s and 1970s youth culture, appropriately set to the music of The Doors.
Along with this, DTI premieres a new piece by artistic directors Robert Connor and Loretta Yurick, Like Water Flowing East, in which water is a metaphor for human relationships, the flow of living and loving now hitting hard rock and now floating calmly onward. In Dublin's Tivoli Theatre at 8 p.m. from Tuesday to Saturday and matinees at 1.30 p.m. on Thursday and Friday and 3 p.m. on Saturday, the show later tours Limerick, Derry, Galway and Longford, with Muirne Bloomer, Ella Clarke, J. J. Formento, James Hosty, Samuel Letellier, Liz Roche, Connor and Yurick in the strong cast.
Rubato also tours Tralee and Sligo with artistic director Fiona Quilligan's new dance work, after lunchtime performances at the National Gallery next Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Based on an episode from Tain Bo Cuailgne, Cuchulainn A Chroi has Zelda Francesca in the role of Scathach, the Shadowy One, with whom Cuchulainn studies the warrior's art, and with whose daughter Uathach, danced by Judith Sibley, the hero falls in love. The Rambert-trained dancer Neil Owens, on his first visit to Ireland, is Cat, Scathach's athletic son.
Tonight in Cork the Firkin Crane and Cork Women's Poetry Circle celebrate International Women's Day with Solo Independents, an evening of solo dance and poetry. Dancer/choreographers include Adrienne Brown, Cindy Cummings, Alex Diana, Mary Nunan and the queen of tap comedy, Diane Richardson.