Search Results for 'France'

BURLESQUE PERFORMERS from across the world will strut their stuff on Galway's stages when the second Galway Burlesque Festival returns to the city from Friday May 26 to Sunday 28.

The multi-purpose Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology’s Castlebar campus staged the energetic opening ceremony of Mayo Day 2017 last Friday evening. The bank holiday weekend events were long billed to be a celebration of Mayo - past, present and future - and with no little amount of imagination and obvious hard graft, the organisers over-performed in achieving their aim. In his Mayo Day promotional video, director Lorcan Hynes beautifully wove an emotional message around the cliffs of Mayo and the skyscrapers of the world. The message invited the Mayo diaspora to return to a future Mayo, where prosperity will once again create opportunity. Our diaspora was to the fore during Mayo Day and for good reason as Peter Hynes, Mayo County Council’s chief executive, informed the opening ceremony that the global dispersion with Mayo heritage stands at 3.5 million people. Their affinity with their home county has led to Mayo associations growing up in the world’s biggest cities. Just as Mayo currently fits into current global themes of emigration and identity, so it did in the past when the international themes were revolution and republicanism. Those earlier themes, and in particular the political relationship they spawned between Ireland and France, were discussed at the fascinating Mayo Day La L’Arbre de la Liberté - Liberty Tree Conference on Friday and Saturday. The two-day conference offered an impressive line-up of historians and authors.

THE WORLD premieres of a new play by Conall Morrison and a new opera by Donnacha Dennehy and Enda Walsh; a major exhibition by Brazilian artist Ana Maria Pacheco; new theatre productions from Druid; Beach Boys’ legend Brian Wilson at the Big Top; and Syrian architect and author Marwa Al-Sabouni, are just some of the highlights of the 40th Galway International Arts Festival.

What a wonderful, wonderful May we are having – let me correct that, what a wonderful first week of May we are having.

BY KERNAN ANDREWS

of a new play by Conall Morrison and a new opera by Donnacha Dennehy and Enda Walsh; a major exhibition by Brazilian artist Ana Maria Pacheco; new theatre productions from Druid; Beach Boys’ legend Brian Wilson at the Big Top; and Syrian architect and author Marwa Al-Sabouni, are just some of the highlights of the 40th Galway International Arts Festival.

I do not know the statistics, but I feel sure that the greatest number of our continental visitors come from France. During the summer you hear and see a lot of French people clutching maps of our small city, wandering about in groups; or lines of young students talking and gesturing happily among themselves, not paying the least attention to their guide. The French are not operatic like the Italians. They share beautiful sounding words; but the face is serious. I feel there is something of Old Europe in the French language.

Would you like to make the most of the long summer days while learning, refreshing, or practising your French?

BALLET IRELAND is touring a new version of Giselle, the haunting story of love and betrayal, choreographed by one of Europe’s foremost emerging choreographers, former Royal Ballet dancer Ludovic Ondiviela.

IN MAY 1940, three days after the Fall of France, with Nazi Germany looking unstoppable, Winston Churchill made a rousing speech to the House of Commons, concluding: "Come then, let us go forward together with our united strength."