Litir ó Bhaile Atha Cliath

The skyline of Dublin is littered with cranes as the city feverishly transforms Celtic Tiger cash into bricks and mortar. The city’s architecture is always a gauge to prosperity – like relating the length of skirts to the mood on Wall Street – and it can choose to either look back or forward depending on the relative (dis)comfort of its bank balance. Right now Dublin is looking ahead, building office blocks to prove how good things are. And right in the centre of the city is a new space dedicated to dance: DanceHouse.

It is bright and palatial compared to the grim inconveniently located studios dancers have had to use in the past. But it is also still not open: a dispute involving a leaking tunnel, the largest infrastructural project in the history of the state, is demanding the full attention of the city council’s legal department. Once that issue has been resolved they can turn their attention to ticking through DanceHouse’s snag list so that it can open. Feeding into the acts of creation within the new studios, large scale visiting productions will now pay more visits to the city, as International Dance Festival Ireland becomes an annual event from this year.
But there is also a ...