The Dublin Community Blog

The Chinese New Year festivities are about to begin in Dublin as the city welcomes year 4076 of the traditional Chinese Lunar year. Chinese New Year is considered to be the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays and falls on the first day of the first month of the Chinese Lunar year. This year the New Year day arrives on February 7, 2008. It will be the year of the Rat, which is the first of the 12 year cycle of animals that form the Chinese Zodiac related to the Chinese New Years.

The Dublin Chinese New Year Festival Association (DCNYFA) has organized various events to celebrate the holiday. The first of these begins tomorrow (February 1, 2008) with the launch of a Chinese film ‘Still Life’ by directory Jia Zhangke in the Irish Film Institute, Temple Bar. This film is part of a seven-day Chinese film festival. Other events in various locations around the city include a Chinese arts and crafts show, an event celebrating Chinese literature and music, launch of a 2008 Beijing Olympic pack at UCD Sports Centre, international table tennis and badminton tournaments, dragon boat racing, lion dances, stage plays, and a three day Chinese carnival in Smithfield. The closing ceremonies will take place on Monday February 11, 2008 at 6m in Smithfield Square.

I believe that this is first time that a Chinese New Year festival is being held in Dublin and I have no doubt that it will be successful. We should all welcome the festival and make an attempt to attend at least some of the various events. We wish a very Happy New Year to the Dublin Chinese community!

A complete brochure with more details about the festival is available here.

Here are few shots I took on Monday night at Circus Vegas, which is currently in Swords, on the Airport Rd (transparency: my family run this circus).

Even though I ran away from the circus for a 9-5ish job in Dublin, I have huge amounts of affection and admiration for what goes on here – real, live people, doing amazingly skilfull things. It’s by no means an easy life – that massive big top is still put up and pulled down mainly by hand – but every one involved truly loves it.

The sad thing is, Dubin dwellers are getting to see fewer and fewer circuses as land is guzzled up for devlopment – one of my favourite circus sites in Blackrock is now so tiny very few circuses can fit there any more, and I recently passed the grounds in Whitehall (just opposite the Bingo hall) and they are also in the middle of getting devloped so no more shows there either

In saying that, interest in all things circus has increased in the past few years – Sara Gruen’s wonderful book, Water For Elephants, was a massive word-of-mouth phenomenom, topping the NY Times bestseller list. Closer to home, the Abbey Theatre is showing Circo de la Sombra in April, a family-friendly “mischievous take on the traditional travelling circus show.”

Circus is a lovely, wonderfully old-school tradition and it’s great to see how much kids still enjoy it.

A few more pics on the Dublin Blog Flickr.

Grand Canal Square, originally uploaded by HolaHolaCherryCola (Nathalie Márquez Courtney).

This looks pretty cool – it’s a “festival of light” that’s taking place in the crazy neon green, red stick laden Grand Canal Square next week. What with the walky men on O’Connell Street and now this – it’s all about the light shows at the moment isn’t it?
It’s called the Hive, and has been created by KMA (Kit Monkman and Tom Wexler), who, I’m told, are the digital artists behind some v. cool installation in London’s Trafalgar Square. It will take place between the 1st-9th of Feb from 5pm to 10pm as part of Lightwave, the TCD Science Gallery festival (more on this later). Say the Docklands dudes:

“This is a newly commissioned public artwork consisting entirely of projected light and sound through which you, the audience, come and go. By entering you take control of one part of an interactive fantasia driven by your movements and the changing rhythms and timbres of the music. Drawing you in to explore the rich mix of sound and light, the Hive imagines a number of encounters with otherworldly life forms and environments.”

Woo woo.

I’ve just heard that Neil Hannon of the Divine Comedy will be in conversation with John Kelly at the Walton Theatre in Trinity College tonight. The interview starts at 7pm and is bound to be entertaining! Admission is free and all are welcome. More details can be found here.

On Saturday, my family and I ventured in to the city centre to see a friend from Prague. While we were there, we caught some of the traditional story-telling that was happening in conjunction with the Irish Trad Festival. It was interesting, but not really much more than your typical street performer. In fact, there was a busker in Temple Bar Square doing improvisational humour in between the story-tellers and he was actually far more entertaining. With that said, it worked well for the trad festival and seemed to be a hit with the kiddies.

For dinner, we headed West to the edge of Temple Bar for Dublin’s finest kebab at Zaytoon’s (arguably also Dublin’s dearest kebab – a tenner and some change for a meal combo.) After dinner, in my pre-fatherhood days, it would’ve been straight across to The Porterhouse for a pint and some Irish trad. But alas, a 4-month-old can only take so much action in the city.

(Note to parents: Bit of a rough ride taking a pram through Temple Bar, unless it’s got big wheels and state-of-the-art suspension.)

When you hear new music perhaps everyone starts to search in the head for tha latest tunes of Rihanna. But no. New music is the phrase for all these ‘avangarde’ followers of classic music. It’s not Bach, Mozart or Verdi. Think Messiaen, Stockhausen, Part or the recently famous Gorecki.

And so we had a rare opportunity to listen to Gorecki’s music last Sunday at National Gallery. It was Ireland-Poland Cultural Foundation event for the closing of Polish painting exhibition. The performeres were members of Concorde – an Irish ensable performing contemporary music.

The concert was devided into 3 sets of 30 minutes long music. It was brilliant idea because Gorecki’s music is very contemplative and you need break to admire it. Another good idea was comparing Gorecki’s pieces to another Polish composer: Marta Ptaszynska. The strange thing was that the music did not represented period of time of the paintings, though Polish music of this period has two brilliant composers: Szymanowski and Karlowicz.

In time when Coca-Cola considers its tv ads as art (thank you, Andy Warhol) it is good to have opportunity to listen music less ordinary. All audience like the performance. They were ususally surprised of what they heard. And perhaps they will drop in to next Concerde show in The Hugh Lane Gallery on February 10th.

Photo: courtesy of Kasia Kurta.

It is being reported that The Sunday Times property survey from yesterday showed property prices in Dublin have fallen by up to 27% in 2007. Unfortunately I did not get a copy of the paper yesterday so I’ve not been able to read the report but surely a 27% would be a crash of the most dramatic kind, certainly worthy of more than 3 paragraphs on an Irish internet news site?

I’m wondering if anyone in the real world is seeing such a dramatic drop in prices. If you are interested in buying property are you waiting an watching the price of your dream home drop towards your budget? If you are trying to sell are you slashing the prices and watching your property sit on the market for months on end?

Friday will see another edition of the Hoot night at the Sugar Club on Leeson Street. Hoot Nights are an opportunity for local bands to take the stage and perform slightly different stuff than they normaly would…. On a Hoot Night, two major artists or bands are the ‘Theme of the Eve’ and each performing local band will be playing one song of each artist.

This Friday the battle is on between the songs of Kylie and R.E.M. and 12 bands will be having their way with anything from ‘Can’t get you out of my head’ to ‘Nightswimming’

The fun starts at 7.45 sharp, entrance is €10 and location is The Sugar Club on 8 Lwr Leeson street.

Iarnród Eireann are starting an improvement project on the Kildare line out of Heuston station this weekend, with some cancellations and delays to and from Heuston on Saturday evening and Sunday morning as a result. Full details can be found here – the work is set to continue on selected weekends through to the end of March at least.

The Frames frontman (and Dubliner) and Once moviestars Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova have been nominated for an Oscar in the Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original song) category for their song “Falling Slowly”. The song can be downloaded free from the official Once website.

I’m a big Glen fan and the nomination is well deserved. The soundtrack to the movie is well worth checking out and some of the songs can be heard on myspace.

The Oscar winners will be announced on February 24th. Good luck Glen and Marketa.