There are some very interesting performances happening at the Take Off Festival in Cork, and we thought you should definitely be in the know.
What’s Take Off, you ask?
Take Off is an exciting contemporary festival for Cork City, celebrating and showcasing thrilling dance artists from Ireland and Europe. The festival takes place 16-18 February 2023 at Dance Cork Firkin Crane. For those who may not be acquainted with Dance Cork Firkin Crane, it’s located in a heritage building in Shandon, Cork’s north city centre.
It specialises in supporting dance artists, presenting dance performances and encouraging people in Cork to engage with dance of all kinds.
Coming back to Take Off, the festival presents three international choreographers’ works, chosen from the Aerowaves Twenty22 selected artists. They will be presented on shared programmes alongside the work of three Irish choreographers.
The six choreographers will gather in Cork throughout the week to share their practice with each other. Each performance will be followed by a Q&A and a reception with the artists to deepen audiences’ engagement with the work. The Take Off Festival will introduce the artists to each other and to audiences, not just in the studio and onstage, but also in informal social gatherings.
How much would attending the festival cost you? Tickets are €15 / €12 per programme, or €30 for a Festival Pass for all three programmes.
If you’re attending the programme tomorrow, there’s a very interesting way to begin your evening. Head to the Smurfit Theatre at 7.30 pm for The Very Last Northern White Rhino. It’s a very interesting performance/piece by Gaston Core, who’s from Spain. It’s a solo, “based on urban dance, questions the very possibility of happiness in the face of the world’s chaos.” If you’re wondering about the reference to the ‘White Rhino,’ here’s a little bit to quell your curiosity. The text for programme details on the website alludes to a real-life scenario: “When New York Times journalist Sam Anderson heard about the death of the last male Northern White Rhinoceros, he flew to Kenya to observe and narrate in detail the daily lives of the last two female representatives of this species, which will disappear from the earth after they die. Core seeks, through a formal investigation of different styles of urban dance (Krumping, Finger Tutting, Waving, Afro), to offer the image of the Man – the dancer Oulouy – who dances because he has discovered, as Paul Valéry puts it, that we have ‘too much energy for our needs’.”
If this interests you, as do the other performances, you can find out more here.
We hope that you do go to the festival, and have a great time. As always, drop us a line, or tag us in your photos.