Quarter Block Party

Cork’s Quality Quarter Block Party

The sixth edition of the Quarter Block Party festival, in association with Jameson Irish Whiskey, is gearing up to inject life and colour into Cork City from Thursday, February 6 to Sunday, February 9.

The event will sprawl through the city’s streets and venues with over 50 music, art and theatre performances. Amble through a weekend wonderland of pop-up shows, public events, and creative discussion to discover some of the freshest high-calibre Irish and International artists.

As ever, the festival programme features a superbly eclectic Live Art Programme, curated by Ruairí Ó’Donnabháin. Commenting on this year’s edition, Ó’Donnabháin says, “This year’s festival will bring the voices of some incredible artists to Cork, these performances and installations all about finding the light in these dark times.”

“We have gathered together our neighbours from Newfoundland, Iceland, Norway and Portugal and even a few Dubs. Radically political and poetic, I think it will be the right tonic for us and as always the people we bring really know how to throw a party.”

Opening the Live Art Programme on Thursday, Andre Uerba visits the Triskel from Portugal bringing the performance-installation Burn Time. In Uerba’s choreography, delicate threads are gradually set on fire one after the other and sometimes simultaneously, creating a space in slow motion constantly changing and fading. The strength of the burning threads unfolds in the darkness. In a time of perpetual wars between the present and future, the tempo decelerates, becoming quiet and calm.

Later that night in Kino, there is Dead by Beauty and the Beast. For more than two decades the duo, Amanda Apetrea from Sweden and Halla Ólafsdóttir from Iceland, have remained a mythical force, creating new lyrical expressions with their gravelly voices and poetic dances. Their new show is a dystopian performance that merges dance, poetry, music and the beauty of darkness.

Friday night welcomes the bright and brilliant drag show Queent all the way San Francisco. It features Monique Jenkinson (and her drag queen alter-ego Fauxnique) and Mica Sigourney (also known as VivvyAnne ForeverMORE) serving killer moves at Firkin Crane.

On the Saturday of the festival, Quarter Block Party will partner with Crawford Art Gallery and Tonnta to present a free lunchtime performance titled Their Chorus. Simultaneously playful, bleak and revealing, the piece is a blend of performance art and music using quotes and reactions to Facebook feeds that unfold over two hours.

Later on that day more performers from over the pond join the party. Flying in from St. John’s Newfoundland, Lois Brown and James O’Callaghan invite the audience into a playful investigation of memory, patience, boredom, democratization and relationality in I am A Genius Does Anybody Know Me?

The show is part of a double bill in the Triskel also featuring Sarah Stoker’s Fort/ress. The latter is about women - strong and not so strong women; forceful powerful women; injured dismantled women; manipulated oppressed women; women and sex. Fort/ress treads

a thin and tenuous line between submission, repression, misogyny, aggression, power, pain, control and pleasure.

International talents will continue to wow as Norwegian trio Ingeleiv Berstad, Ida Wigdel and Kristin Helgebostad bring Spoiler to Firkin Crane. The three have developed an intuitive way of working where no idea is too hysterical, vulgar, provocative, or childish to probe. In Spoiler, they explore outer and inner noise and enter into an unknown universe

that seeks the distorted, dark and playful.

Sunday is all about getting wet and wild with Fluids by Wauhaus. The show creates an impossibly slippery stage for the Finnish and Estonian performers to the extent that they cannot fully control their own bodies. Fluids then invites the audience to encounter empathy, intimacy, and failure in these times when individualism, perfectionism, and mistrust prevail in society.

Topping off the weekend is Irish

comedy duo Lords of Strut with Ping Pong at Kino. The show is part-club, part-art space - all dance floor. The whole party is a performance so get involved in this all-day event running from 2.30pm - 11pm.

Gain access to events through single event tickets, or with Live Art Bundle Passes (€60 + booking fee for all dance/theatre shows). There is also a limited amount of Full Festival Passes (€100 for entry to every show at Quarter Block Party). Tickets on sale now from quarterblockparty.com.