May 1, 2014:

Bealtaine Festival Gets Underway Today

The Bealtaine Festival, Ireland's nationwide celebration of creativity as we age, starts 1st May, with the first of thousands of events involving older people.  The festival takes place throughout the month of May with events all across Ireland, offering theatre, visual arts, music, dance, literature, film and more. The festival has grown to be one of the country's biggest arts festivals in its nineteen years. An estimated 120,000 people now take part in this unique event, which is an initiative of Age & Opportunity.

axis: Ballymun will be starting Bealtaine with the opening of their North West Art Exhibition - a group exhibition by older people from Ballymun and surrounding areas, which is back by popular demand. The work displays the wealth of talent and invention existing in art groups and individuals in a variety of mediums across the North West Dublin area. The exhibition will be officially launched by the Lord Mayor Oisín Quinn on Thursday 1st May, 2.30pm.  For details call 01 883 2123 or visit www.axis-ballymun.ie.

The Festival will see two theatre productions touring Ireland.  Bealtaine Theatre Tour will bring 2013 Dublin Fringe Festival favourite, Small Plastic Wars to venues across the country. This play, about one man's comic attempt to hide from the recession by building plastic models, got rave reviews when it premiered last year. Also, Carnation Theatre will be presenting their production Fuss on the Bus to audiences in care homes, day care centres, hospitals and community venues. Both productions will be performed on 1st May. Other events on the first day of the festival will include a variety of exhibitions, lectures and readings.

 

Catherine Rose, says, "At Age & Opportunity we are passionate about optimizing ageing and turning the 60-plus period of life into an adventure. Event organisers all over the country are planning a rich and varied arts programme to celebrate being part of Bealtaine. This year the theme for the festival is 'And catch the heart off guard', a phrase from Seamus Heaney's poem Postscript. As always, everyone is invited to take part; this is an invitation to be surprised by joy, to astonish yourself, and to find your heart's desire without looking for it."

 

Bealtaine 2014 is delighted to be hosting two conversations in association with the Dublin Writers Festival. Life is for Living on 20th May will celebrate 25 years of Age & Opportunity with an exploration of how Ireland has changed during those years. Chaired by Catriona Crowe, this special event will bring together leading artists such as musician Paddy Moloney, actor Eamon Morrissey and travel writer Mary Russell, to explore the different ways in which they interpret the recent past and what it might mean for the future. The second Bealtaine conversation is Philipp Meyer in conversation with Philip Schultz on 25th May, a fascinating intergenerational pairing of two leading American writers whose work engages in very different ways with American history.

 

Dance has been a potent part of Bealtaine for many years. This year Age & ?Opportunity is delighted to work with the Dublin Dance Festival to introduce Dublin audiences to work from the Act Your Age festival in The Netherlands. Act Your Age aims to overturn and add to our existing ideas about ageing and older age, taking dance as its starting point. The two pieces are Please Be Gentle and Stay With? Me from Cypriot choreographer Alexis Vassiliou, with performances at Project Arts Centre 23rd-25th May. CoisCéim Broadreach are also sharing the dance love this Bealtaine with Love Song and Dance comprising of classes and a performance around passion, romance and heartbreak, which will be shown in the Irish Museum of Modern Art on 1st June.

From the visual arts world, Catch the He(art) a traveling residency, will invite four artists, Patricia Hurl, Mary Kelly, James King and Therry Rudin, to come together to explore their motivation to continue making work in later life. These artists will be presenting their current working practices at events in Kilkenny, Wicklow and Galway during Bealtaine. Wandering Methods, a slow craft project centred this year on Dublin Castle, will see older people explore heritage, both personal and national, through craft. Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane will be hosting a special series of Bealtaine Summer Seminars featuring artists such as Brian Maguire and Robert Ballagh. For more information on the Summer Seminars, call 01 222 5564 or visit www.hughlane.ie.

This year's Bealtaine Film Tour will bring two films - Quartet and High Society - to Irish audiences nationally. The Tour, which is presented by access>CINEMA in partnership with the Irish Film Institute, will be launched at the IFI on 8th May. The IFI's Wild Strawberries Film Club for the over-55s will also be screening two more films The Area and Love is All You Need in a programme chosen specially as a response to this year's Bealtaine theme.

 

The Given Note has been designed to celebrate Bealtaine and the 10,000 people who sing in choirs all over Ireland each week. It is being run with the Association of Irish Choirs and is hosted by the National Concert Hall. Choir conductors and singers alike are invited to join renowned composer Elaine Agnew and choral practitioner 'The Choral Doctor' Alan Leech in a two-day workshop on fun warm-ups and on how to think about music constructions and compose a choral piece. And Dawn Chorus, now established as a calendar event, will be offering audiences a lyrical treat on the last weekend of the festival, with events across Ireland and in other locations around the globe on Sunday 25th May.

 

To get involved in Bealtaine 2014 or for more information:

Web:               www.bealtaine.com - for full, up-to-date event listings

E-mail:             Bealtaine@ageandopportunity.ie

Telephone:      +353 (1) 8057734

Post: Bealtaine, Age & Opportunity, Marino Institute of Education, Griffith Avenue, Dublin

 

Age & Opportunity wishes to acknowledge the generosity and foresight of its supporters including the Health Service Executive and The Arts Council of Ireland.

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