Colourful Live Art Shows Come To Cork For Quarter Block Party

The sixth edition of Quarter Block Party festival, in association with Jameson Irish Whiskey, is gearing up to inject life and colour into Cork city from Thursday 6th to Sunday 9th February 2020. The festival 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 art events, and creative discussion in the shops, venues, and outdoor spaces 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, Ruairi says, "this years 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 6th February, Andre Uerba visits from Portugal bringing an exquisite performance-installation BURN TIME, presented in association with Corcadorca TDC. In Uerbas' 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 at The Kino, there is a story that tells of Beauty and the Beast's fascination with their own shadow - DEAD by Beauty and the Beast. For more than two decades the duo Beauty and the Beast, Amanda Apetrea from Sweden and Halla Ólafsdóttir from Iceland, have remained a mythical force in dance and have created new lyrical expressions with their gravelly voices and poetic dances. Their new show, DEAD, is a pornographic and dystopian dance performance that merges dance, poetry, music, the beauty of darkness and the in-between, seeing inner and outer realities. Exploring expressions of sexuality, body and gender flirting with the power of horniness and lust. A power that they believe can move mountains.

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

Quarter Block Party partners with Crawford Art Gallery and Tonnta to present a free lunchtime performance: THEIR CHORUS. Simultaneously playful, bleak and revealing, composer Jennifer Walshe's installation vocal work Volunteer Chorus is a reflection of today's world through the prism of social media. Fluctuating between harmonious and discordant, this new adaptation of Walshe's piece, THEIR CHORUS is a blend of performance art and music using quotes and reactions to Facebook feeds that unfolds over 2 hours. With a cast of gender-diverse performers, THEIR CHORUS sees Tonnta join forces with local singers to create a meditation on body image, social media, and gender expression, in the evocative surrounds of the recently renovated Canova Cast sculpture collection at Crawford Art Gallery.

On Saturday of the festival, 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, things and relationality in "I am A Genius Does Anybody Know Me?".

Microphones, paper, foil wrap, and an out-dated dictionary Lois inherited after her Dad died of dementia create a sonic choreography at Corcadorca's TDC at Triskel Arts Centre.

"I am A Genius Does Anybody Know Me?" is in a double bill also featuring Sarah Stoker's Fort/ress. Fort/tress is about women; strong and not so strong women, forceful, powerful women, injured, dismantled women, manipulated, oppressed women, women and sex. Women who carry babies across deserts and seas, women who wait in lines for doctors and food, it is about the animals in women, the vital power and connection to the earth, the giving and preserving of life. Putting sexuality/sexualization on display, Stoker's white, cisgender body 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. This trio have developed an intuitive way of working where no idea is too hysterical, vulgar, provocative, or childish to explore. In Spoiler the three dangerous 'douchebags' from the North explore outer and inner noise and enter into an unknown universe that seeks the distorted, the dark and the playful.

Sunday is all about getting wet and wild, with Fluids by W A U H A U S, who create an impossibly slippery stage for the bodies of the Finnish and Estonian performers. In Fluids, W A U H A U S creates a state of slipperiness on stage in which the human subject cannot fully control its own body. Fluids invites the audience to encounter empathy, intimacy, and failure, in these times when individualism, perfectionism, and mistrust prevail in society. One part strange spectacle on ice, one part slimy orgy - the performance is enabled by J-Lube, a lubricant that creates a movement language continuously fluctuating between clumsiness and gracefulness.

Topping off the weekend, treat your ears, hearts, and your hips to grinding Italio and Disco and performances by Lords of Strut in PING PONG at The Kino. PING PONG is part club part art space, all dance floor. Enter the parallel universe of PING PONG, debauched, dirty, healthy + surrealist party! The whole party is a performance so get involved in this all day party 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 a limited amount of Full Festival Passes (€100 for entry to all every show at Quarter Block Party). Tickets on sale now from quarterblockparty.com

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