Fair Play for World Cultures...
Cothrom na Féinne do Churtúir na Cruinne
Fair Play for World Cultures
A new logo/strap line for the Irish World Academy is ‘Cothrom na Féinne do Chultúir na Cruinne’, with its English translation - ‘Fair Play for World Cultures’. A less informal translation might have been ‘Parity of Esteem for World Cultures’, but the notion of ‘fair play’ is one well embedded in the consciousness of Hiberno- English, and it carries with it a resonance with play as performance. It also has a sympathetic resonance with ‘fair trade’.
‘Fair play to you’ is a very common phrase used in Ireland to mean ‘well done’. It has also appeared in Irish language conversation as ‘fair play dhuit’ (from duit = to you). Our contribution to fair play for world cultures is through performing arts education and research. To that end we have two new degree programmes in action or in the offing. The first is a four-year BA Voice and Dance which commenced in September 2008 with its very first intake of students. Designed to bring singers and dancers together from many cultures, it was launched this year by Bobby McFerrin at a historic concert in St Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick, where this great global singer took to the stage with some thirty singers and dancers from the Irish World Academy.
A second programme, PhD Performance Studies, will begin in 2009 to coincide with the opening of the new 5000 square meter home of the Irish World Academy on the banks of the Shannon. Situated on the Clare side of the University of Limerick campus, the Academy building (designed by French architect, Daniel Cordier) will house two performance theatres, an extensive suite of music and dance studios, and a specially designed research centre for doctoral studies along with many other features. The presence of the research centre and the performance theatres alongside one another represents clearly the interplay between research and performance, between thinking and doing, that is such a vital part of the Academy’s ethos.
The Stepping Stones initiative is yet another forthcoming energy at the Irish World Academy. Over the next two years, new programmes in theatre-linked arts will be announced and brought on stream to interface with the music and dance programmes already in action. The first international gathering of consultants from USA, Canada, Brazil, and Europe took place in 2008, and the Stepping Stones vision is already beginning to emerge.
Of the many innovative actions in our programmes over the past year, one stands out for its particular breath of vision: ACADEMOS Irish World Academy Strings. This graduate orchestra led by members of the resident Irish Chamber Orchestra was launched at its inaugural Dublin concert in 2008. A DVD on the project is available for viewing on our website www.irishworldacademy.ie. Plans are also underway for equivalent ensemble initiatives in other Academy programmes.
Building work has commenced on the new Irish World Academy home, and the foundations of many of its features are already visible. Standing beside it is the newly opened home of the Irish Chamber Orchestra with it’s specially designed Rehearsal Hall, recording facilities, office suites, and rooms for visiting artists. And all of this is approached by The Living Bridge, The University of Limerick’s most impressive architectural statement in a pedestrian bridge across the Shannon that is itself a cultural experience. Computer simulated films of both the Academy building and the Living Bridge may also be viewed on www.irishworldacademy.ie.
In all of this (and not least in our forthcoming practice-linked PhD Performance Studies) the challenge in the interplay of poetics and politics, of the possible and the practical, of the imagined and the existent is dependant for a balanced outcome on fair play. The power within each energy to answer to the other is noted by Seamus Heaney.
... I wanted to affirm that within our individual selves we can reconcile two orders of knowledge which we might call the practical and the poetic; to affirm also that each form of knowledge redresses the other and that the frontier between them is there for the crossing.*
The Living Bridge at the University of Limerick may be taken as a symbolic invitation towards a free crossing between both such orders. That thegeography of the emerging campus has placed the Irish World Academy at ‘the other side’ of the Bridge is its own statement of position.
Dr Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin
Director, Irish World Academy of Music and Dance
University of Limerick
* The Redress of Poetry: Oxford Lectures (London: Faber and Faber 1995) p.203
20 November, 2008
