by Rose Rushe
See video clip by show technician Mario Beck at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD7vKMVuXm8
€400,000 is being spent on bringing top Argentinean act ‘Fuerza Bruta’ (brute force) to Limerick for St Patrick’s week as one of City of Culture flagship events.
Thirteen performances are scheduled from March 13 at the Culture Factory, the 350,000 sq ft former Dell building in Castletroy to make the most of bank holiday festivities.
It is one only of four stand-out international productions booked for the €6million Culture programme.
“About half of the Culture Factory will be used for the Limerick run allowing for a capacity of 1,000 people for each Fuerza Bruta performance,” interim City of Culture chief Mike Fitzpatrick told Limerick Post at London’s Round House where a media preview was held.
“Better still, tickets here in London are £46.60str while for Limerick, we are charging €28 and €20 concession for tickets. It will be same performance of around 70 minutes duration and the audience can enjoy food and beverage from local providers in the covered village which will open for each show”.
The stampede anticipated should cover costs.
Fuerza Bruta is the first of a series of extraordinary international productions earmarked to provide all-weather crowd pleasers undreamt of for the Mid West. Culture Factory venue off Plassey Road and the ‘Big Top’ at Milk Market are the sites that make this possible.
“We have UK’s NoFit Circus bringing ‘BIANCO’ with its dance trapeze and cloudswing setting up camp from June 13 to 21. In Autumn, ‘Faust’ as adapted by Silviu Pucarete will be presented on a huge scale also”.
It also emerged that Royal Delux, with its 100ft puppets and street pageantry, has now been booked for a Limerick date, despite a reported €315,000 contract price being stumbling block to previous efforts to bring this French company Shannonside.
Not to be outdone, Irish Chamber Orchestra and Ballet Ireland are co-presenting ‘Carmen Suites after Bizet’ by Rodion Shchedrin under the Milk Market’s tented roof inMay.
Mike Fitzpatrick believes that Limerick now has the infrastructure, budget and stamina for world class productions, and those that command enormous audiences – “such as Leonard Cohen. His concerts were not so great in Sligo, Kilmainham was cold but worked well in the O2”.
With the programme not finalised until the year end, Limerick can anticipate more surprises.
Review:
BY hook and crane lift, by swimming pools in the sky and jet propulsion to the stars, Argentina’s ‘Fuerza Bruta’ has become the hottest ticket in London.
Forget the titillation of alleged nudity: costuming for the dancers/ acrobats/ actors who swam to synchrony in glass bottomed pools descending from the ceilings, well, it stayed put. The elusive effect in this ‘immersive experience’ – we could palm hands with them through the perspex above – was to suggest divinely happy waterbabes at play in cloudburst.
In another sequence, disco booth arcades emerged at eye level from behind foil clad walls. Drum beats, wild sambo, jungle calls and fast, furious Latino ryhthms reminded us that South America is another culture, a far away (sub) continent where music and dance express a primal scream.
In Limerick, my bet is the crowd will catch fire.
Yet there was fear with the frolics. This is a roller coaster of high-wire acts, ‘running man’ shot through the heart, polysterene walls breaking over heads and shrieking dervishes who scale pneumatic walls.
Fuerza Bruta? This is a production for which you will reach, cower, dance, retreat, sally, surge and be dusted with glitterball glee, as was Limerick Post in London.
Book for the exhilarating experience, 7pm and 9pm shows for the over8s and more, on http://limerickcityofculture.ie
