Galway’s got a lot going on for such a small city, and this time of year there’s a children’s festival on called Baboró. Since we arrived right before Covid struck, (and last year Ari wasn’t the right age for any of it) we’d never been, but this year we pounced when the programme was announced and picked up a bunch of tickets.
Saturday 14th October
For our first day, we got Dough Bros in town before Nathalie took Ada to a Universe in the Mick Lally Theatre and Ari and I walked to the university for Club Origami, a beautiful dance event in the O’Donoghue Theatre.
Here’s a little peek of it:
It’s a beautiful show that starts slow, with two performers creating simple origami shapes outside the theatre before inviting the kids present to create their own simple folded shapes.
They gather everybody’s creations and lead us into the theatre where we sit on the floor in rows delineated by precisely-folded strips of paper. A musician plays a xylosynth to one side, creating a really beautiful “indie-movie” soundtrack to the expressive dance woven with exquisite paper models and props. Ari was rapt!
Then the real fun begins. To one side of the stage is a huge pile of artfully torn up paper. The performers take turns carrying armfuls to the centre of the stage and tossing it in the air. They get more frantic. More chaotic. They change into costumes styled to look like shredded paper. It looks incredibly fun – and then they invite all the children to participate! Ari dove in and had a blast literally tearing it up.
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