More details about Fly Butterfly!

Fly Butterfly! The Beat Initiative presents a day of live music, family workshops, a carnival parade and an aerial dance spectacular for the re-opening of Belfast City Hall.

After a lengthy two-year refurbishment project, Belfast City Hall official re-opens to the public on Saturday 17th October. To mark this momentous occasion for Belfast, The Beat Initiative will ensure that the city centre is filled with colour, music and spectacle and a flock of aerial dancing, spinning, gravity defying, weaving butterflies!

This fabulous festival is entitled Fly Butterfly! and its theme signifies the re-emergence of a newly renovated City Hall, a transformation, a flight, a ‘liftoff’ into the future: a future with Belfast being a shared space for all. Fly Butterfly! is funded by Legacy Trust UK, an independent charity set up to help build a lasting cultural and sporting legacy from the 2012 Olympic Games, and is part of the Connections programme which is managed by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. Saturday 17th October is jam packed with fun events and acts for all the family with live music, a carnival parade, carnival arts workshops, circus performance, gymnastics, dance, street theatre, a carnival parade and a unique aerial dance piece performed on the wall of the building.

The event features a music stage, kicking off at 12pm is hosted by Love Music, Hate Racism and Homely Planet Radio will feature local talent such as bluesy rockers, Ten Gallon Hat and the Big Salute, Colenso Parade and a special DJ set from the BBC’s Joe Lindsay. As the music stage kicks off there will be an opportunity for families to take part in free carnival arts workshops in the grounds (these are free but you need to phone/email to book a place – click on the link for more details!!)

At 2.30pm 600 community participants, street performers, drummers, puppets and dancers will take part in our Caterpillar Parade leaving from Bank Square and travelling to the City Hall in time for the feature performance of the day. Fly Butterfly! will be introduced by local performer Jitterbug Jackson who will get the crowd going with some performance that everyone can join in on! As the Caterpillar Parade moves into the grounds of the City Hall the transformation from Caterpillar to butterfly slowly begins. At 3.10pm enjoy gymnastics from Rathgael, live samba drumming, dancers, stilt walkers and aerial performers dressed as caterpillars crawling up the wall of City Hall and transforming into beautiful butterflies!

The climax of this performance features a live soundtrack from renowned Belfast musician Ruby Colley. Ruby is a violinist, composer and a pioneer on the local music scene, composing, creating and performing ethereal soundscapes with an ambience that is truly out of this world. Initially classically trained, Ruby went to the Royal Academy of Music aged 13 and then went on a degree in music/composition at Darting College of Arts. Ruby performs her music alone, with an electric violin and a series of peddles, such as a loop-station, delay, and octave peddle. These gadgets allow her to create a complex web of sound that can be heard like an electric orchestra with an array of interesting noises and ambient soundscapes.

As Ruby’s soundtrack fills the air a troop of specially trained aerial dancers lead by Kate Lawrence ascend the walls of City Hall. Kate was director of feminist dance company Nomads in the 1990′s and now lectures on the BA and MA programmes at the University of Surrey and her own recent performance work has been site specific: a collaboration in 2001 with a visual artist at a ruined medieval chapel and vertical dance works High Art (2002), Highconography (2008) and Descent of the Angel (2009). She is currently pursuing doctoral study into Vertical Dance and teaches the first British undergraduate module in Vertical Dance at the University of Surrey. Vertical dance combines dance with the equipment and movement of rock climbing. Kate makes dance performances that use the walls of buildings as her ‘floor’ and uses the opportunity of being suspended from above to ‘fly’. The butterflies will drop from the roof of Belfast City Hall and a giant butterfly opens its wings to signify the re-emergence of a newly renovated City Hall, a transformation, a flight, a ‘liftoff’ into the future: a future with Belfast being a shared space for all.

~ by W[r]ite Noise on 14/10/2009.