Weekend Guide: From film festivals to live ballet, here’s what’s happening

Nell Mescal

Friday 3 March, Cyprus Avenue, Cork

19-year-old Irish singer songwriter Nell Mescal will be gracing the stage of Cyprus Avenue with special guest Alex Tierney this weekend with what is sure to be a hauntingly beautiful performance. Last year, Mescal released several new songs to acclaim, including the single ‘Missing You’, which soundtracked the 2020 Christmas ad campaign for Brown Thomas.

Ukrainian Ballet of Peace’s Swan Lake

Saturday 4 March, Town Hall Theatre, Galway

The Ukrainian Ballet of Peace has had the great honour of performing its production of Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty, Bizet-Shchedrin’s Carmen-suite as well as several other modern ballets including its interpretation of Romeo and Juliet in the truly great Theatres of Europe. Their repertoire was created in the best traditions of the art form, continuing and inheriting the experience of such masters as Natalia Makarova, Rudolf Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov.

The End of Sex

Saturday 4 March, Light House Cinema, Dublin

As the Dublin International Film Festival draws to a close, Saturday will be your last chance to take part in this celebration of Irish and international cinema, and interact with film as an artform. The End Of Sex follows a couple feeling the pressures of parenting and adulthood, who decide to send their kids to winter camp for the first time and embark on a series of sexual adventures to reinvigorate their relationship.

Rebels and Revolutionaries Tour

Sunday 5 March, EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum

For International Women’s Day, EPIC have specially curated tours that focus on the impact Irish women have had on the world so that you can learn how Irish women overcame prejudice, stigma, laws, famine and more to go on to make a positive impact in the world. Hear the tales of trailblazers like Nellie Bly, pioneering investigative journalist; workers’ rights activist ‘Mother’ Mary Jones; Olympic gold medallist Sarah ‘Fanny’ Durack; WWII frontline hero Emma Duffin; ground-breaking scientist Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell; and more.

Kevin Mooney: Revenants

Until 19 March, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin

This series of paintings by Cork-based artist Kevin Mooney is informed by his engagement with Irish mythology, history and cultural migration. Revenants is an exercise in speculative art history which imagines the ‘lost’ art of an Irish diaspora as it maps out the gaps in our visual culture as a reverberant event in the Irish psyche, a traumatic break caused by famine and forced migration.