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'CHAOS AT THE CROSSROADS' NUI GALWAY CONFERENCE AND DANCE FESTIVAL WEEKEND, 19-21 APRIL

Many of us are familiar with the Rambling House tradition where neighbours gather in a local house for music, dancing and merriment but an NUI Galway conference and festival planned for the weekend of 19-21 April is set to host a cuairteoireacht with a difference!

Traditional artforms including Straw Boys, a house céilí and sean-nós dance, meld with contemporary, site-specific dance works, installations and artworks to create an exciting and inspiring night in which the audience members are vital players. The audience for the final event will be ferried from Galway city centre to a mystery location in Connemara by bus to experience a cuairteoireacht of the past but that is housed very much in the present moment. This particular event seeks to open up discussions as to how Ireland's landscape changed from being the 'céilí at the crossroads' to what Frank McDonald and James Nix called the 'chaos at the crossroads' in recent years.

The international conference entitled Mapping Spectral Traces V and the festival Dancing Days will explore the connections between how we inhabit such everyday spaces and how the traces of the past have shaped and moulded the places in which we live today.

Irish and international dancers, visual artists, writers, musicians and academics will gather in Galway throughout the weekend of specially commissioned performances and academic sessions that are free and open to the public. There will also be a pop-up Art Exhibition in the Black Box Theatre and the launch of a new essay collection, Irish Contemporary Landscapes in Literature and the Arts, in Charlie Byrne's Bookshop.

The event is organised by Dr Nessa Cronin and Tim Collins based at NUI Galway's Centre for Irish Studies, Dr Karen Till of NUI Maynooth, and Galway Dancer-in-Residence, Ríonach Ní Neill, a dancer that according to The Irish Times, 'would wow anyone (and there are many) with a fear of modern dance'.

Highlights of the weekend will be launched at 7pm Thursday 19 April at the Black Box Theatre and will be followed by the world première of Ríonach Ní Néill's FRAME, produced by Richard Wakely, at 8pm that evening.

Mapping Spectral Traces V is supported by the IRCHSS, NUI Galway, NUI Maynooth and the Mapping Spectral Traces International Network. Dancing Days is supported by Ealaín na Gaeltachta, the Arts Council, Galway County and City Councils, and the Town Hall Theatre, Galway.

Conference events at NUI Galway are free and open to the public, and tickets for Dancing Days are available from the Town Hall Theatre, Galway at www.tht.ie and 091 569 777.