Look - but don't touch. Kathryn Holmquist finds some surprises in Dublin's lap-dancing clubs. In certain parts of Europe, you can stay out clubbing until lunchtime the following day, yet in Ireland you will invariably be shepherded home at a 'respectable' hour. Arminta Wallace talks to the Sheikh Hamza Shakkur and the Al-Kindi Ensemble's Paris born artistic director, Julien Jalal Eddine Weiss, about the poetic conception of Islam embodied by dervishes. It's all sponsorship with your sequins and silk knickers, wigs and white socks at the World Irish Dancing Championships, writes Rois n Ingle .
Competition is intense and the standards impressive, but old values win through.
Choreographer Paul Johnson doesn't feel particularly Irish - his art is persistently misunderstood here and his influences are international. But still, he argues, dance can tell Irish stories like no other art form. The Russian Stanislavski Ballet's Nutcracker at the Point on Friday has all the magic and charm that the previous night's production of Swan Lake lacked, writes Carolyn Swift. It is a pity Ballet Ireland were not given the funding to do the full Swan Lake as they had planned. Finally we are beginning to turn our backs on such slothfulness and turn to the style of places such as the Sugar Club, writes Gerald Kelleher .