FROM IRELAND---

The Junction Festival Celebrates The Art of The Circus in Ireland, 7/2 - 7/11
Junction Festival 2010 is celebrating the art of the circus, its traditions, its excitement and its potential, with a selection of circus shows both traditional and contemporary, Irish and International. The festival will run from July 2nd - 11th.
The circus has been touring Ireland since the very earliest travelling circuses, devised by Peter Astley in the late 1700s traveled from Cork to Dublin with a show Astley claimed offered, "an integrated entertainment experience". Ireland's oldest indigenous circus is Fossett, which was started in 1888 by Mallow born George Lowe who after a time with Buffallo Bill Cody touring the US, returned to his native land to establish a troupe that would in time become the Fossett Brothers Circus. In recent years there has been an explosion of interest in circus with circus schools now established in Belfast, Cork and Galway. The early graduates from these schools have been setting up production companies to produce circus theatre shows which are beginning to make an impact both in Ireland and abroad.
read more at:

http://ireland.broadwayworld.com/article/The_Junction_Festival_Celebration The_Art_of_The_Circus_in_Ireland_72_711_20100615