Culture Under Canvas

One of the perks of attending any multi-arts international festival is that you usually end up catching some performances that you didn't plan to see. Organisers of these events are aware of this fact and skilfully help things along by scheduling programmes that don't only complement one another but also allow paying audiences to attend more than one event of a different genre on the same evening, without suffering cultural overload.

Perhaps they want us to try something new and fresh - preventing theatre buffs, dance aficionados and music fans from pigeon holing themselves and helping them become true performing arts lovers instead.

My second day at the Festival started with a call from the festival's publicist Lior Albeck-Ripka offering me a ticket to a classical recital by Israeli pianist Pnina Becher, who was making her Australian debut at 6pm. Although both she and I knew that I would be able to watch only the first half, as I had a ticket for the jazz concert by the Melbourne-based Dead Horse Band at 7pm, I gladly accepted the offer.

               Federation Square

Walking through the Federation Square, I found a quiet retreat at the multi-purpose venue called BMW Edge. I was surprised not to see any promotional cars, pretty presenters or the company's logo, and was even more amazed to discover a 450-seat hall with a crystalline web of glass interlaced with a steel and zinc framework. From most of the seats, the audience could also enjoy the sights of the Yarra River and the adjacent Alexandra Gardens during springtime twilight.

          photos by Carla Gottgens 

The pianist charmed the audience with her powerful renditions of timeless compositions, including Scarlatti's Sonatas and Chopin's "Nocturnes" and "Premiere Ballade". The experience was so enticing that I was reluctant to leave at the interval. I did tear myself away, however, as I wanted to watch the local jazz ensemble at the nearby Spiegeltent.

                             This temporary canvas and wood structure has travelled to Sydney, Auckland and Edinburgh this past year. In Melbourne, it has been set up on the forecourt of the Arts Centre and was an integral part of the festival.

Spiegeltent was open from noon to 3am everyday and from 1pm on several days for "In Conversation" - a free-admission talk with the artists hosted by the artistic director herself. A few performances were scheduled in the evenings and at all other times, it was a popular place for drinks or snacks with an always-open bar set up at the back of the tent. The festival has now finished, but there are programmes scheduled through mid-December in the tent.

With original compositions that tread the borders of many genres, Dead Horse Band - featuring musicians on two violins, viola, cello, piano, drums, electric guitar and electric bass, plus a conductor - took the audience to places both in and outside this world.

      photos by Carla Gottgens 

During brief pauses between compositions, talented composer Kate Neal talked about one of her inspirations - the fact that Einstein's Relativity Theory was inspired by music. Towards the end of the memorable one-hour performance, she also thanked the musicians for their immense efforts in playing her "highly abstracted" pieces, saying that "anything you struggle for, or with, in life is important".

Well, that's very true but it also explained what, to me, was the only minor flaw in their performance - the musicians looked overly intense throughout and had little chance to interact with the audience.  

The applause was less enthusiastic than I expected, perhaps because the festival programme didn't clearly describe the music, or maybe because some of us were expecting a less cutting-edge evening of standard or contemporary jazz.  

Walking out of the Spiegeltent that night, I spotted a souvenir magnet with a painting of a sexually unidentified person and an inspirational sentence reading "Life is not about finding yourself, it's about creating yourself".  

Many friends wondered why this reviewer chose to overlook the more vibrant Sydney and visit only Melbourne on this trip, even neglecting kangaroos, platypuses and koalas to hang around the Arts Centre. To me, the answer was obvious: when the festival organiser has spent such effort and creativity in staging this showcase, the Garden City is the Southern Hemisphere's only cultural destination come October.  

These two music events offered solid examples of how venues - the spatial relationship between the performers and the audience - can complement live performing arts. It is something Thai festival organisers may want to consider.  

This reviewer couldn't help thinking about those temporary tents set up next to Thailand Cultural Centre - this Arts Centre's counterpart - during many cultural events. While the former promises "rare acts of curiosity and fantastical skill" all year round, the latter seem to serve only as venues for receptions for VIP guests by the event's corporate sponsors. 

Heady Brews at the Malthouse  

My third day at the Festival took me away from the Arts Centre into a more residential area in the south of the city in search of the CUB Malthouse, a theatre complex which was, as the name suggests, a brewery in a former incarnation.  

The featured ale that evening was a new work by one of the world's most critically acclaimed directors, Peter Brook.  

In "Sizwe Banzi Is Dead", a South African desperately needs to feed his family. Yet restrictions on travel for blacks mean he can't be employed in the city without an identity book. While out with his new friend Buntu, he comes across a corpse and steals his identity in order to survive.  

"You must understand one thing. We own nothing except ourselves. This world and its laws allow us nothing except ourselves. There is nothing we can leave behind when we die, except the memories of ourselves," are examples of the play's memorable lines.

  photo by Carla Gottgens

Credibly portraying many characters in this periodically comical and thoroughly moving play about Apartheid were the cast of two, the strongly built Habib Dembele from the Republic of Mali, and slim Pitcho Womba Konga from Congo. They needed nothing more complicated than simple costumes, and props on an otherwise huge, almost empty stage.

                                                        photo by Carla Gottgens 

This South African theatre classic written by Athol Fugard was performed in its French translation with English surtitles. Not a French-speaker myself, I tended to focus more on the actors' facial and vocal expressions as well as their physical movements - the universal language of theatre.  

After all, the legendary director and the world-renowned playwright subtly withdrew their authorial presence and gave the stage to the two skilful actors to shine and to communicate with the audience. "Siswe" finished a few minutes before 8pm and initially I thought my theatre-going evening had ended there. I had been told that Dood Paard's "medEia", which started at 8:15pm at the Beckett Theatre, 20 metres away under the same roof, was completely sold out.

Curiosity may have killed many cats, but it has never harmed a middle-aged theatregoer. I went straight to the Malthouse's box office, and was able to secure a rush ticket for A$20 (Bt600) to sit in the front row.

A showcase of acting talent without any overshadowing by stage visuals was also the mark of this contemporary rendition of the Greek classic "Medea".

Like Fugard's "Siswe", written during improvisations with his original cast 25 years ago, "medEia" was born as a collaboration between Dood Paard and his two actors and one actress during rehearsals. Little wonder then that the Melbourne festival curator suggested the audience watch these two plays back-to-back.

                                                           photo by Carla Gottgens 

Barefooted with painted toenails and dressed in plain clothes, the trio - who faced the audience most of the time yet never failed to communicate with one another - behaved like the thespians and choruses of ancient Greek theatre. They took turns narrating, and morphed into different characters for scenes of dialogue delivered effortlessly, naturally and sincerely in their "Euro-English".  

A little research reveals that Euripides's original version of "Medea" drew on an older myth in order to communicate certain themes to his audience two and a half millennia ago - its plot was not the whole story of Medea, but one of the most crucial days in her life. The Dutch group attempted to tell more background story and to ask more questions. And for this reviewer, the themes of love and exile were most dominant here, rather than the revenge that dominates the Greek play.  

In one scene, an actor tried to explain what was happening between Jason and Medea: "Love is the most beautiful of all emotions." He then replaced "beautiful" with "terrible", "direct", "horrible", before running out of alternatives, he simply used "emotional" - cue laughter from the audience. In between scenes, slide projections of amateurish tourist snaps of destinations around the world were projected on the paper screens, which were torn down later as the performers moved further downstage.

       photo by Carla Gottgens 

The last line of the play was, "For those of you who ever doubt me, f**k you," which was followed by black-out in the auditorium, and an audience not shocked but loudly applauding. We were left in the dark as to which character - Jason or Medea - had uttered the exit line but by then we had no doubt as to the creativity and boldness of this Dutch ensemble.  

On the Festival's website, any drama teacher, myself included, can download, for free, these two plays' "Education Resource Packs". These highly informative yet easy-to-comprehend guides and notes, filled with suggested classroom activities based on the plays' themes, enhanced many young theatre-goers' understanding and appreciation. Without a doubt, their experience of these plays would have begun long before the house lights dimmed and the actors entered the stage. And for many others, it didn't end when the curtain came down either.  

This kind of educational programme not only helps to sell more student group tickets, but also proves that theatre is not simply part of the entertainment industry. Even commercial theatre now adopts the practice - Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical "The Woman in White", when it premiered in London’s West End a few years ago, had a similar resource.

Dancing on a Pixel

Although the highlights of this year's Melbourne International Arts Festival 2007 include globally renowned performances by such artists as Laurie Anderson, Peter Brook, Merce Cunningham and Robert Wilson, one of the organiser's main missions is to promote home-grown works. A prime example comes in the shape of Melbourne's leading contemporary-dance company Chunky Move, whose "Glow" is a ground-breaking fusion of technology and human movement.

Premiered in Melbourne last year and now touring the world - with stops in Shanghai, Beijing, Pittsburgh and Dresden next month - "Glow's" concept is described as follows:

"Beneath the glow of a sophisticated video tracking system, a lone organic being mutates in and out of human form into unfamiliar, sensual and grotesque creature states. A digital landscape is generated in real time in response to the dancer's movement, with the body's gestures extended by and in turn manipulating the surrounding video world. Light and moving graphics are not pre-rendered by video playback, but rather images constantly generated by various algorithms responding to movement, meaning no two performances of 'Glow' are exactly the same.

"In most conventional works employing projection lighting, the dancer's position and timing have to be completely fixed to the space and timeline of the video playback. Their role is reduced to the difficult chore of making every performance an exact facsimile of the original. In 'Glow', the machine sees the performer and responds to their actions, unlocking them from a relationship of restriction and tedium."

I sat down with Melbourne-born Gideon Orbazanek, the artistic director of Chunky Move and the choreographer of "Glow" at his studio and office, which is just next door to the Malthouse. Here's what he had to say:

"[In contrast to classical works], the pieces I'm interested in are those where you really don't know what you're going to get. Despite my primary training in classical ballet - at the Australian Ballet School - I find that my interest lies in opening up questions rather than knowing answers.”

"When I was much younger, I witnessed rehearsals by the Netherlands Dans Theatre (NDT). They were quite revolutionary for me, showing me what dance could be. Although I worked as a classical ballet dancer for three years after school, I always found that I was better at, and more engaged in, contemporary works.”

"I began choreographing as soon as I started my dance training. It's kind of like an exercise for self-esteem for people who started dancing at a later age [like myself]. Even though you couldn't do some things as well as others, you could make things your own.”

"Dance can be a highly emotive medium, but it's also a very difficult medium to work in and go beyond the normal clich้s.”

"I've been working with projection images in various works where the video images had to be pre-recorded, the timeline had to be fixed, and the dancer had to be at the right place at the right time."

In 2004 in Monaco, Orbazanek attended a software presentation by Frieder Weiss, a German specialist in real-time computers and interactive computer systems for performance art.

"When I saw that, I realised he was the missing piece in my puzzle, as his software can analyse the dancer's movements through space. I've been watching a lot of dance works that use new media, but I want the work to be more than just a demonstration of technology. So, [in the development process of 'Glow' that has spanned two years] Frieder and I have worked in a lot of different environments and aesthetics."

One unique characteristic of "Glow" - an outcome of this interdisciplinary collaboration - is that the screen on which the dancer moves is laid flat on the studio's floor, and is watched by an audience sitting on raised and raked stands on all four sides.

"I work on my computer and watch television, and with the vertical screen, the dancer would have to be at the bottom of the screen all the time, and never really be part of it. Putting it on the floor gives the audience a new perspective for a dance performance."

This reviewer's experience of "Glow" at Chunky Move's Studio 1 was a memorable 25 minutes, one among many during my five-day visit to Melbourne. But at times I found myself in an artistic dilemma - should I concentrate on the energetic movements of Sarah Black, watch the digital images that the skilful dancer in a white body suit was creating, or simply let myself be enthralled by the compelling soundscape created by Luke Smile and Ben Frost - a feeling I've never before experienced during a dance performance.

Yet this exceptional marriage of human creativity and technological wizardry, sparking scintillating spontaneity in the performance, opened up my imagination and perspectives and took me on an emotional journey to various states not previously visited. Even now, "Glow" still flows in my memory.

 Joe buying his Festval tickets

My audience companion, Prapon "Joe" Kumjim, a lecturer of New Media at Chulalongkorn University's Visual Arts Department, made an interesting note.

"This show is very condensed, and its length [just under half an hour] is just perfect. [Although it is digitised], you wouldn't be able to capture all the performance on DVD. You have to watch it live."

Igniting the Imagination

My fourth evening at the Festival took me back to the Arts Centre, the festival's hub.  

But this time it was Hamer Hall, a three-level, acoustically perfect and architecturally remarkable auditorium, painted in the colours and patterns of Australian minerals and gems.

Singer and multimedia artist Laurie Anderson is famous for her 1981 hit "O Superman".

Having watched her solo performance "The End of the Moon" - the fruit of her experience as Nasa's first artist-in-residence - at the University of Michigan’s Power Center two years ago, it's an easy decision to buy a ticket for "Homeland", her new work, inspired by the so-called War on Terror.

Now touring Europe and the US, "Homeland" is more than a concert; it's a musical performance by a virtuoso who's a poet, an activist, a filmmaker, photographer, instrumentalist, vocalist and composer. Poignant and thoroughly provoking with politically charged lyrics and spoken-word passages, it doesn't fail to entertain, either.

Although the subject matter is predominantly American, its nuances are universal. In an electronic composition for violin, viola, keyboards and bass, Anderson delivers a message that most soldiers killing one another in wars today are teenagers, and many American college students enlist in the army because they want college scholarships - they wouldn't be able to afford the tuition fees otherwise.

In another, Anderson utters, "Only the expert knows what the problems are. Only the expert gets the Nobel Prize", and the house roars with laughter.

Apart from "Homeland", the festival showcases other works by Anderson. For example, her film "Hidden Inside Mountains" is shown daily at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in nearby Federation Square.  

Also at the festival is the world-renowned Paris-based butoh company Sankai Juku performed "Kagemi: Beyond the Metaphors of Mirrors", making their Melbourne debut at the Arts Centre State Theatre. 

The modern Japanese art of butoh, or "the dance of darkness", is famous - notorious, in fact - for the extremely slow and meticulously controlled contortions of its white-powdered, shaven-headed dancers.

In Japanese, Kage means shadow, Mi, seeing and being seen. "Some say the word Kagemi is the ancient origin of 'mirror'," writes Ushio Amagatsu, the director, choreographer and designer.

There were few colours in this enchanting performance - the white moving bodies set against a stark black backdrop.

And yet, when the audience spotted a colour - like the small red lines on performers' faces - we discovered new meanings.

Likewise, while the dancers were almost always emotionless, when they did show their emotions through facial expressions here and there, the impact was immense.

In the eyes of Europeans and Americans, butoh is an image of post-World War II Japan. In this reviewer's perception, moments in "Kagemi" offer a rare opportunity to really concentrate on the here and now - reminiscent of those five-minute, pre-class meditation exercises in primary school.

A casually dressed elderly woman sitting next to me on the opening night dozed off during a few scenes. It didn't dampen her enjoyment - she said afterwards that it was "the most beautiful thing I've ever seen on stage".

As an English-major student in university days, I took more poetry than prose, simply because I didn't like to carry around all those doorstops - or have to spend the hours it took to wade through them.

Now, 20 kilograms later, I prefer stage productions, whose creators have faith that the less they show to an audience, the more we make of it through the power of our own imaginations.