By Rain Francis.

Pre-eminent choreographer and award-winning writer Douglas Wright’s work rapt is set to be performed in The Hague at the prestigious Lucent Danstheater next April. Douglas Wright Dance is initiating a fundraising drive to raise $35k NZD to realise the project.

The invitation has come from one of the world’s largest dance festivals, Holland Dance in conjunction with Lucent Danstheater, home to the world famous Nederlands Dans Theater. It is unique for a New Zealand company to achieve the chance to perform on this prominent dance stage.

The New Zealand Dance Company's 'Language of Living' at the ASB Theatre, Aotea Centre, Auckland. Photo to John McDermott

The project has received major funding support from Creative New Zealand, however the challenging economic environment and significant size and scale of rapt means that the total cost of the rehearsal period and tour cannot be covered by performance fees and Creative New Zealand funding alone.

People can donate from as little as $10 by visiting www.pozible.com/rapt.  A number of donation tiers with acknowledgement benefits have been created as a means to say thank you to supporters. These include personally signed Douglas Wright books as well as an opportunity to attend a rehearsal of rapt in Auckland before the company departs for Holland.

The world premiere performances of the recently established Auckland based contemporary company, The New Zealand Dance Company met with rave reviews from five different publications.

The programme featured works by Justin Haiu, Michael Parmenter, Sarah Foster Sproull and Executive Artistic Director Shona McCullagh. The company doubled their audience targets at their launch in the ASB Theatre, Aotea Centre.

Rise by Java Dance Company

After 25 years at the helm of Footnote Dance Company, Deirdre Tarrant announced earlier this year that she was retiring from the post. It has recently been announced that Malia Johnston will assume directorship in 2013. An award-winning choreographer, Malia is also currently Artistic Director of the Brancott Estate World of Wearable Arts Awards Show (WOW). She also runs Rifleman Productions and is a regular guest tutor of choreography and technique at both New Zealand School of Dance and Unitec.

Java Dance Company is continuing to have a great year. Out of 923 shows at the Adelaide Fringe Festival, Java’s Back of the Bus was ranked 5^th best. They’ll be back in Australia next month when they bring the show to Perth, for the Awesome International Arts Festival for Bright Young Things.

Java has also recently been commissioned to make a new show for 3-14 year olds for the Capital E International Arts Festival in Wellington.

New Zealand School of Dance third year students, due to graduate in November, are already receiving company contracts and offers for next year.

New Zealand School of Dance students Cauê Frias and Christopher Gerty. Photo by Stephen A’Court

Contemporary students Samantha Hines and Matt Roffe will join Australian Dance Theatre on full-time contracts, dancing alongside 2011 NZSD graduate Zoe Dunwoodie, who is already with the company. Their classmate James Pham has taken up a position with Chunky Move. He will perform in the company’s upcoming season at the Melbourne International Arts Festival.

Classical student Cauê Frias has been offered a place with Houston Ballet II and Christopher Gerty with San Francisco Ballet School’s Trainee Program. Cauê is performing in Stanton Welch’s September production of Madame Butterfly for Houston Ballet.

Top photo: New Zealand School of Dance students Matte Roffe, Samantha Hines and Simone Lapka, photographed by Stephen A’Court

Melbourne International Arts Festival
The Arts Centre
October 2011 

By Rain Francis. 

When, as the ushers check your ticket, you are handed earplugs, you may experience a mix of excitement and trepidation.  Then, when the show opens with the jaw-dropping depiction of a samurai warrior sacrificing himself, you know you are in for a ride that will be engraved on your retinas for some time.

After a standout appearance at the 2009 Melbourne Festival, Hofesh Shechter was back this year with his first full-length work, Political Mother.

This is a total immersion experience for the audience; a powerful blitz of live music, dance, and striking imagery. With his uncommon duality – being both composer and choreographer – Shechter has created a show where the music and dance are not only equally compelling and equally central, but integral to one another.

The music is brutal; thrashing between hard rock and military drumming. Rather than simply being placed on stage, the musicians have an intense visual presence. The rock band, elevated above the rest of the action, is shrouded in haze, with the players evenly spaced and lit from below. Between them and the dancers is a sinister line of often faceless drummers, stern and upright, with the brass buttons on their uniforms gleaming in the dark.

The dance itself is constantly moving; the feet shambling and shuffling, the floor patterns looping intricately, mathematically organised. The arms are very expressive, but never fully extended. They are strung aloft by the wrists, or cradled in what sometimes seems like self-defence, sometimes submission, sometimes weariness. It is emotionally draining. We feel the performers clinging to near-shredded hope, always moving forward though close to exhaustion.

Tying together and somewhat brightening all this darkness is a strong sense of community, which seems to empower the individual. Shechter has interwoven traditional folk dance with his own contemporary vocabulary to comment on the way humanity deals with the pressures of modern life. The result is surreal, but also hyper-real, with a timeless, universal quality. Political Mother reels you in, envelops you and takes you on an intense voyage through worlds colliding.

By Rain Francis

Hofesh Shechter, Artistic Director of Hofesh Shechter Company, is recognised as both a choreographer and a composer. Born in Israel, he studied at the Jerusalem Academy for Dance and Music before joining Batsheva Dance Company. In 2002 he moved to London to dance with Jasmin Vardimon Dance. Forming his own company six years later, Hofesh Shechter is currently one of the UK’s most exciting artists.

On a world tour, Shechter recently brought his bold contemporary work Political Mother to Melbourne International Arts Festival, and spent a few moments talking with Dance Informa about it.

Political Mother is a physical and gritty work danced to Shechter’s own score, featuring a band of live drummers and guitarists.  

Describe the experience that is Political Mother.

It is likely to be quite an intense experience. There are nine musicians onstage and there are twelve dancers. It’s a piece that sort of explodes on you and shouts at you. It has also some tender moments, but it’s rhythmic, like a demonstration that goes on and flickers through worlds – from one world into another. It’s a pretty intense experience. The idea is to create a sort of emotional build up and tension. It’s loud at times, it’s angry, and it’s fun, if you’re in the right mood.

What are the themes you’re trying to explore with that intensity? 

I’m a little bit scared of the word ‘themes’, but I do deal with human emotions and human experience below and underneath the pressures of modern life. But it’s not about these pressures, it’s not about politics, it’s not about politicians. It’s about the people that live underneath, it’s about the emotional experience, it’s about the way that we deal with it. There is a lot going on, but it’s definitely dealing with human emotions.

What sort of emotions in particular do you deal with in this work?

Anger and I think there is a lot of despair, and a feeling of hopelessness. But through that, sometimes at the bottom we find hope, we find a sense of perspective, a sense of brotherhood, a sense that we share this experience with other people. So it’s a lot about hope and the loss of hope.

What was the catalyst for the creation of Political Mother?

The work always starts with things that I deal with in my life. I did deal with collision of different worlds. I’ve seen and experienced in my own life, how you can see something that is happening just next to you, or very far away from you (something that is very powerful, very disturbing) and you can forget about it in five minutes. It can really disturb you, and then you just move on. I find our ability to have parallel worlds that are conflicting in a way, but actually exist sometimes very closely, kind of disturbing and worrying. But it’s also just the way it is. That’s the way we respond to the world. It started from this curiosity about our ability to care and then to not care.

In this work you use both traditional Jewish folk dance and live, hard rock music. What is the relationship between these two?

There are parallels between the social structures that allow people to feel connected to each other, and to feel connected to certain emotions that they need to express and want to experience. Rock can give you that angry experience, but it’s like a bubble in a way – you’re not doing anything, you’re just venting, you’re not changing the world at all, or yourself. Folk dance can give you this sense of belonging, a sense of identity. It helps direct people towards a certain way of thinking. I find this interesting – the social systems that help direct people to where you want to direct them. That’s the parallel that I’m looking at.

Hofesh Shechter Company is currently performing Political Mother and other works across Europe, and will be touring across the world well into the New Year.

Top photo: Israeli Choreographer Hofesh Shechter, photo by Carl Fox

Melbourne International Arts Festival
Malthouse Theatre
October 2011

By Grace Edwards.

Indonesian choreographer Jecko Siompo’s Melbourne Festival offering, We Came From The East, is a light-hearted exploration of the roots of hip-hop. “Hip-Hop was born in Papua, you don’t have to believe me, but my great grandmother told me,” says Siompo. Starting with this simple premise, Siompo traces the journey hip-hip may or may not have taken from Papua, through Indonesia and finally to New York.

Performed in Siompo’s trademark “animal pop” style, this piece is nothing if not energetic. It’s a frenetic blend of contemporary and tribal dance styles infused with the shuddering movements, screams and yelps of wild animals set to a lively and highly percussive soundscape. The ensemble dancers handled the fast-paced choreography reasonably well, whilst the acrobatic displays of the male performers added an extra physical dimension to the piece. The popping and locking sequences were less well-executed, perhaps owing to the different backgrounds of the dancers, though this did not prove a major hindrance to the overall design of the choreography.

The piece could, however, have benefitted a great deal from a stronger conceptual direction. The overarching theme of the show was hinted at only briefly, most explicitly in a vocal mosaic of interviews and musings on the origins of hip-hop. In the final scene, the dancers donned bright-coloured jackets, marking the arrival of contemporary hip hop; how we got there, however, remains a mystery. Meanwhile, a few odd quips and some seemingly out-of-place references to Pinocchio only further obscured any insights to be gleaned.

The choreography also suffered from a lack of light and shade. There were indeed signs of progression throughout the piece; the heavy use of floor work in the initial stages of the performance was replaced by more upright passages, the plain costumes and heavy tribal body paint was balanced by the contemporary final sequence. The dancers’ verbal passages progressed through several different languages, presumably Papuan and Indonesian dialects, through to English. Nonetheless, Sempo’s choreographic style proved somewhat limiting in this respect, at times becoming overly repetitive.

Soloist Jakob Yaw, stunningly painted half in black and half in white in perhaps a nod at his heritage, performed his role with strong presence and assurance.

The shortcomings of this production were ultimately minimised by Sempo’s playful, joyful approach to this piece. We Came From The East is a show to be embraced not for its profound insights nor its technical wizardry, but for its most basic contribution as an energetic and uncomplicated tribute to the ever-evolving and awe-inspiring world of dance.

Photo: Jecko Siompo’s We Came from the East (c) Riduan

Melbourne International Arts Festival
Melbourne Recital Centre
October 2011

By Grace Edwards

Chunky Move’s Assembly is Artistic Director Gideon Obarzanek’s final work with the company. Produced in collaboration with the Victorian Opera, it is in one a study in the motion of crowds, a salute to the collaborative possibilities of the age-old partnership between music and dance, and a swan song for Obarzanek which marks the end of a triumphant fifteen-year era in the history of Victorian contemporary dance.

The scale of the work reflected the occasion, featuring over sixty singers and dancers performing on a giant staircase set up on the stage of the Melbourne Recital Centre. The choice of music accompanying this experiment appeared surprising. Rather than a contemporary soundscape, Assembly offered its audience a selection of unaccompanied vocal works from the plainchant of the Middle Ages to the music of late Renaissance composers Carlo Gesualdo and Tomas Luis de Victoria. The choice reflected Obarzanek’s desire to work with nothing but pure vocal sound and movement, devoid of technical special effects or wizardry.

Opening on a staircase filled with performers, the crowd launched into a million discussions, creating a wall of sound above which no individual conversations could be heard. This is the anonymity of the crowd, at once comforting and frustrating. The performers underwent a number of subsequent permutations, from navigating past each other’s bodies like pedestrians to performing simply movements in unison.

Whilst these sequences were interesting in their own right, they did not ultimately transcend their original context. There is a fine line between art through emulation and simple imitation; at times, the crowd sequences appeared to veer towards the latter, with rather literal presentations of a football shouting match, dozens of individuals talking at once, moving past each other as if walking on the street. Indeed, part of the magic of crowds is their spontaneity; the reason why people-watching can be so fascinating. Simply transferring such experiences to the stage stripped these moments of their interest whilst offering little as replacement. 

The length of the opening also foreshadowed what would prove to be the generally static pace of this work. Lacking a sense of progression towards any sort of climax, Assembly remained somewhat cold and abstracted throughout on more than one occasion, causing one to wonder where it was all leading.

Performers Harriet Ritchie and Sara Black were, as always it seems, standouts – dynamic agents amidst the throng of performers, throwing themselves across the merciless staircase with abandon whilst maintaining masterful control of their bodies. As an ensemble, the dancers impressed with their dynamism and commitment to the work. The singers were equally impressive in their vocal clarity, their voice projecting beautifully across the auditorium amidst the sounds of movement onstage.

The most interesting sequence was that in which the crowd followed individual performers to the furthest points of the set, flocking like sheep to engulf those who dared stand out. The music echoed this theme at many points in the work with a single voice piercing the auditorium before being subsumed by other voices in a beautiful wall of sound. These aspects perhaps lit a path towards a more transformative approach to crowd behavior.

Whilst this was not Chunky Move’s strongest work of recent years, the risk-taking, collaborative approach of Assembly makes it a fitting tribute to Obarzanek; a contemporary dance icon who has consistently stayed one step ahead of the crowd.

Photo: Assembly in rehearsal. Photo by Jeff Busby

The 2011 Melbourne International Arts Festival brings dance, theatre, art, opera and film to Melbourne from October 6 to 22. A truly international Festival, it features major presentations by visiting artists from countries including Russia, India, Sudan, Indonesia, Japan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, the People’s Republic of China, Iraq, Lithuania, Ireland, South Africa, Israel, Syria and Ukraine.

The Festival examines what it is that unites us across cultures, and includes works that celebrate what can be achieved through unity, through call-to-action, through protest and politics, and through assembly of peoples.

“This year’s program is the most pan-cultural I’ve had the privilege to direct, and celebrates the ‘live’ experience,” says Artistic Director, Brett Sheehy.

Chunky Move, Assembly. Photo by Jeff Busby

This year’s festival includes six unique dance works, including the world premiere of Assembly by Chunky Move and the Victorian Opera.  One of our greatest choreographers, Gideon Obarzanek, presents his final work as head of Chunky Move in an ambitious collaboration with Victorian Opera. Devised by Obarzanek in partnership with Victorian Opera Music Director Richard Gill, Assembly investigates the enigmatic motion of crowds. Integrating dance with theatrical and operatic performance, this grand piece involves over sixty performers on stage, with the entire cast choreographed into an awesome mixture of movement and voice.

Phillip Adams also presents a world premiere with Aviary, A Suite for the Bird with his company BalletLab. A fusion of feathers, flight and fantasy, Aviary imagines a jungle paradise of exotic birds, brought to life by BalletLab Artistic Director Phillip Adams, who both directs and performs, with six exquisite dancers. Costumes are by acclaimed Australian fashion designer Toni Maticevski, with plumage designed by iconic Melbourne milliner Richard Nylon.

Political Mother. Photo by Gabriele Zucca

After his astonishing Australian debut at the 2009 Festival, the much feted Hofesh Shechter returns with his first full-length work, the critically acclaimed Political Mother.  A powerhouse performance that meshes traditional Jewish folk dance with a jackbooted live soundtrack of military drums and electric guitars, Political Mother finds Shechter at his most innovative and impassioned. Over the course of 70 minutes, Shechter’s dancers lurch through the authoritarian nightmares of recent human history.

In an Australian premiere, Jecko Siompo and Jecko’s Dance present We Came from the East. First you hear the noises, a cacophonous array of yelps emerging from the blackness. And then the bodies appear, contorted and animalistic, folded backwards and leaping toward the ceiling with bestial vigour. It’s a long way from breakdancing, yet it seems so familiar.  Could it be true? Could hip-hop really have come from Indonesia? This is the question mischievously posed by Jecko Siompo in We Came from the East. Siompo conjures up a furious display of the apparently indelible links between traditional Papuan dance and contemporary hip-hop.

Arts House and Force Majeure present Double Think

Arts House and Force Majeure present Double Think. Critically acclaimed Australian dancer, director and choreographer, Byron Perry explores the concept of a performance work in constant flux in his second full-length dance work Double Think. A rhetorical examination of the illusion of opposition, Double Think creates a constantly evolving landscape of relativity – a place where actions and statements serve double functions and characters create and derail trains of thought simultaneously. One tall man and one short woman make imperfect sense as they shed some dark on a light subject in a complex world of simple objects.

In a fun addition to the dance program, Strut & Fret will present Tom Tom Crew who smash together acrobatics, hip-hop and percussion to create an entertaining, adrenaline-fuelled circus show for the 21st century. From the first bass drum kick to the hair-raising, acrobatic finale, the Tom Tom Crew deliver a show that grabs you and doesn’t let go. The pulsing energy of hip-hop meets the raw physicality of acrobatics in an astounding mash-up of gravity-defying manoeuvres, astonishing beat-boxing and breakdancing, improbable contortion and energetic drumming.

To get your tickets and find out more visit www.melbournefestival.com.au

Top photo: Aviary by BalletLab

Win Tickets to Jecko Siompo’s We Came from the East.

In an Australian premiere, Jecko Siompo and Jecko’s Dance present We Came from the East at this year’s Melbourne International Arts Festival. First you hear the noises, a cacophonous array of yelps emerging from the blackness. And then the bodies appear, contorted and animalistic, folded backwards and leaping toward the ceiling with bestial vigour. It’s a long way from breakdancing, yet it seems so familiar.  Could it be true? Could hip-hop really have come from Indonesia? This is the question mischievously posed by Jecko Siompo in We Came from the East. Siompo conjures up a furious display of the apparently indelible links between traditional Papuan dance and contemporary hip-hop.

To Enter
Email Dance Informa at info@danceinforma.com with
Your Name, Date of Birth, Full Address, Phone Number and ‘Why you love Dance Informa’.
Good luck!

We Came from the East
Tue 18 – Sat 22 Oct, 8pm
The CUB Malthouse, Beckett Theatre
Bookings: M-TIX (03) 9685 5111 / malthousetheatre.com.au
Ticketmaster 1300 723 038 / melbournefestival.com.au

NSW Permit Number : LTPM/10/00971CLASS: Type B
Competition opens on Oct 4 2011. Competition closes on October 12 2011. Winners will be selected at random on Oct 12 at 5:00pm EST and notified by email and/or phone. All entrants must provide an email address, a postal address, full name and date of birth. All entrants who are not a subscriber to Dance Informa will be given a free subscription. All subscribers can unsubscribe at any time by visiting danceinforma.com/unsubscribe. Minimum entry age is 13 years of age. Prizes will be drawn in Highbury SA. Winners will be published at www.danceinforma.com after they are announced. If not all prizes are claimed, a Second Chance Draw will be held. This competition is held by Dance Informa Pty Ltd of SA. Phone 1300 783 120.

Top photo:  (c)Riduan

Melbourne International Arts Festival
The CUB Malthouse
October 2010

By Natalie Papps. 

As part of the Melbourne Festival 2010, creator and performer Hiroaki Umeda has brought his show Adapting For Distortion & Haptic to Australia, from Tokyo. Hiroaki was a photography student when he became interested in dance whilst at University. His creativity and artistic vision is wonderfully presented in the first act Adapting For Distortion.

Those hypersensitive to auditory or visual input should avoid this show, however for everyone else it is a must see. The use of lighting and visual effects created a trance like show where even the slightest movement had fluidity and was enhanced by the way the light hit both the stage and Hiroaki himself.

The first act was a display of the performer’s hip hop and robotic isolations that was accentuated by the bar coded white lighting flashing across the stage. At times the dancer and lighting became still, yet there was still subtle movement in the ripple of light across the rise and fall of the dancer’s chest. At one point in this act, the lighting played tricks on my vision and it was as though I was watching a 2D screen with a 3D image in the centre of the stage.

Hiroaki needs to be credited with his ability to foresee such visions and shapes that can be achieved through lighting, design and the body.  He also has an incredible ability to bring his skills in video projection and computing to life on the stage.

The soundtrack for this act and the second were extremely distorted and can be described almost as an alarm clock on the background of a chainsaw and distorted radio. It was loud and at times surprising – not for the faint hearted.

The second act Haptic was described as a performance focusing on ‘the physical aspect of the perception of colour, not simply to show it, but to give it substance to the relationship it has with dance’. Examples given were; red/anger and blue/reassurance.

During this act the stage was simply covered with blue, green or red light. I have to admit that I was unable to see any clear relationship between the movements of the dancer and the colour, nor any highs or lows in the choreography or soundtrack. The choreography didn’t seem to alter much from the first act to the second, yet the second act did not have the lighting effects to add highlights and alternatives to the choreography alone. At times the movement seemed to move through the music rather than with it. This was only noticeable as the music and choreography were sharp and isolative, and I felt they needed parity to achieve the greatest impact.

This show had only one performer, and I think Hiroaki successfully held the audience’s attention for its duration.  It was a unique experience for the audience and an impressive example of one man’s vision, imagination and creativity.

Photo: Haptic, by Shin Yamagata

Melbourne International Arts Festival
The Arts Centre, State Theatre
October 2010

By Rebecca Martin

The ubiquitous picture of two dancers clad in red tights and striped jackets (hello, Twyla Tharp’s In The Upper Room) that advertised come, been and gone in every newspaper, magazine and web page had me very excited.  A piece that married classical dance with rock ‘n roll, namely David Bowie and Lou Reed, simply had to be amazing.  Not that the concept was entirely new.  New York’s Joffrey Ballet Company has previously strutted their stuff to the sounds of Prince, and Bejart Ballet Lausanne has combined Queen with Mozart.  I have to admit, that while normally weary of hype, I approached the opening night performance with great excitement and preceded the show with a week of listening to Bowie and Reed in anticipation.

The first section, noticeably devoid of either Bowie or Reed, saw the dancers on stage in electric blue unitards and with dramatic panda eyes that looked less glam punk and more bar brawl aftermath.  The bare stage instilled the piece with an amateur air that suggested the show would not be all I had hoped.  Slow, repetitive movements were the mainstay of the piece, saved only by the strength and impressive bodies of the dancers who managed to imbue the stale choreography with some life. 

By the end of gone, my spirits were lifted slightly as the momentum increased and the dancers finally got a chance to spread their wings through a series of dynamic jumps and turns.  As the lights went up for interval, I remained in my seat, muted with disappointment yet hopeful that the remaining two acts would prove to be all that I had been led to believe.

Oxana Panchenko and Clair Thomas. Photo: Jake Walters

Part two – been – started with Lou Reed’s Venus in Furs and one of the female dancers clad in an opulent fur coat.  The dancer was soon joined onstage by the rest of the company in various different costumes that gave a nod to the glam rock era of both Reed and Bowie’s careers.  The cyclorama was removed to reveal the back of the stage which is normally populated by scenery, props and dancers away from the eyes of the audience.  The effect was impressive, giving the piece some much needed depth, both literally and metaphorically.  Next up was Reed’s Heroin, a devastating track that holds so much potential for a choreographer and dancer to explore.  On this occasion, we got a dancer in a unitard which was embellished with oversized syringes.  With the stage stripped bare and the compelling subject matter of heroin use being sung about, this part could have been poignant and impressive, but at best it was comical.  Unintentionally so.

Come again, which was the title of the final act, oddly saw a ballet barre at the back of the stage which the dancers used as if it was the uneven bars in a gymnasium.  I’m still not sure why.  The costumes returned to the glam rock style but were mismatched and created a cacophony of confusion for the audience.  There needed to be more cohesiveness from the themes to allow for some semblance of motif or motive.  Alas, we were left with what appeared to be a bunch of different ideas thrown randomly together. 

The final song of the evening was fittingly Bowie’s Jean Genie, which created a noticeable shift in audience mood.  The dancers appeared in the Twyla Tharp-esque red, white and black costumes and strutted with vibrancy to the song.  It was a shame there wasn’t more of this throughout the show as on this occasion, Clark nailed the nuances of Bowie’s track, and had the dancers testing their limits.  While the company received more thunderous applause from the audience at the conclusion of the show, I couldn’t help notice the hasty exit made by many people seated near myself in the stalls.  Kind of summed up how I felt, really.

Top photo:  Simon Williams by Jake Walters

The anticipated 2010 Melbourne International Arts Festival is this month!
Running from October 8 to 23 in venues across Melbourne, this year’s festival includes some must see dance works. 

Australian Premiere
Michael Clark Company – come, been and gone
The worlds of classical ballet, modern dance and explosive rock music collide head on, yet coexist in perfect harmony in this exhilarating Australian premiere of Michael Clark’s come, been and gone, at the Arts Centre, State Theatre from Friday 8 to Sunday 10 October.

The playful and provocative smash hit of the 2009 Edinburgh Festival is set to be this year’s must see Melbourne Festival event. Created to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Michael Clark Company, critically acclaimed come, been and gone is danced primarily to the music of the legendary David Bowie. It embraces the work of his key collaborators Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and Brian Eno as well as touching on some of his influences including The Velvet Underground and Kraftwerk amongst others.

Vertical Road. Photo: Richard Haughton

World Premiere Season
Akram Khan Company – Vertical Road
The internationally acclaimed Akram Khan Company makes its long awaited Melbourne debut with the World Premiere Season of Vertical Road at The CUB Malthouse, Merlyn Theatre from Tuesday 19 to Saturday 23 October.

Celebrated dancer and choreographer Akram Khan is known for bringing vitality and innovation to crosscultural, cross-disciplinary expression. His latest creation Vertical Road draws inspiration from universal myths of angels that symbolise ‘ascension’: the road between the earthly and the spiritual, the ‘vertical road’.

Khan has assembled a cast of extraordinarily talented performers from across Asia, Europe and the Middle East including Australia’s very own Paul Zivkovich and has worked with long-term collaborator composer, Nitin Sawhney, who has created a specially commissioned score for this thought-provoking piece. Balancing a carefully crafted structure and innovative lighting, Vertical Road has a richly diverse quality, played out through each performer’s different cultural interpretation of the human odyssey.

Dates: Tue 19 – Sat 23 Oct at 8pm
Venue: The CUB Malthouse, Merlyn Theatre

Haptic. Photo: Shin Yamagata

Australian Premiere
Hiroaki Umeda – Adapting for Distortion & Haptic
Digital sounds, neon-coloured lighting and minimalist movement combine to create a technologically charged world controlled by Japanese performer Hiroaki Umeda. Tokyo-based Umeda brings to Melbourne Festival two of his recent installations for body, sound and light, Adapting for Distortion and Haptic, playing at The CUB Malthouse, Merlyn Theatre from Thursday 14 to Sunday 17 October.

Umeda is a choreographer, dancer, sound artist and lighting designer whose work is minimal and radical, subtle and violent, and very much in touch with his contemporary Japanese roots. His movement style draws upon an eclectic training in ballet, hip-hop and butoh. A self-described pluridisciplinary artist, Umeda creates his work entirely from scratch; the lighting, music and video all devised on his laptop computer.

Distortion of time, change of movement and immobility are at the heart of Adapting for Distortion. Engulfed in computer generated sounds and optical effects, Umeda’s body seems to slowly fade away and go out of focus within the luminous lines and spirals, until it is a mere vibration, a shadow of its real self.
In Haptic, Umeda leaves behind computing and video projection to concentrate on the effects of light and colour. Beautiful bright colours shift and morph in relation to his fluid movements creating an exquisite visual and sonic experience. Umeda uses this performance to focus on the physical aspect of the perception of colour, not simply to show it, but to give substance to the relationship it has with dance.

Dates: Thu 14 – Sat 16 Oct at 8pm, Sun 17 Oct at 5pm
Venue: The CUB Malthouse, Merlyn Theatre
Warning: Loud Music, Strobe Lighting

For more information about the 2010 Melbourne International Arts Festival and ticket purchasing visit www.melbournefestival.com.au

Top photo: Simon Williams. Photo: Jake Walters

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