Dance Territories

Sense and Sensibility choreographed by Cindy Van Acker & Perrine Valli (Switerzland) and  Matthew Day and Sandra Parker (Australia). Four choreographers. Four solo works. Four riveting explorations into the power of minimalist dance.

What is the most that can be achieved with the least? This is the question posed by Dance Territories, a sequence of four solo dances from Switzerland and Australia that explore the possibilities afforded by a minimalist choreographic language. Sparsely rendered, precisely performed and possessed of an undeniable elegance, these performances are at once both commanding and graceful, decisive arguments in favour of a stripped-back gestural aesthetic.

Impasse

Denis Beaubois, William McClure & Jeff Stein (Australia)

Push your way into the experiential extreme of an ‘impossible space’ – where physical pressure, light and sound combine to create a surreal accumulation of sensations.

Denis Beaubois, William McClure and Jeff Stein were members of Sydney’s Gravity Feed Ensemble – an architectural performance-theatre group that employed large sets to create potent, subversive and densely atmospheric events.

For Impasse they’ve created a tangible rendering and intensification of space: a unique experience where space becomes substance, in which visitors must struggle to carve out a path with their bodies, as they move through an unfamiliar physical and aural landscape.

Surreal, immersive and challenging, Impasse is an extraordinary, densely packed journey that will change the way you see, feel and hear the world.

Created by Denis Beaubois, William McClure and Jeff Stein

Sound Design Nick Wishart

Lighting Design Sydney Bouhaniche

Production Hedge

Produced by Insite Arts

Hold

An intriguing performance-installation from David Cross  (New Zealand) invites participants to step into the void, braving primal fears and testing the limits of trust.

Part reality TV ordeal, part extreme performance art engagement, Hold draws participants into a dynamic relationship between play, interaction and phobic space as they push through an assortment of physical and psychological barriers.

This highly immersive, multi-sensory architectural experience creates an uncanny yet intimate one-on-one encounter between the audience member and an unseen performer. Crucially, it also demands unusual levels of physical and psychological interaction, as they navigate a spatially complex and disorientating pathway, all the while suspended above the ground by cushions of air.

Walking into Hold, was a shift outside my comfort zone. Part fear and unsettling, and part curiosity and pleasure.

Weather

Lucy Guerin Inc

From one of Australia’s most renowned choreographic talents comes an atmospheric new dance work, a homage to the breathtaking power of the elements.

Celebrated dance artist and choreographer Lucy Guerin explores the extremities of our ever-changing climate in the world premiere of her latest dance production, Weather. An immersive voyage into the elements around us, Weather pits the human form against the uncontrollable power of nature, conjuring the thrill and awe that these forces inspire.

An arresting new work born from a co-production between Lucy Guerin’s Melbourne-based company and Montreal’s Place des Arts, it draws on the inventive design skills of Robert Cousins and the expansive music of Oren Ambarchi to create an intriguing exploration of the choreographic formations and visceral affects of weather.

Mesmerising and intense, Weather is a dynamic expression of the tides, the winds, the sun and the rain – a celebration of the ephemeral forces that shape our lives and the physical body’s connection to the natural world.

Desh

Akram Khan Company (UK)

Having taken the 2010 Melbourne Festival by storm with his visceral Vertical Road, dance phenomenon Akram Khan now returns with this mesmerising one-man show, a whimsical reflection on his ancestral homeland.

Born in London to Bangladeshi parents, Khan has over the past two decades become one of modern choreography’s finest observers of the migrant experience. With DESH (Bangladeshi for ‘homeland’) he turns the spotlight decisively on his own story and identity.

Spanning continents and generations, DESH is beautiful, direct and grand in scope, a dance rich in comic flourishes and theatrical asides, underpinned throughout by Khan’s inimitable merging of traditional Indian kathak dance and the precise gestures of contemporary movement – fluid as water in one moment, taut and pronounced in the next.

Weaving his way across an enchanting landscape created by Oscar-winning set designer Tim Yip (production designer for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and Yeast Culture, Khan explores the Bangladesh of his childhood imaginings as breathtaking projections transport him to a chance encounter with an elephant or into a journey through the treetops and down the rivers of his father’s childhood. Orchestral strings swell alongside traditional Bangladeshi chants, as Khan shows us the complexity and untrammelled beauty of a country and people still divided and uncertain.

Playful and imaginative, intimate and deeply affecting, DESH is a masterwork from a performer at the peak of his powers, a wilfully magical reflection on the indelible ties of family and culture, and the elusive nature of the place we call home.



http://www.akramkhancompany.net/html/akram_production.php?productionid=37

"I am fascinated by water inside the earth, it is the core principle of the way I think and move, fluidity within form... and Bangladesh has an abundance of both water and earth... I am fascinated to search for and explore a story that addresses the tragedy and comedy of lives in Bangladesh."

- Akram Khan

Dolorosa/Gaude!

Astra Chamber Music (Australia)


Melbourne’s Astra Choir takes choral sound on transformational pathways – from a key contemporary Romanian work, back into musical history and forward to electronic spectra from two of Australia's present-day sonic pioneers.

Performed at one of the city's architectural and acoustic marvels, St Mary Star of the Sea church in West Melbourne, Dolorosa/Gaude! represents two images of the traditional figure of Mary: the grieving victim of human conflict, as portrayed by Romanian Dan Dediu in a stunning harmonic pageant of the medieval poem Stabat mater dolorosa; and the joyful affirmation of Nature as ‘star of the sea’, as laid out in a choral tableau by Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara.

Australian composer Carl Vine places human singing and laughter in an endangered natural world in his Hebrew psalm setting for choir and organ. Recorder celebrity Genevieve Lacey joins the choir and computer-art composers Steve Stelios Adam and Michael Hewes in music, that moves between the ‘real’ and the transfigured.

Dolorosa/Gaude! is a pilgrimage through the worlds of the sacred, the ritualistic and the natural, in a spirit of sonic experiment and adventure.

Dan Dediu Stabat Mater dolorosa, 10 madrigals after Gesualdo and Verdi
Carl Vine They Shall Laugh and Sing
Anthony Briggs Credo
Steve Stelios Adam Et Døgn – One Day
Steve Stelios Adam Waves
Michael Hewes An Imaginary Hymn (World Premiere)
Einojuhani Rautavaara Song of Mary: Star of the Sea/Gaude!
With choral pieces by Stravinsky, Verdi, Gesualdo and Gombert
Recorders Genevieve Lacey
Organ Rhys Boak
Electronics Steve Stelios Adam and Michael Hewes
The Astra Choir
Conductor John McCaughey

After Life

Michel van der Aa (Netherlands)

Libretto by Michel van der Aa, after Hirokazu Kore-eda

Universally acclaimed and utterly unique, Michel van der Aa’s cross-genre masterwork grapples with a compelling, singular question: what was the defining moment of your life?

Could you distil your life to a single instant? A moment that, if all else were to fade, you would choose to live with for the rest of eternity? Michel van der Aa, house composer for the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam and one of contemporary opera’s most assured and ambitious voices, burrows deep into the very question of why we live with this profound contemporary masterpiece.

As six lost souls gather in limbo, they are asked to decide on the one memory each of them will take with them into the afterlife. Those who cannot choose must remain, trapped in purgatory until they can find a way to move on.

Michel van der Aa (Netherlands)

Libretto by Michel van der Aa, after Hirokazu Kore-eda

Universally acclaimed and utterly unique, Michel van der Aa’s cross-genre masterwork grapples with a compelling, singular question: what was the defining moment of your life?

Could you distil your life to a single instant? A moment that, if all else were to fade, you would choose to live with for the rest of eternity? Michel van der Aa, house composer for the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam and one of contemporary opera’s most assured and ambitious voices, burrows deep into the very question of why we live with this profound contemporary masterpiece.

As six lost souls gather in limbo, they are asked to decide on the one memory each of them will take with them into the afterlife. Those who cannot choose must remain, trapped in purgatory until they can find a way to move on.

Based on the acclaimed 1998 Japanese film of the same name, this landmark Netherlands production is a heart-rending fusion of music, theatre and film. The textured vocals of the six singers, set to an ethereal score performed by a 23-piece orchestra, blend with an intriguing element of documentary: as the characters struggle to choose a single, defining memory, their stories are intercut with footage of real people contemplating the same decision.

Grandiose in scope, Van der Aa’s audacious blending of arts makes for a fitting final operatic presentation from Festival Director Brett Sheehy, who throughout his work with festivals around Australia has sought to champion contemporary opera as a vivid and essential 21st century art-form. After Life joins such works as Jonathan Mills’s Eternity Man, Jonathan Dove’s Flight, Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar and Pascal Dusapin’s Medea in bringing us another compelling demonstration of contemporary opera’s artistry and vitality.

Composer, Stage Director, Video Script & Direction Michel van der Aa
Technical Production Development Frank van der Weij
Costume Designer Robby Duiveman
Film Projection Flint Louis Hignett, Bert Hornback, Dee Jager, Esther Jager, Tessa Marwick,
Juul Muller
Conductor Wouter Padberg

Performers
Aiden Roderick Williams
Mr Walter Richard Suart
Sarah Marijje van Stralen
Ilana Margriet van Reisen
Chief Yannick-Muriel Noah
Bryna Helena Rasker

Representatives of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

I don't believe in outer space

The Forsythe Company (Germany)

A work by William Forsythe

Legendary choreographer William Forsythe presents the Australian premiere of an ambitious masterwork – an unmissable event for anyone with an interest in the past, present or future of contemporary dance.

Commanding and enigmatic, I don’t believe in outer space is a brilliant inclusion in a stellar choreographic career – one that has deeply influenced the very trajectory of contemporary dance.
Renowned for his rigorous and inventive choreography, Forsythe returns to Melbourne Festival for the first time since 2001, when he stunned sold-out audiences with Eidos:Telos, a formidable exploration of memory and time. With I don’t believe in outer space he has created a whimsical and poignant investigation of life itself, in all its physicality, fragility and inevitable mortality.

Invoking the artefacts of popular culture, Forsythe pieces together a stunningly complex collage of images and voices, casting a playful yet sober eye on the nature of our existence.

Pulsing to a fractured live soundtrack, this surreal opus sees molecular interactions, social intrusions and sentiments from the disco era bleed together against the backdrop of an uncaring, unfathomable spacescape.

As the 17 dancers of the Forsythe Company move through the comedic, poetic choreography – taut, fluid and precise – they display a discipline and power the equal of any ensemble in the world today, giving a powerhouse performance worthy of this exquisite paean to the potential and beauty of movement.

Music Thom Willems
Sound Design Niels Lanz
Graphics Dietrich Krüger
Costumes Dorothee Merg
Light Tanja Rühl, Ulf Naumann
Dramaturgical assistance Freya Vass-Rhee
Dancers Yoko Ando, Cyril Baldy, Esther Balfe, Dana Caspersen, Katja Cheraneva, Brigel Gjoka, Amancio Gonzalez, Josh Johnson, David Kern, Fabrice Mazliah, Roberta Mosca, Tilman O`Donnell*, Jone San Martin, Yasutake Shimaji, Elizabeth Waterhouse*, Riley Watts, Ander Zabala

Membra Jesu Nostri

The Illustrated Man (Australia)

Performed under the majestic arches of St Paul’s Cathedral, Membra Jesu Nostri is a unique contemporary re-imagining of a masterwork of Western sacred music.

Two talented Melbourne-based ensembles join forces under the direction of award-winning conductor Peter Tregear to present a stirring vocal and visual performance of Membra Jesu Nostri, a set of seven short cantatas first created for Holy Week in 1680 by German-Danish composer Dietrich Buxtehude.

Berlin-based visual designer Christian Herrnbeck has composed an arresting series of photographic projections to accompany the performance, providing a stunning contemporary commentary on the Christian idea of a God-made-man.

Performed by Melbourne’s finest young vocal soloists, The Consort of Melbourne – who appeared at last year’s Melbourne Festival with the Kronos Quartet – along with the accomplished string ensemble Monash Sinfonia, this stunning baroque score is given a suitably exquisite showcase in a truly majestic setting.

Conceived & Directed by Peter Tregear

Visual Design Christian Herrnbeck
The Consort of Melbourne

Monash Sinfonia