The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Page 14

ARTS 14 The Sydney Morning Herald Friday, November 3, 1995 Change of heart for AB ydney's dress circle festival byjillSykes wWWww-WX I (sMfc'3pft pMmuMiM Www' 7 G3E2 lIlbMlllBSV'rt 1 tis V.J I it i yf I i i I Hfelt Ml' tji l' St 4ft -vju SUDDENLY, there has been a reversal of form in two key areas of disappointment over repertoire choices by the Australian Ballet's outgoing artistic director, Maina Gielgud. In 1996, her 14th and final season for the company, there will be a profusion of Australian works and an infusion of contemporary ballets by Europe's leading choreographers, Jiri Kylian and William Forsythe. Stephen Baynes's bewitching work Beyond Bach, premiered in Melbourne seven weeks ago, will open the Opera House season in March, sharing a triple bill with the drama of Kenneth MacMillan's Las Her-manas and the first, long-awaited choreography by William Forsythe to be brought into the repertoire, In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated It should be a powerful program, though you have to hope that the beauty and delicacy of Baynes's work won't be swamped by the extrovert character of the other two. Baynes has been commissioned to do another piece, to be premiered in Melbourne in June. His fellow resident choreographer, Stanton Welch, will also create a new work, Red Earth, to music by Peter Scul-thorpe, which will make its debut in an all-new Australian triple bill in the November section of the Sydney season.

Stephen Page, the artistic director of Bangarra Dance Theatre, will choreograph mmi i i tin MauMittMis- New Moves of vital importance Alchemy to music by his brother David Page on his debut with the Australian Ballet Meryl Tankard, whose name has been added to the title of the Australian Dance Theatre since she became artistic director, will return to the company on which she tested her creative mettle in a choreographic workshop nearly 20 years ago. Her work is as yet untitled. Jiri Kylian will come to Australia to mount his 1985 work Stepping Stones, by far his most recent choreography to enter the company repertoire. It will be presented with La Sylphide, first in Melbourne and then in Gielgud's final Sydney program. Sydney audiences will also see a revival of the great John Cranko ballet Onegin.

In announcing the company's 1996 season in Melbourne on Wednesday, Gielgud told a select audience of media guests and supporters to "think about, and recognise, and really take in this extraordinary wealth of talent you have in this She made no reference to her forced departure a year ago, the company's board elected not to extend her contract beyond 1996 but she added details of one commission that will not mature until 1997, after she has gone. Stanton Welch will choreograph Cinderella to the Prokofiev score arranged by John Lanchbery, with designs by Kristian Fredrikson. BALLET BYJILLSYKES New Moves, Beckett Theatre, November 1. the nifty construction of this entertaining and unexpected work with a genuine spark of individuality. Stephen Baynes's admiration for the choreography of William Forsythe and Mats Ek is obvious in his duet Dialogue.

However, Baynes is also striking out in a new direction of personal engagement for his dancers. There is no mistaking the intensity of the relationship beautifully defined in the choreography, and the heart-wrenching performance of it by Nicole Rhodes and Kip Gamblin. Paul de Masson offers a stylishly crafted work for three couples to piano studies by Scriabin, in which the highlight is the vivid and speedy central duet excitingly danced by Vicki Attard and Geon van der WysL Adam Marchant has a superb artist in Miranda Coney as the focus of his duet Paths; she is partnered by Matthew Trent Marc Cassidy correctly titles Just a Bit of Fun, his breezy solo for Steven Woodgate. Yasuyuki Endo is contrasting. Serious in his self-performed solo Distance.

There is so much value in this choreographic venture that it's disappointing to see it crammed between the Perth and Sydney seasons. Only three performances are possible. The chance to see their work in performance and get audience feedback is as important to the artists. There should be more of both. Sr '( k.

The 1996 Sydney Festival will be positioned around the harbour, and Circular Quay will be its stage. Steel preferred to call it his "festival Though elsewhere in the city there will be other events quite crucial to the festival's overall success, box office or otherwise, it is to this festival precinct that he hopes Sydney will throng. Perhaps this explains the idiosyncratic nature of the program he has unveiled with characteristic flourish. His program is quite unashamedly biased toward two particular kinds of art forms. The 1996 festival is top heavy with theatre and a quite specific kind of theatre art at that and the visual arts.

Nor are they separate pursuits on the contrary, it is their mix, the way the two artforms have been combined into a synthesis of visual ideas, puns, illusions and events, that gives the program its distinguishing flavour. On the forecourt of the Opera House, for example, Spain's Els Comediants most important outdoor performance company in the according to Steel), will perform Dimonis (The Devils), their world-famous performance work which takes the audience with them "through fire (literally) into Holland's Vis a Vis The Quay and its environs are the perfect milieu for an invigorating festival program, writes ANGELA BENNIE. of works by 20 international artists on the concept of tolerance. am You, Artists against Violence has been seen around the world, "from Reykjavik to as the program puts it. Almost as silent, as if in witness, on the Opera House's forecourt opposite will stand eight flagpoles carrying flags designed by Aboriginal artists from the BoomalH Aboriginal Co-op, dealing with the site on which they stand, Bennelong Point, and the tribe whose land it was.

The awful CML hoarding decking the pathway leading up to the Opera House will be covered in an exhibition of art dealing with that particular site's own controversy, and Maria Kozic's Cherry Twins two inflatable characters known as "cherries" will fly above the roof of ICI House. And, tucked in beneath Circular Quay railway station, but like an echo of the eight flagpoles and their strange fruit across the way, eight performers perched 4 metres high on very thin poles, known collectively as Strange Fruit, will perform their PTIMISM was i rewarded at the Aus- tralian Ballet's choreographic work shop, New Moves. Among the 10 short works there were several sparks of fresh creative talent, some well-crafted pieces and new insights into the mind of an established company choreographer. The first spark came from Gaetano Del Monaco, a member of the corps de ballet whose Vision of the Rose immediately establishes an atmosphere of mystery and tension, underlined by the lush score of Graeme Koehne's Rainforest The suppleness of Nicolina Campbell and quick-moving individuality of Marc Cassidy build on that first impression with theatrical flair and technical fluency in conveying interesting body shapes that are there for more than their arresting visual quality. Josef Christianson's 3 Distraction borrows more than the costumes from other productions.

But if the choreography is derivative, it is also very well handled, the spark here being more in the piece's structure and dramatic development than the invention of steps. And it does provide a powerfully emotive duet for Miranda Coney and Richard Bowman. Adrian Burnett's Pitch'nSway is a blokey duet of engaging and deceptive simplicity, cloaked in swinging moods of complicity and competition that give it a crisp edge. Dancers Marc Cassidy and Geon van der Wyst give a sense of working out in a gym as they build on shifts of weight and balance to map tEfc fiLENN ELSTON'S A MIDSUMMER! NIGHT'S erni UNDER THE STARS ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS 1996 Season Fantastic Ticket Discount A Midsummer Nights Dream under the stars in the Royal Botantic Gardens has become a January tradition since its acclaimed Sydney premier in 1993. Sydney Morning Herald readers are again being offered a fantastic discount on tickets, normally priced from $30.90 to $36.90.

For the seven performance dates listed below, you can book tickets at the exceptional price of $24.90 (subject to availability). Herald Dream Tickets Offer READER AS IF to a magnet, all eyes turn to the harbour. This is what happens when you are in Sydney, whether you live here or just visit. Eventually, you come to the harbour. It is Sydney, it is what defines it Anthony Steel has never been in any doubt of this.

And there has never been any doubt in his mind that it should be to the harbour that all eyes and feet must turn every year when Sydney dons its festival hat and parties on into the oleander nights of its high summer in January. Right from the very beginning as festival director, Steel has said the harbour and its foreshores should be the focus of the festival and that he intended to make it so. Last year saw tentative beginnings: with the Sydney Opera House itself at one end and the Wharf Theatre at the other end, both included for the first time as official venues for festival activities, and with a tighter focus of official festival events in and around the city, there was a sense of a gathering-in of focus to the one single point. This year, in the 1996 program unveiled yesterday, those tentative beginnings have been consolidated. OFFER stamped envelope for safe return of your tickets to: Herald Dream Tickets PO Box 130, Kings Cross 2011 Streets alive with surreal seduction "Because it is one of the most extraordinary performances by Donal McCann of one of the most extraordinary scripts or texts, so poetic and so moving, that I have ever seen on any stage anywhere.

It is an experience in the theatre for anyone who is interested in the word 'theatre'." But what about those who are not interested in the word Well, there is Glass and there is that rare and special event, a Meryl Tankard Australian Dance Theatre performance, Songs with Mara. There is what he calls his "special delight" at the Sydney Entertainment Centre, Stars of Illusion, which presents "for our amazement" the greatest illusionists of our time. There is, too, the Flying Fruit Fly circus; and, there are, of course, those old favourites, the Domain concerts. Steel says his brief has always been "keep it keep it accessible. He believes his festival of "Quayworks" down by the harbour, which spill across into the people's Domain and into the city itself, has fulfilled that brief.

"It is my opinion that it is absolutely imperative that the Sydney Festival establish a character and a personality of its own. I believe this is now beginning to happen," he said. major festival. But I spy a danger which applies not just to Melbourne but to all Australia and indeed far beyond in the race to the totemic year 2000: and that danger lies in the gradual festivalisation of culture. Of course, festivals are fun.

They brighten our lives and cities and give us the chance to experience things we wouldn't otherwise see. But, as festivals proliferate across the globe, it becomes harder for each one to acquire an individual identity. And the artistic life of a city or country stems, I believe, from its permanent indigenous organisations: the orchestras and choirs, theatre, ballet and opera companies that often struggle to exist, on barely adequate subsidies, from one year to the next. Festiv als, of course, offer the benefits of cultural exchange and open our eyes to new experiences. In a sense, they're like parties in which life is lived at great intensity for short periods of time.

But it is vital that cultural life continues after the circus has left town. As Australia gears itself up to the millennial celebrations and the Sydney Olympics, it should remember that a country not only needs the heady excitement of international festivals: it should also continue to cultivate, patiently, quietly and consistently, the often exquisite flowers in its own back garden. equally strange outdoor performance and dance work, The Field All this, by the way, will be free. In fact, the Quay and its environs will be awash 1 with performances of every type. Inside the Opera House the National Dance Company of Guinea, "which drives its audience into a frenzy" with its drumming and its spectacle, will contrast with the contemplative dream state of Philip Glass's single concert, when he performs his work, including a series of etudes for solo piano, one of which has been commissioned especially for the festival.

Across the water, the MCA's Amex Foundation Hall will become the festival's late-night cabaret space. Yet while the harbour is the heart of Steel's festival, it is ironic that its soul will probably be elsewhere the Seymour Centre, of all places. Here, Steel will present what he believes is the very core of the festival the Royal Court production of the new Irish work, The Steward of Christendom, which comes with overwhelming reviews from the international press. "I am quite willing to declare now that my favourite work in the whole program would be this play," says Steel in defence of yet another Irish play as the festival's chief drawcard. Melbourne Festival diary for the extraordinary impact of his generation which roughly includes Clive James, Germaine Greer, Barry Humphries and John Pilger on British life and letters.

But Schofield's Melbourne jamboree has proved that people don't just want one-off cultural events: they also come to festivals to learn. A Barbara Cook masterclass for young singers attracted a thousand people and the daily lunchtime forums have been decently packed. Why not take the process even further? Brian McMaster, who runs the Edinburgh Festival, has recently initiated the idea of study days where you can, if you wish, learn about the background to a particular writer or composer. They are hugely popular and suggest people don't just want an ecstatic thrill from art: they crave information and insight. Melbourne, in fact, seems to me the very model of a modern jHornfag Umlb performance troupe, using its quite breathtaking command of technical wizardry and visual comedy, will perform Central Park atop a huge realistic set "that does the Across the water, another quite bizarre performance will also be taking place, but over days and days, at the will of the weather, biological imperative and loads of hype.

The controversial American artist Jeff Koons will create his Puppy, a 1 2.4 high sculpture of a west highland white terrier, made from 60,000 tonnes of soil and some 50,000 flowering plants. It will sit, growing, outside the Museum of Contemporary Art and gaze vacantly across Steel's "precinct" to one of the iconic wonders of the 20th century on the opposite forecourt Nearby on the Puppy's right, France's performance artists, Pesce Crudo, will perform Negrabox, in which a huge black box sprouts people who then perform a mix of circus antics, performance art and dithering, slithering theatre; while above them, on the railway line, in silence will stand an exhibition in every field, whether it be highbrow or popular culture. We live increasingly in an age that sanctifies trash, that treats art as a branch of sociology and that is terrified of value judgments. But Schofield's principle, which I wholeheartedly applaud, seems to be to go for the best in every field: so Les Arts Florissants share the same stage as Barbara Cook and the romantic virtuosity of Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust takes its place alongside the Mephistophelian cunning of American illusionist Ricky Jay. This is genuine populism, not diluting the product but making the best available to the largest number of people.

Not everything, of course, quite comes off. IHOS Opera's To Traverse Water, which took place in a chilly, bum-numbing dockside warehouse, was a laudably ambitious attempt to encompass the migrant experience. But, for all its mixture of Byzantine music and fire-and- The PRIVILEGE Guardian's drama critic, MICHAEL BILLINGTON, reviews the last week of the festival for the Herald I 3xn Jiff rHlFi linders Street 5pm: That is the title of one of my favourite paintings in the National Gallery of Victoria. It is a quasi-Expressionist work showing a phalanx of square-jawed businessmen in brown suits dashing for commuter trains. It was painted in the 1950s and makes a fascinating contrast with modern Melbourne.

The earnest suits are still there but my abiding impression, as a visiting festival critic, is of a once-straitlaced city that has learned to let its hair down. Surreal images greet you around every corner. My first encounter, going for a Sunday morning stroll, was with three men clad in orange body stockings and boasting cockatoo hair who struck silver cymbals across their stomachs: I learned later they were a street-theatre group called Chrome IV. Mingling with the crowds on the Southgate riverside terraces, I also noticed knots of children following a Pied Piper figure trailed by a box filled with self-propelling plants. And I later took a tram festooned with botanical greenery.

If the first job of a festival is to enliven the city streets and embrace the people, then Leo Schofield's Melbourne bonanza certainly succeeds. But his festival also strikes an old-fashioned blow for excellence 6 JL. water images, I learned less about the alienation felt by many Australian Greeks than I did from a Mike Leigh play on a similar theme a few years back. Playbox also presented a Japanese play about Nagasaki, The Head of Mary, that disquietingly implied that nuclear devastation may almost be justified if it leads to religious rebirth. But every festival has its ambitious failures.

What makes Melbourne so seductive is that the festival not only impinges on daily life and is based on quality control, but is also full of lively debate. Robert Hughes's lecture on Art and Identity not only attracted a vast, fashionable audience it felt like the intellectual equivalent of the Melbourne Cup but also crackled with ideas pungently expressed. In his talk, Hughes spoke of the concreteness of the Australian language and the scepticism of the nativ character, which may be one reason To book tickets at the discount price, simply fill in the coupon below, Send coupon with payments (cheque or money order) and a self-addressed Please send me tickets to A Midsummer Night's Dream at the special nriro nf toA on fsftatinn subiect to availability). I would like to attend the performance, starting at 8.30pm, on Saturday, January 6 Tuesday, January 9 Thursday, January 11 Monday, January 8 Wednesday, January 10 Thursday, January 4 Friday, January 5 Name: Address: Phnno- Second choice if first is unavailable. Allow 7 days for processing.

Make me chequesmoney oraers payaoie ro uream ncneis This offer applies only to the purchase of tickets to A Midsummer Night's Dream performances during the 1996 season indicated above. This offer cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer. All arrangements for supply of product and services are directly between the supplier and customer and are not the responsibility of The Sydney Morning Herald..