Oz Asia Festival. Dunstan Playhouse. 30 Sep 2015
Artists often take their inspiration from nature, but it is usually from what is seen or heard and rarely from what is un-sensed. Superposition is an artist’s attempt to make tangible what is essentially the ultimate in intangibility – the quantum world.
Superposition is a fusion of synthesized sound and computer generated imagery that assaults your senses. It is not an enjoyable experience, and nor is it un-enjoyable. It is provoking and arresting – it demands and commands your attention and if you can’t give it you have but one option, and that is to leave the ‘event’. That is exactly what some did, but only a few.
At its heart is science and mathematics, and it’s confusing. If you know nothing of quantum physics or informatics your enjoyment would be diminished, and seeing it several times would, I suspect, not fill in the gaps. The program notes aren’t of too much use either. I’m fortunate (or not) to have some training in mathematical physics and I could appreciate what creator Ryoji Ikeda was trying to say, but it’s dangerous to overstate your case. Ikeda’s Artist Statement in the programme notes concludes by saying that “Superposition is … foolhardily and quixotically aiming to explore the new kind of information through art.” Maybe foolhardily, because the quantum world defies common sense.
Suffice to say, Ikeda drew inspiration for his ‘event’ from the ambiguity and confusion that plagues a mere mortal’s attempt to explain and describe the quantum world.
The event comprised a perplexing and stunning array of graphic images projected onto multiple screens, sometimes with expositions of the underpinning data, and always accompanied by seemingly chaotic signal generated sounds. It was loud. Your body felt the ‘music’ – your sinuses vibrated. At times two actors manipulated electronic and mechanical equipment on stage and we saw graphical and mathematical representations of what they were doing. The pace was relentless, and each spectacular electronic display was outdone by the next.
Can our lives be expressed in mathematics? Is reality deterministic? Who knows? Philosophy aside, the audience loved it.
Kym Clayton
When: 29 to 30 Sep
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: Closed
Oz Asia Festival. M.O.V.E. Theatre. Nexus Arts. 2 Oct 2015
Dear Taiwan,
Who would have thought to mount a celebration of John Cage's 101st birthday? Cage is not the first composer one might have imagined would turn on the Taiwanese creative juices.
Cage was the American who delivered the music of silence, who deconstructed instruments, created "indeterminacy" as a musical concept. He was the great avant-garde original of the 20th Century. And it seems, you, Taiwan's M.O.V.E. Theatre, have fallen in love with his sounds, his philosophies and created both visual art and science around his themes. You have called it "sound immersion experimental" and turned him into experiential theatre for millennials.
Here in Adelaide for OzAsia, you have made the Nexus performance space dark and uncomfortable, so the people must stand, sit on the floor or perch uncertainly on the edge of the stage or the odd rough pine box. You allow them to move around but warn them not to touch the "instruments" in the blackout darkness. Then you play lights here and there as sonic effects are brought into use. Sometimes audience members help by pulling a string or two on some chime suspended aloft.
You add a dancer in white who shrugs on a suspended jacket connected by wires to an opened piano frame and then elicits certain notes as she strains invisible elements. There is a musician to play at this raw piano belly. She pounds and strokes the strings with soft sticks and mallets.
Upon the stage boxes contain clear plastic tubes which, when activated, rise and fall under pneumatic pressure, a laboratory pipe organ of some sort, squeezing out pipe whistles some soft and some so strident they assault the senses.
The dancer moves through the audience, adding percussive complements. White lines create a box in which the dancer struggles with a wooden box and it drums and thumps and then, as she leaps upon it, rattles wild staccato like a human castanet. Piece by piece, light falls upon the boxes around the room and new sounds are released. Is that rain on the roof or the shimmer of a shamanistic tube rattle? As one listens in the darkness, the sounds become layered and build into what is often a pleasant Cage-style sort of tune. Or not.
The random aspects of Cage philosophy are thrown into the mix, most exquisitely when a child in the audience is invited to follow a light through the room and then help to switch on and off and off and on a line of hanging light globes. The child innately understands the expectation of the piece and it is beautiful.
From the beginning and the one constant through the hour-long show is a pleasurable metranomic sound.
Finally, under a shaft of blinding light, it is illuminated as water droplets making controlled splashes into a glass beaker.
And thus, dear Taiwan, you bring us a night of strangeness and auditory adventure. Very serious and mysterious. Science and art and history and love in a big, dark wonderland.
Thank you.
Samela Harris
When: 2 to 3 Oct
Where: Nexus Arts
Bookings: Closed
Gilbert and Sullivan Society of SA. Arts Theatre. 1 Oct 2015
The magic of theatre. When it happens, when one realises that, within the big black box, one has become part of one great big single organism bonded in the shared pleasure of the moment, it is profoundly good. It is what theatre is all about.
This sensation was extraordinarily intense on the opening night of the Gilbert and Sullivan Society's production of Guys and Dolls. The audience responded to the performance like a big beating heart, responsive to each nuance.
G&S has an excellent reputation for mounting lots of slick and professional musicals, especially the light opera of its eponymous composers. But this show in The Arts Theatre steps it up a Broadway notch.
The teamwork between director Karen Sheldon, choreographer Kerry Hauber, and musical director Martin Cheney reflects both understanding and generosity of spirit as well as expertise. Interestingly, all three have honed skills with Northern Light Theatre Company.
Of course, Guys and Dolls is one of the great musicals of all time. Based on a Damon Runyon story scripted by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows, it is rich in classic characters, love and fun, humour and satire, absurdity and redemption, all gift-wrapped in Frank Loesser's score of evergreen hits.
The director says her first participation in Guys and Dolls was a catalyst to her making theatre her life path and it is still her favourite show. This shows. But, of course, you can't make a hit production without some pretty talented performers. Sheldon has found a full complement. Her principals are stunning. Then again, any show that his Nicholas Bishop in a minor role has to have a creamy cast. Bishop plays the constantly-snacking gambler Nicely Nicely Johnson and when he sings Sit Down You're Rocking the Boat, it is nothing less than a wild show-stopper. The audience applauds and hollers itself into exhaustion.
Jason Bensen is the official star of the show, playing the inveterate gambler Sky Masterson who accepts a bet that he can convince a Salvation Army girl to go on a date to Cuba with him. Bensen is suave and handsome with good acting skills and a voice which can carry the Sinatra-famous songs such as I've Never Been in Love Before, albeit that no-one can actually match Old Blue Eyes. What Bensen does is create a strong, romantic character and a real sense of chemistry with the female lead, Sophia Bubner playing Sister Sarah Brown, the missionary girl. She is copybook perfect in her part. She has to carry some fairly tricky songs with treacherous high notes, but she does so with sweetness and charm, going on to belt out some big ones like If I was a Bell. She has the most beautiful and interesting qualities to her voice.
Ever-loving Adelaide is the other female lead; the showgirl in love with the gangster Nathan Detroit. And here's one Jeri Williams, an American with a stunning, big Broadway voice, masses of chutzpah and comic presence and, on top of it all, dancing skills. She's breathtaking. And partnered by a peer in the form of Brendan Cooney who has a splendid, distinctive voice along with all the stage skills upon which a comic-musicals player needs to call. These two performers seem almost born to play these renowned roles. All around them are good players giving their all: Ian Brown, Raymond Cullen, Nathan Quadrio, and Lauren Noble.
This is all done with good sets and costumes and wonderfully spirited and atmospheric choreography which makes all dancers look good. This is a big, blockbuster stage show with a large male ensemble as the New York gamblers and a large female troupe as the Hot Box showgirls. They not only have to turn on a diverse array of dance numbers, but some important choral work. Oh, how beautiful it is to hear the harmonies of these singers. Martin Cheney has them rehearsed to perfection, all the while accompanied by what feels like a massive, powerful orchestra down there in the pit. It is eleven-strong. Its string section is just dreamy. In toto, it has found its balance with the miked voices and it spreads the joy. A lovely feeling of enthusiasm and engagement seems to rise from that invisible underworld and connect itself with the audience. It is not a common phenomenon and it is part of what makes this show so very special.
Buy a ticket to this one - even if you have to sell your children to do so.
Samela Harris
When: 1 to 10 Oct
Where: Arts Theatre
Bookings: gandssa.com.au
Photography by Timeless Event Photography
Dancenorth/Batik. Oz Asia Festival. 30 Sep 2015
Profound moments of epiphany, for audiences and artists, come along only so often. When they do, they change the way work is created, because that change allows an unseen truth or reality of human existence and interaction to appear as if in a flash of brightly lit realisation.
Jane Austen, Mary Shelly, Berthold Brecht, Pablo Picasso, James Joyce, and Vittorio Di Sica wielded ancient and modern art forms in such a way they built new foundations for how we see the world, each other, and how we interact. They were forces for change in human consciousness still manifest today.
Kyle Page and Amber Haines’ Dancenorth, in collaboration with Japanese company Batik’s Josh Mu, Mamiko De and Rie Teranishi Batik have unleashed something new and profound for contemporary dance in their work Spectra.
Their marriage of Japanese movement form Butoh with western contemporary dance is extraordinary from a philosophical viewpoint for contemporary dance work development.
Buddhism is central to Spectra. Basic knowledge of Buddhism’s focus on meditation geared towards warding off distraction and the egotism all humans have in them, to reach clearer realisation of what’s true, important and what’s merely transient is all you really need to know. As for Butoh, it’s a very assured, clear, gracious and ceremonial form of dance requiring extreme concentration. It makes sense then, that to successfully create dance melding the conscious fast and furious ‘look at me’ vanity in performance of western contemporary dance, with the slower, considered and impersonal, ritualised grace of Butoh, a completely new performance style is needed.
Spectra is a first demonstration of it, successfully gripping opening night audience’s hearts and minds in something so breathtakingly new, Buddhism in motion.
How? Spectra is feature length work in which the ensemble moves, to use an analogy, like a series of falling dominos. Their every measured brush, touch, jump, pull and slide neatly creates a sense of place and awareness greater than each individual.
There’s total focus on expressing something collectively, which has no place for a sense of the individual. When there is a solo, such as Amber Haines’ delicately poetic series of lift and glides, it is performed in such a way that any communicated sense of distinct personality is totally absent. There’s a moment of contemplation before action, something rarely seen in other contemporary work.
Emotion and personality in the work comes again and again from the shapes and relationships between the dancers, many mesmerising not just in their beauty but also in what they seem to say about how small humanity is amidst the forces of time and pure physics
David O’Brien
When: 29 to 30 Sept
Where: The Space
Bookings: Closed
Oz Asia Festival. Dunstan Playhouse. 26 Sep 2015
Masks have a profoundly significant role in the performing arts cultures of so many nations. Topeng in Indonesian means ‘mask dance’. This production makes beautifully clear a truism of this art form. The mask does not move, but it speaks. How sad Topeng Cirebon is offered for only one performance. It has so much to offer for those seeking experiences of performance, and music styles completely new to them.
Topeng performance comes from the coastal city of West Java, Cirebon. Two styles are performed; the spiritual Losari style and the more showy Selangit style. By alternating styles the two leading dancers of each form, Neni Losari and Inusi Kertapati, entrance the audience, drawing attention not only to the physical differences between each style overall, but also to how each mask ‘speaks’ of character, experience, status, even the circumstances the mask is relating to - be it in a directly or indirectly spiritual or ritual context.
Supporting the choreography are 17 brightly costumed musicians playing gamelan compositions whose performance alone is gripping. A predominantly percussion based musical style melded with wind instrumentation, the gamelan moves with remarkable ease in tempo and nuance. Sometimes working with the choreography, sometimes differentiating in beat and tempo and working against the choreography, the music heightens the performance’s depth and significance.
The costuming is rich and ceremonial. Each flick and turn of cloth holds significance and meaning. Each mask expresses emotions through skilful physical deployment and exacting choreography, down to the detailed movement of single fingers.
Bravo.
David O’Brien
When: 26 Sept
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: Closed