WRITE RESPONSE

Jackeys Marsh Forest Festival Art Trail 2012

2012-02-10T14:54:00.000-08:00

The Art Trail has been an integral part of the Jackeys Marsh Forest Festival since it resurfaced 4 years ago and serves as a welcome reminder of the core purpose of this event.

Jo Anglesey's work titled Rainbow

Positioned above the main site of the festival, punters are enticed onto the winding, bush track to experience an array of ephemeral works produced by both emerging and established Tasmanian environmental artists. Art is wound through this whole festival. Sonia Hindrum’s Pleiades (felt spheres) hang from the trees that greet those entering the staged area, Linda Barkers’ Dragonfly float from precarious branches next to the track that connects the camp ground to the gathering space and Rick Bindon’s Tree Tent takes shape positioned high in the branches of a large gum tree.

The surrounding bush is as much a part of the art trail as the artwork itself. The nature of the festival means that the theme of the work is about promoting sustainable living, protecting Tasmania’s forests and educating the community.

Starting the art trail we come upon more of Linda Barker’s Dragonfly, hanging from what looks like old traditional fishing poles. Just above the tips of the ferns and fronds these creatures made from string, bark and solar powered lights, hang within the forest and are a perfect introduction to the art trail. Almost invisible, once spotted you are invited to hunt for more treasures set along the walk as your eyes acclimatise to the dense bush.

As you come up the steps you are met by Remember, a large bulbous sculpture made from dodda vine and black twine. This is a work by well-known Aboriginal artist Vicki West and is a reconstructed piece that has had many manifestations. It appears like a home, a refuge or a being that sits at the foot of the ferns. The last time I saw this work was at the 2010 Junction Festival where it was hung, as 3 individual circles above the Treasury building in Launceston. Set within a very different context of the forest festival this work is inviting and works well in this form.

Pausing to look down onto the forest field you feel quite removed from the activities that include tai chi and yoga classes and circus workshops. The intention of the art trail is to encourage people to leave the festival, look at the art work and by doing so to experience the forest, which formed the catalyst for the festival. It is about celebrating the forest and encouraging the respectful ownership, interaction and use of the festival.

Rob Duffield's, What you see depends on where you stand (2008) stands out as a favourite. It consists of a circle of stones that have had letters cut into them. They are placed in a circle at the foot of a tree and sit within the soil and moss. From outside the circle I can see particularly words that stand out, but as I step into the middle of the work, which we are encouraged to do, I instantly find new words that resonate deeply; the words ‘earth’ and ‘heart’ leap out from it. This is an effective work, especially as people can interact and engage with it, but it is also beautifully executed. The rocks appear worn and at home in the forest. It is a lovely piece of work.

Heading further into the forest I glimpse a splash of vibrant colour, intermingled with the grasses, wattles and ferns. This is Jo Anglesey’s Rainbow Tree and it is a stunning work. Satin, in the colours of the rainbow, have been wound delicately and intentionally around the trunks and branches of wattle trees that surround a grassy clearing. At the 2011 Marion Bay Falls Festival the artist chose to wrap an entire tree. But here she has looked at the whole space and chosen to wrap particular branches with the glossy material. The way this has been executed is very effective as the tendrils of the branches lead you through the space creating the most enchanting, inviting and calming atmosphere. The rainbow colours represent rain and sun and the importance water plays to the environment. This is an extremely effective piece of work that has been very purposefully and thoughtfully cleverly achieved. Quite magical.

Next to this is a permanent, or long term piece, by Laura McKew titled I love a broken fence. Originally the first part of this in 2008 was just the old fence posts. Here it has been added to, ever so slightly, but with a humble plaque that reads…”This fence is broken”. The work consists of two very aged fence posts that sit within their original position about 4 metres apart with the silver tarnished plaque installed on one. This was once a farming property and not far from the location was the original farm house. You could read this being about the shift in land use and the breaking up of the original farms. This seems to be also about history and people; how we use the land and the locking up of land which of course resonates with the forestry debate. Is it also about how we access land and the question…who has access to land? It questions the whole idea of ownership. Could it also be about intentionally breaking down the fences that separate and divide people? The contemplative nature of the setting for this work suits its subject well.

Many of the installations included in the art trail have been resurrected. They have a history, just like the history of the many artists who have produced art within the environmental movement. Niecy Brown’s work is a redevelopment of a previous work that was originally used as part of a performance, Earth, Fire, Water and Wind, at the 2006 Jackeys Marsh Forest Festival. Clan Gathering- Black, White and Brown consists of 3 large birds made from vine framework and stretched tissue paper. They hang in the lower limbs of trees, heading toward the same course but coming from different directions. This is about different people coming together as indicated in Niecy’s artist statement.

‘The birds have regrouped and come from far and near to joyfully crack the hard nut of forest business.’

The positioning and height of these austere birds creates a sense of drama and this work fairs well in this current reincarnation.

Tree Spirit Prayer Flags by Cecy Edwards welcomes us as the path leads us higher towards this austere, almost cathedral-like installation. Cecy has dedicated almost 30 years to forest activism and her work sits proudly at the top of the hill, the colourful flags inviting and welcoming visitors. Strung between trees, these and other flags were originally at Camp Florentine. As they are destroyed, more are produced and it is a very literal and honest work that openly expresses the passion and commitment by this artist to the environmental movement. The images on the flags are figurative incarnations, incorporating the tree and fluttering amongst the bush.

It’s a short walk to Rob Ikin’s work Six points of Contemplation; Readings from the Book of Change. Six small wooden benches greet you. They appear rickety; as if they couldn’t possibly hold your weight, but they do. This is an achievement in itself; to create something that has the illusion of fragility. In front of each seat is a rectangular framed installation made from sticks and branches from the bush. Small pieces of painted wood are attached by wire. This work sits on the hill looking out over the festival grounds. The position and surrounding bush provides a sense of tranquillity and is a perfect place for contemplation; to sit upon the rickety seat and think. The viewer teeters between looking at the work and through the work; almost in a meditative exercise. Your eye is drawn to the surrounding environment and there is a sense of the work being part of the broader environment and in turn the viewer being part of the whole. It has a lovely feel to it.

The splash of red against the green bush can be seen as you leave Rob Ikin’s work. It is an installation by Martin Cole simply titled Couped. This work incorporates 2km of hand dyed red string that winds around trees that are positioned more than 10 metres apart. It is visually stunning and a stark contrast to the various green hues, limbs and tree ferns. A red bird cage made of willow hangs within the confines of the coupe, amongst the trees and below is the linear red line that engulfs the trees. This work is very successful. It’s a great location and is a tranquil piece with an edge to it. Like many of the works in the art trail it is literal and follows the festival theme, however, it also allows space for the individual to interpret.

A Glass Bead Game…never again to leave the forest is by Brian Abraham. It is a triangulation of three long fern covered structures. While the three appear to be leaning against each other none are touching, but tensioned with nylon line. An exercise in tensegrity (refer to Buckminster Fuller) this work is interesting and conveys the balance and the fragility of relationships and the environment. Too much or too little tension and the structure would collapse.

Ralf Haertel’s work is called Tree Huggers and that is exactly what it is encouraging. Old blankets have been hand dyed with natural materials and stitched with fishing line to the trunks of trees. They are tactile and alluring and have luscious warmth that draws us in and along the path. Maybe this is an invitation for anyone to engage with the environment; a bridge between conservatism and the stigma of a term that has often been used derogatively. Tree Huggers rambles alongside the pathway and we are accompanied as we exit the art trail.

We come to the end; the bush opens up and we see our first splash of plastic. It is an interesting contrast going from environmental art predominately made from natural materials to the coarseness of harsh, shiny plastic. Toxic Beauty by Liz Russell-Arnot sits on the edge of the bush. Apt really, given the nature of the work. Liz uses painstaking and sophisticated techniques to create plastic sculptures that twist and entwine each other. This is about the ever increasing problem of plastic in the environment and the realisation that it is ensconced within our environment as a material that never disappears. While it is ironic that she is using plastic as a material, it also fits. After all if it can’t break down why not use it to educate and inform. While the sculptures are organic, Toxic Beauty grates against what we have just experienced. It probably has greater resonance within this setting than if it were set within a stark white gallery, where it could be read very differently.

The work produced by many of the artists involved in the art trail represents the importance of the process leading to the art installations, as much as the finished work. The depth of community involvement and commitment is admirable and provides a depth and resonance that fits beautifully within the context of the Tasmanian bush, which provides a magnificent backdrop and companion to environmental art. The setting for this art trail truly allowed the viewer to spend quality time with each individual artwork, something which is not always possible in a gallery setting.

It has been beautifully curated by Ralf Haertel; well chosen locations with a light touch that ensured the works sat within the forest, rather than on top of it. The permanent works will provide ongoing delight to those taking the short walks throughout the year, while I hope other installations and artists will resurface at future festivals. Tasmania is ripe for more environmental art and this Art Trail is an example of how such art can move, inspire, delight and enlighten.

By Kylie Eastley

Jackeys Marsh Forest Festival 2012

2012-02-09T02:09:00.000-08:00

My last foray into Jackeys Marsh was around 25 years ago when I was on work experience for The Examiner newspaper. I was sent with a reporter and photographer to cover the front line protests. It was a harrowing experience as I stood in the rain, sinking into the mud in my 80’s court shoes, watching people literally jump on the bulldozers. The anger, passion and desperation from both sides was palpable and left an indelible print on my memory. This is a festival that has been built on a foundation of forestry activism.

The original Jackeys Marsh Forest festival ran for 20 years and after a 10 year hiatus it was resurrected by those who had committed years to the cause. Now in its fourth year, this biannual festival appears to have held onto its roots while managing to move with the times.

While most festivals are opened by the festival director, the welcome came from the next generation who have been supported and nurtured by their elders. There appears to be a genuine intention to hand on the festival to ensure it has longevity and involves young people, many of whom were suckled on the original event.

Unlike some of the larger festivals there are no car cues or angst at the gate. It’s a peaceful scene that greets the festival punter and with the numbers capped at around 1100, including volunteers, this is a perfect event for families and people of all ages.

The location is superb with the small tent city surrounded by mountains and lush hills covered in rainforest and regenerated bushland. While punters can choose to participate in the many workshops, cave walks, classes and live music, it clearly provides the opportunity for friends and families to coral their tents and enjoy a few days in a beautiful location.

It’s a welcome reprieve from city life to bush babe; the tents, cricket being played on the grass and music emanating from across the field is not dissimilar to the large family picnics that I remember from my childhood. It’s friendly and inviting.

The clearing positioned close to the dense bush is a perfect amphitheatre for the many bands, while the Art Trail provides a reprieve for those wishing to take time out.

This is a festival I would willingly return to with friends and family for both the quality of the music and the overall experience.

The Forest Festival is located in Jackeys Marsh, about 20 minutes out of Deloraine in Tasmania’s north. It’s a no waste event with visitors asked to take all rubbish with them when they leave. There are toilet facilities and access to clean drinking water. Sunscreen, shade and wet weather gear is recommended as the weather is changeable.

CYGNET 3D ART TRAIL

2012-02-03T15:35:00.000-08:00

A cartwheel on the beach, yellow flowers, car engines under bonnets, teapots and teacups are the focus of Huon Valley’s young people in the photography project ‘Cygnet’s Art Trail – snap shots of life in 3D’.

For the month of January 2012, you could borrow 3D glasses and an Art Trail map from Balfour House or Re-Find, and cruise the main street, where 3D images placed in shop windows would jump out at you: swans on green pasture, an attractive woman with flamboyant beehive hair-do, an artichoke.

I propped my cardboard glasses over my ears, looking through one blue lense, the other red, and walked the long main drag of Cygnet. At most shops the artwork was displayed in the outward facing window to be viewed from the pavement any time of day or night. Adding to the experience, at Derek Glanville’s Small Engines shop I perched behind a ride-on-lawn-mower to see Lewis’s photo of a tugboat floating in shimmering water and Freya’s picture of flowers and leaf in shade. Similarly at Mitre 10 I looked through a rack of door mats and a potted lemon tree to see Nina’s image of a freckle-faced boy wearing mirror sunglasses and her silhouetted reflection standing in the kitchen. At the butcher, R&D Meats, there were fluorescent capitols “PORTERHOUSE 18.99 KILO” painted over the glass covering Cooper’s image of what looked like a pile of discarded plastic lense caps, which I’m told is actually War Hammer paraphernalia, a young boys war game.

As I looked at a beautiful image of a stack of retro floral teacups by Nina in the window of Home & Body, I saw the reflection of local Cygnet identity, Dr Dennis Dubetz, walking along the other side of the street. The long and dispersed ‘exhibition space’ layered the daily doings of the main street, with the 3D-embellished images, making it an animated and interactive experience.

Textile Designer and Manager of Balfour House (an Artist Run Initiative) Claire Byers, said she’d always wanted to do a 3D photography youth project in Cygnet. Sitting on the verandah with Artist and Arts Administrator Kitty Taylor one day, she mentioned her idea, and Taylor didn’t hesitate in saying they could do that. Shortly after they secured funding from the Huon Valley Health Services Committee and Tasmanian Regional Arts, and sixteen young people were participating in photography workshops with Taylor.

Many of the participants had done little or no photography before, and some didn’t even have a camera or access to one. One of the supporting organisations, St James School, actually bought cameras so students could participate. For Kitty Taylor, working with participant William, was a standout. He had four works in the exhibition, with his photo of rust being particularly striking. As a result of his work, Taylor has invited him to participate in another project in the north of Tasmania.

For a community project such as this, the young people learn about photography, see their work manipulated into 3D images and exhibited in the main street. Surely they’d feel some satisfaction, possibly some teenage squeamishness, but as the headline on the poster states “FIND A WAY, NOT AN EXCUSE”.

So how many people actually did the trail? Byers said most of the 600 glasses vanished around the time of the Cygnet Folk Festival in early January, and – more surprisingly – some shop cleaners thought the artwork was part of the festival’s plethora of posters and threw them into the rubbish! Perhaps it says something about the quality of the images when viewed without the glasses? The works, however, were swiftly replaced, and by the time I’d walked the trail, criss-crossing the street a few times, putting my 3D glasses on and off, I felt a bit goggle-eyed.

The Art Trail gave me an hour or so to ponder images of the Huon Valley, by Huon Valley’s young people for the Huon Valley. I wonder what images would be collected by the same age group in similar sized towns in other countries around the world?

The photographs will be exhibited for the rest of the year: for February they’ll be hung in the Youth Zone at Huon Linc in Huonville; in March you can see them at the Huonville Library; and later in the year they’ll tour Health Centres around Tasmania.

Forest Festival

2012-02-02T18:22:00.000-08:00

Usually when we cover a festival there is a team of us, however small, to bring a varied response to the art and performance we are about to see. But this time it is just me. I've driven up from Hobart and am now sitting on the riverbank at Deloraine. Kids are making the most of the last week of holidays, jumping into what looks like very cold water and the town has grown with an influx of people sporting impressive hair styles and squeezing the final supplies into their slightly (or very) rusty subaru's and VW's.
While the focus for me will be on the arts program, particularly the art trail, the festival provides the perfect vehicle to showcase a collection of Tasmanian artists. Some I have seen before at events such as the Junction Festival, while others will be completely unknown.
The Getz is packed with tent, torches, tarps, new season apples and many layers of clothes to accommodate any climate including my all terrain sandals. (If they can cope with mud pools in Borneo, they can do anything)

And I am thrilled to not only be experiencing a world of art in a beautiful environment, but to be out of mobile range for a few days. Yippee! Not so good for posting, but great for focusing on feasting of music, food and art. Bring it on...More about the art later. Wish me luck!

BOFA 2011: That's a wrap!

2011-12-08T16:02:00.000-08:00

This is a striking ensemble piece, executed brilliantly through slick production, magical storytelling and the love of cinema…

With over forty feature films, six masterclasses, two Big Ideas debates, fifteen shortlisted films in the digital SLR short competition, three award winners, one major photography and film exhibition, six opening-, during- and after- parties, a ten by ten metre outdoor screen, a Tassie food and wine festival, a red carpet opening and twelve of Australia's leading directors and producers sharing their expertise over five days of film festival, BOFA lived up to every expectation of providing "new horizons and food for thought".
There's always 'writer's regret' when a festival is over, because it's just not possible to get to everything that's on the menu - even more so with BOFA, because of the incredibly extensive and clever programming over the five days of festival.

And what generous programming it was, with feature films, documentaries, previews and award-winning movies from around the world featuring some of the most talented actors, producers and directors. Through the various after-film Q & As, Masterclasses and festival parties it was possible to rub shoulders with cinema heavyweights such as Vincent Sheehan (The Hunter), Jonathan auf der Heide (Van Dieman's Land), Rowan Woods (Chopper), Michael Rymer (Face to Face), Yu Hsiu Camille Chen (Little Sparrows) and Gregor Jordan (Two Hands). Hearing firsthand from such esteemed film glitterati about their creative processes, successes, difficulties and future plans provided an incredible opportunity for up-and-coming Tasmanian writers and would-be film-makers to make connections, gain knowledge and, most importantly, confidence that it can be done from our tiny, remote island.

My 'picks' that I missed: the Australian Short Films, which everyone was raving about; the sneak preview of the Channel 9 and Southern Star telemovie about the Beaconsfield mine disaster with a Q & A by miners Brant Webb and Todd Russell; Ireland's The Guard, which fellow Write Response reviewer loved; and Fred Schepisi's Eye of the Storm which won The Age Critics' Award for Best Australian Feature at the Melbourne International Film Festival.

But I was privileged to make it to the swanky Opening Night Party followed by the endearing Happy Happy, the debut feature from Norwegian Director Anne Sewitzky and audience winner at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, Tarsem Singh's sublime USA/India feature The Fall, with its stunning visuals and magical storytelling, Todd Edwards' audience-polarising comedy Jeffie Was Here, the powerfully compelling but difficult-to-watch Van Dieman's Land by Australian Director Jonathan auf der Heide, Daniel Nettheim's classic Tasmanian drama The Hunter, with Q & A by Producer Vincent Sheehan, and three Masterclasses - The challenges of writing for Tasmania, The importance of story, and Tasmania, the perfect location.

And Launceston is the perfect location for such an incredibly well produced film festival. The boutique riverside city is a spectacular setting, with its Georgian architecture, gorgeous parks and gardens, and thriving arts and cultural scene. It's also the gateway to the Tamar Valley and some of the finest gourmet food and wine in the country, which were showcased at the Opening Night Party and throughout the event. The Inveresk precinct, with the Tramsheds and the grand Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, provided perfect film venues close to the city centre and with plenty of parking.

With almost 4,000 ticket holders attending, BOFA was incredibly well executed, particularly considering Festival Director Owen Tilbury doesn't come from a film or events management background. It was marketed incredibly well and was easy to book online and on site, with great support from the Launceston Tamar Valley Visitor Centre and screening venues, and the volunteers were exceptionally friendly and helpful. (Two in particular should be applauded for their emergency counselling skills, following my early - and nearly-traumatised - departure from Van Dieman's Land and subsequent need for an urgent debrief.)

BOFA can only get better and if I have a say in what I'd like to see next year it would be ratings included in the program (it didn't impact on me, but I could see how it might impact on people with kids), a blu ray player installed at The Tramsheds (not having one caused a not-too-significant half-hour delay for The Fall) and a stronger opening night film. And choc tops.

Masterclasses: The challenges of writing for Tasmania; and Tasmania, the perfect location

2011-11-27T00:42:00.000-08:00

Jonathan auf der Heide, Vicki Madden and Stephen Dando-Collins; Vincent Sheehan and Bradley Patrick
BOFA 2011

“How can you know where you’re going unless you know where you’ve come from?” Jonathan auf der Heide

It’s been two years since Jonathan auf der Heide’s first feature film Van Dieman’s Land screened and he’s still paying off the debt. Now the 32-year old Director is working on a horror film shot in Tassie, “a sort of zombie film with Tasmanian devils. It sounds tacky, but it will sell to Americans.”

One has to wonder why iconic Tasmanian films such as Van Dieman’s Land and The Hunter that have stayed true to their Tasmanian roots have had such mixed commercial success. (Granted, The Hunter may be a somewhat more accessible story for audiences to engage with, and auf der Heide admits to knowing that the feature was always going to be an uncommercial film.) But if place has such a profound impact on our history, culture and identity, on who we are as artists, is it possible to have a successful career as a writer, director or producer while living or working in Tasmania? Could Tasmania become the perfect place for television and filmmaking?

Bradley Patrick, BOFA’s Artistic Director, certainly thinks so, explaining that he was so “amazed” when he first saw Launceston, he’s decided to film his new romantic comedy here, instead of France. He describes it as “a perfect location”, with its atmospheric gothic architecture, the Gorge, Seaport, vintage shops and Tamar Valley vineyards, and believes it looks like Bordeaux or Nice.

Vincent Sheehan took advantage of Tassie’s “misty mornings, long days and longer twilight” to film The Hunter and even used the Hotel Grand Chancellor in Hobart, rather than Paris, to film the opening sequence. Sheehan suggests that “any genre can be done in Tasmania”, and particularly believes that a period drama could be filmed here, explaining that the Georgian architecture and English-style vegetation makes the scenery so like northern Europe.

While Sheehan had $6 million dollars (not the $35 million that was reported in The Examiner – Sheehan said the error was in misinterpreting his comment that he had shot the film on “35 mm”), Jonathan auf der Heide shot Van Dieman’s Land on $600,000. But of that, $340,000 was in salaries. Because there isn’t a studio system in Tasmania or, therefore, people with the required skills in the state, it’s pricey to get skilled crew in for filming, auf der Heide explained, but he always knew he’d make a feature film “out of the system”. Despite the lack of commercial success, the first-time Director believes that there are many Tasmanian stories yet to be told and that “some of Australia’s best writers are in Tasmania”.

Writer Stephen Dando-Collins agrees that it is expensive to film in Tasmania (“and filmmaking is almost always about costs”), but believes that it’s not necessary to film here, even if the story is set in Tasmania – it doesn’t matter for the audience, even if it does for the author. He suggests that passion is the key for Tasmanian producers, filmmakers and writers, and that they should take advantage of the fact that Tassie is seen as “exotic” to Americans.

Vicki Madden, who has written extensively for television series such as The Bill and Water Rats, believes that we don’t tell stories that really reflect the way Australians live their lives. “Kath and Kim, in a way, is more reflective of our society than Packed to the Rafters.” She suggests that we should tap more into “our parochialism”. Madden has returned to Tasmania after spending two years in Ireland. Their strong culture and identity reminded her of home and made her think about who she is as a writer and who we are as Tasmanians.

Madden believes we need to debunk the myths about Tasmania, such as that we are too far away for the industry, and while she comments that she has missed out on “a few jobs”, she can sustain a career here utilising technology. She commented that we don’t have a TV culture in Tasmania, but she’s trying to change that, and wants to develop a unique Tasmanian television drama so that it helps build infrastructure here. “People are starting to take notice of our history.”

To have such intimate access to such esteemed film directors, producers and writers is one of the highlights and privileges of attending this festival. Hearing firsthand about their creative processes, successes, difficulties and future plans provides such an incredible opportunity for up-and-coming Tasmanian writers and would-be film-makers to make connections, gain knowledge and, most importantly, confidence that it can be done from our tiny, remote island.

Burning In The Sun

2011-11-26T23:41:00.000-08:00

Directed by Cambria Matlow

BOFA 2011

I would like to think that there is something within us, within all of us; a sense of purpose to our lives that ensures we could make the world a better place. A simple idea that suggests that we can contribute something with our lives that will be built upon and learned from to ensure the peace and prosperity of those who will be born into what we leave behind. This kind of idea of course has one direction; forward.

Simple. Or at least it should be.

But for reasons too numerous and too complex to mention there are still places in the world where clean drinking water is scarce, where education is, at best, an opportunity, and electricity to power a single light bulb is a fantasy beyond reach.

Burning in the Sun (2010) is a resonating documentary directed by Cambria Matlow and co-directed and photographed by Morgan Robinson. The film being shown as part of the BOFA Film Festival follows the charismatic and driven Italian/African Daniel Dembele as he works towards an admirable and achievable goal; to bring electricity to his homeland of Mali in West Africa. With the use of solar energy he intends to follow his mother’s legacy ie; to help his people.

From the opening minutes, this film offers no pretence pushing nothing into the faces of the audience - the ‘flip open the book and start reading’ kind of stuff, holding your attention through its shear humanity and admiration of the protagonists who are writing their own future.

In a land so abundant with sunlight, the possibility of renewable energy by way of the sun is incomprehensible as the cost of imported solar panels is unaffordable. But light brings hope. Three words none more evident than within this magnificent film.

Burning in the Sun is centred on the Sun’s energy powering batteries for a few light bulbs to bring hope to the village of Banko, and more importantly, to its classroom. Candid footage plays to a calming score giving us an introduction to life in the village where Daniel will install his recycled solar panels. These few minutes offer something truly magnificent and undeniably genuine - peace, community, unity, and determination.

This is an African community that is real beyond any of the media sensationalism of hunger, despair, and turmoil that we are fed through commercial news media between imported entertainment, suggesting that above all else, rural Africans are helpless. Yes, the African people are faced with adversity, but there are those who are lion-hearted and determined to bring change. This entire film is filled with the most beautiful, genuine, endearing people who despite hardships most of us couldn’t imagine, smile not only with their mouths, but their eyes.

I won’t spoil the statistical outcomes of Daniel Dembele’s impact of determination to bring power to the rural villages of Mali, but the audible sigh within the audience with whom I shared this viewing indicated that it is powerful enough to touch their hearts, and above that, their minds.

And so it should. It really should. Daniel confesses that, at just twenty-six, despite everything he is doing, and everything his mother has done through building wells for his people, he will one day have to escape her shadow; a shadow of protection and innovation that will leave him burning in the sun. A prospect of personal sacrifice that drives him to challenge the plight of his people and stand tall enough to cast a shadow of his own to shelter those who take his lead.

Jeffie Was Here

2011-11-26T15:09:00.000-08:00

Director Todd Edwards
Winner – 2010 San Francisco United Film Festival – Best Feature
BOFA 2011

“I told you not to promise adventure.”

Broke would-be novelist Alan Mangold (Peter Bodgood) is about to drive 2,813 miles over five days in an old bomb of a car with his girlfriend, Amanda (Alexis Raben), whom he doesn’t know is pregnant, and an obnoxious 30-something year old student, who isn’t what he appears to be, to get to his grandmother’s funeral. What could possibly go wrong?

The movie opens in the couple’s apartment, which is so tiny, Amanda has to move Alan’s coffee cup so he can piss in the sink. When Alan gets the call that his grandmother has died, he’s determined to make the drive out west for the reading of the will. Not only will this solve their financial problems, Alan is convinced it will be a “spiritual journey” for them and the inspiration he needs to finish his first novel, “Orphan Bastard”. But there is a hitch: they don’t have enough money to make the trip.

Enter Jeffie (Director and co-writer Todd Edwards), a student who responds to the couple’s internet ad which promises adventure in exchange for the cost of sharing the trip. Jeffie is a greenie, philosopher, musician, poet and generally obnoxious know-it-all who gradually erodes Alan’s tightly-wound persona and the couple’s sanity with antics reminiscent of Bill Murray’s character in Frank Oz’s 1991 film “What About Bob”. Maybe it’s Edwards’ deadpan delivery or his comic timing, but who would have thought getting a fish-hook in the eye could be so hilarious?

Jeffie Was Here is a classic road-trip/odd couple comedy in which people’s differences start rubbing excruciatingly through the intense intimacy of sharing a confined space over a concentrated period of time. (Think “Midnight Run” and “As Good as it Gets”.) Familiarity breeds contempt and also a few laughs as we see Alan and Amanda’s 7-year relationship go under Jeffie’s microscope. Can it be saved in time? Or are Jeffie’s motives in coming on the road trip less innocent than they seem?

I’ve heard that this film has polarised BOFA audiences, with some people actually leaving the screening. Sure, some of the humour was juvenile, and I felt that the last third of the movie lagged a bit, but overall I found Jeffie Was Here to be a quirky comedy with moments of surprisingly fresh and unexpected humour. Perhaps I shouldn’t have enjoyed it as much as I did, or laughed as hard at the politically incorrect scenes, but I found Jeffie to be both annoying and likeable – and genuinely funny.

“Enjoy the journey.”

Van Dieman's Land

2011-11-25T19:11:00.000-08:00

Directed by Jonathan auf der Heide
Written by Jonathan auf der Heide and Oscar Redding
BOFA 2011

"Hunger is a strong silence."

If Jonathan auf der Heide wasn't such an incredibly brilliant film-maker, Van Dieman's Land would be a much easier film to watch. To say that it is confronting is an understatement and I have to admit upfront to leaving the cinema after the fifth killing because I found it too disturbing to watch. Well, I knew it was going to end badly, in any case.

No need to say "spoilers" here when mentioning the killings because the story of Alexander Pearce, Australia's most infamous convict, is well known, if not as explicitly or as factually represented on film before auf der Heide's 2009 feature. Set in 1822 colonial Tasmania on Sarah Island, where the most violent convicts were interned, Van Dieman's Land trails the escape of Pearce and seven other convicts as they attempt to trek cross-country from the west to reach a settlement on the east coast. These are English, Irish and Scottish convicts who don't realise how inhospitable the landscape is until it's too late. They become disoriented and lost, and without the ability to hunt or fish they turn on each other in their desperation to survive.

This film is disturbing because the film-making and storytelling is so powerful, it pulls you into the landscape with the convicts - and that is a bleak place to be. From the opening aerial shots, we feel the brooding, dense, oppressive landscape as character; it is a terrifying natural world. A Gaelic storyteller adds a poetic voiceover at times to the imagery; it is the voice of fate, of tragedy, of despair, a lyrical rumination of what is to come, and it sets up the film with a grim tension that is impossible to escape.

The film is shot almost monochromatically and the gritty washed-out colours add to the intensely bleak feeling. It is the colour before night turns into day, in the netherspace between what is real and what is dreamed, between logic and nightmare. The sense of monotonous desolation is relentless and it creates a profoundly emotional response to the imagery. It is a complete sensory experience; the violence is graphic, the music is at times haunting, and at other times pulsing with a physical intensity that I could feel reverberating through the soles of my feet. It is an uncomfortable intimacy.

The proliferation of CSI-style television with its strong focus on graphic forensic images, bloody close-ups of killings and body parts, and abhorrently new ways of murdering says a lot about our fascination with the dark parts of the psyche. I am fiercely critical of the gratuitousness with which contemporary film and tv approach the subject - and object - of violence. Is Van Dieman's Land violent? Absolutely. Is it necessary to show such violence? Absolutely. It gives us a profound insight into the brutality and desperation of the characters which we could not access in any other way. Character drives story. And this is authentic from-the-guts storytelling driven by character.

Van Dieman's Land is an outstanding Australian film. You might wonder, then, why I left early. Maybe I'm not ready to admit that such darkness exists, that people are capable of such cold-hearted annihilation. All I know is that I was desperate to leave the cinema, and if that all-encompassing, physical desperation gave me even an iota of a glimpse of what Pearce and his fellow convicts felt, then auf der Heide shows his true brilliance in translating story into experience.

The Fall

2011-11-25T19:06:00.000-08:00

Directed by Tarsem Singh
BOFA 2011

Los Angeles. Once upon a time.

Can storytelling save your life?

The Fall is set in a 1920s Californian hospital where movie stuntman Roy Walker is recovering from a fall that has left him paraplegic. Fellow patient Alexandria, a young girl who is also recovering from a fall, befriends him, and Roy begins to tell her the story of six mythical heroes on a quest to kill their common enemy, the hideous Governor Odious. Through Alexandria’s vivid imagination we are transported to exotic worlds and surreal encounters as the six comrades-in-arms begin their heroes’ journey for salvation.

But whose lives are the heroes really saving?

This is lushly layered filmmaking as Director Tarsem Singh juxtaposes the routine and sterile confinement of the hospital ward against the stunning vastness of the imagined worlds. There are glasshouses and gardens, temples and deserts, banished heroes, Indians, slaves, Charles Darwin, lost loves, bandits, swimming elephants, masked heroes, flaming trees, mystics, dangerous missions, tented caravans, kidnapped princesses, a palace in the middle of a lake, a blue city, whirling dervishes. Revenge and redemption. Storytelling.

But storytelling is as much about the orator as the tale. Fairytales can be dark and storytelling can be dangerous. Heroes can be flawed. As the tale unfolds, we begin to realise that the line between fiction and reality is a blurry one, and there is more to Roy’s fantastical tale and his reason for telling it. The “fall” may be yet to come.

The cinematography in The Fall is exquisite, shot over 26 locations in 18 countries and with no special effects. The semi-classical score by French composer Krishna Levy adds a beautiful emotional intensity to the action. Catinca Untaru is mesmerising as the young Alexandria, who is the real hero of the story. Lee Pace as Roy carries enough vulnerability and pathos to feel sympathy for his character, despite the growing sense that we, along with Alexandria, are being manipulated for a desperate ulterior motive that is slowly and shockingly being revealed. By the time we understand it, we also understand that this is a fateful encounter; each needs the other. Both have experienced the real world and its physical limits. Both have experienced loss and heartbreak. Both are looking for a way out of the pain. And while Roy is telling the story, it is through Alexandria’s wild imagination and wilful determination that we are drawn, along with Roy, to the possibility of a happy ending.

But doesn’t the real magic of storytelling happen when the reader or viewer makes the story their own?

I’m in love with The Fall. Unashamedly, eyes wide, mouth open, sitting on the edge of my seat, gasping out loud in love. It is beautiful, sad and moving, visually sumptuous, magical film-making and storytelling that reminds us that imagination is life.

“What a mystery, this world.”

2011-11-25T19:00:00.000-08:00

The Guard

2011-11-25T15:31:00.000-08:00

The Guard
Written and Directed by John McDonagh
BOFA 2011

There are times when one reaches a fork in the road at BOFA. Both destinations are equally enticing but ultimately a decision has to be made about which road one will take to get where they need to go. One way or the other, I was going to a film. My problem was that they were both playing at the same time. As you can imagine this presents a number of challenges and after making my decision I am now faced with a whole new set of challenges. I want to write so much but give away so little.

Directed by first time feature film director John McDonagh, The Guard is a film clever enough to reach behind our ear and then present us with a coin leaving us a little gobsmacked, not so much at the trick, but the fact that the trickster is so bloody slick. Excuse the mild profanity, but let me advise that ‘bloody’ may as well be a snow-white kitten sleeping in a bed of fairy dust compared to the conversation exchanges of most characters in the film. Having said that however, every word spoken throughout this film has been written and delivered with such precision that it only serves to enhance the likeability of the characters at every turn.

The Guard is set in the remote and beautiful costal village of Connemara in Ireland. The pace of the film in the opening sequence is set by juxtaposing the quaint stone walls and rolling green hills of an Irish village with a high-speed alcohol induced car crash and a tab-popping policeman (known as a Guard) who stares out to sea with bodies littering the road behind him. It is here that Sergeant Gerry Boyle (Brendon Gleeson) carelessly utters one of the best opening lines to a title sequence that I have seen in quite a while. In fact, the only thing that I can compare it to is the closing words of Tyler Durden (Ed Norton) in David Fincher’s 1999 masterpiece Fight Club.

What ensues is the kind of story that you expect to find set against a typically American backdrop – murder, drugs, corruption, prostitution, bribery, and camaraderie. What a relief that this film uses those elements, yet presents them with the kind of cream that could only be delivered with a script, location and cast such as this one. Make no mistake, this film is a comedy, but it is dark. Dark, dark humour that is at times so clever and hilarious that given the sub-plots, you may feel ashamed for laughing just that little bit too loudly. Even Boyle’s dying mother retains her wit until the very end to make us feel for her yet recoil also in her tongue, that while not exactly forked, allows enough to question what her suppressed desires were in a life that she will shortly leave.

The American presence is there with Don Cheadle playing FBI agent Wendell Everett, but his character is very much the big fish that is in a pond clearly not his own, and refreshingly, reminded as such. Not only do the Americans take a subtle beating, but also those from Dublin so this film spares no one, just like the personality of it’s leading man. Gleeson’s Boyle dispenses his thoughts with an indifference that is admirable. His character is very clever indeed and the film never truly resolves if he is a brilliant mind content with his lot or so numbed by it that he simply doesn’t care.

The baddies are there too. With the awesome combination of Mark Strong, David Wilmot and Liam Cunnignham assuming the roles of such diverse yet intelligent and ponderous criminals, it is hard as to decide who deserves a bit more attention due to their likeability. Yes, even the token bad-guys in this film appealed to my inner philosopher. The aquarium scene in which they have a heart-to-heart (sort of) is excellent. Settling down is pondered briefly as the sociopath of the trio contemplates monogamy. Fantastic.

The Guard is a clever film indeed that, while following the standard model of the good guys versus the bad, it does so in a way that reflects the centre character as flawed, caring, needy and ultimately human. No tough guy here. This of course means our hero is somewhat overweight, deals with his family, drinks a pint or two, addresses his sexual needs, and does his job with the contempt that, after a while, most of us do.

What a beautiful fucking day.

Breath of Fresh Air (BOFA) Opening Night Party

2011-11-24T21:13:00.000-08:00

5.30pm Wednesday 23 November 2011
Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery

Spring is fluttering her wings as I head towards the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery at Inveresk for the BOFA Opening Night Party. Ahead in the warm afternoon glow and sea of people I glimpse red carpet, black tie, a white marquee and a woman in an iconic backless green dress, alchemical colours that are transforming the grassland of the familiar industrial site into a celebration with the magic of party favours.

The Party pops like a champagne cork. It's bubbles and glitterati as I'm ushered up the red carpet as starlet, along with some 200 VIP guests and celebrities that appear to glide across it and underneath the sweeping yellow pylons that lead to the Museum mecca. I can't help but crowd-spot for my favourites, but I'm not sure I'll recognise the incredible who's who of behind-the-camera Australian film-making talent that BOFA has attracted to Launceston: Jonathan auf der Heide; Vicki Madden; Rowan Woods; Gregor Jordan; Vincent Sheehan; Michael Rymer. I slip into the ladies and have a conversation at the mirror with Yu Hsiu Camille Chen, Director of "Little Sparrows". She's screamingly elegant in an off-the-shoulder long black crepe dress and we chat about how beautiful Launceston is, how much warmer it is than she expected, how wonderful the festival is. It seems generosity of spirit is on the runsheet for tonight.

The speeches are short, the camaraderie long, the Tasmanian food and wine by Matsons Catering superb. I sup on oysters, wallaby, little snow-cones of delicious risotto balls, quail, stuffed mushrooms and ragout before wandering the gallery's Stories of Cinema, Past, Present and Future exhibition with its showcased Corrick collection - this is Launceston's gift to the history of silent cinema. Normally housed in the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra, it is being shown for the first time in Tasmania, together with much of the equipment used by Leonard Corrick 100 years ago. The white-walled gallery is the perfect setting for such a venerated collection: of photographs, of history, of people. It reminds me just how much Launceston contributes to Tasmania's, Australia's, cultural heritage.

And, like the feature film we're being treated to, I am Happy Happy. BOFA is in town and we are privileged to be a part of such esteemed company.

This Unchartered Hour

2011-11-14T15:26:00.000-08:00

Theatre Royal
Written by Finegan Kruckemeyer
Produced by Tasmania Performs
Directed by Robert Jarman

I have been reliably told that when you lose your child you never get over it, you just get on with it.

A simple black stage with a lone cellist opened This Uncharted Hour by Finegan Kruckemeyer and the characteristically melancholy notes issued a warning to the audience – this is not going to be light and breezy. The story of a still-born child and the lingering grief of both parents led the audience through the rugged territory of pain and loss that cuts keenly long after the event. The performances by Jane Longhurst and Ben Winspear deftly conveyed the damaged beings that emerge from the fog of grieving, going on to have another child who is forced to carry that burden through his own life. It is a tough subject and Kruckemeyer shows an uncanny level of empathy in conjuring up that great black hole that death presents.

The simple staging was like a blank canvas that left plenty of room for the performances to dominate, although there were times when there was too much action happening in a cluster around the musician. Cellist Antony Morgan’s subtle presence was a welcome relief from the dense subject matter and helped steer the audience through the moods and messages of the play beautifully. Danny Pettingill’s lighting was another excellent source of levity amongst the heavy emotions.

For me it was really the women that carried the show, in the contrast between Longhurst’s encumbered, loving loyalty and Mel King’s serially single temptress. The absent, yet dominant deceased brother, played by Kai Raisbeck, was a good device for illustrating the distraction of the mother. Stronger again was the character of Luka, the second and surviving son played with skillful innocence by Brett Rogers. The scenes between the two brothers told their story cleverly and I enjoyed watching the tension play out between them.

This Uncharted Hour is a story of the dangers of untended grief and a warning that mourning the dead should not come at the expense of love for the living. However, the only hint of redemption came from Luka in confronting his dead sibling, exposing the relics of a life never had and putting him in his place as just a memory. It may be symptomatic of my age and overexposure to the ills of the world, but I feel that with so much bleak reality and raw emotion in a play it would have been nice to have been offered more hope ... just to help us get on with it.

by Stephenie Cahalan

Death by Television

2011-10-16T05:33:00.000-07:00

I find television to be very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go in the other room and read a book. – Groucho Marx

In a week where mass media reported on the authenticity of Beyonce’s baby bump along with the imprisonment and lashing of an Iranian actress for her role in an Australian film, Death by Television was a reminder of the absurd and dehumanising nature of television. Don’t get me wrong, I am one of the 96% of Australians who own at least one television, but it’s a bit like that third or fourth glass of wine; you know that it’s bad for you but you still partake.

Death by Television was presented as part of the Festival of New Tasmanian Theatre at the Backspace Theatre, Hobart. The black comedy began as a shorter work at the 2006 Melbourne Fringe, when Briony Kidd collaborated with fellow writer Sarah Robertson. Kidd reworked the production as part of the Tasmanian Theatre Company’s Associate Artists program. Kidd, who describes herself as a recovering TV addict, has delivered a work that explores the negative effects of television. This is certainly not a new theme to either theatre or film. Many would remember Videodrome, the 1983 film directed by David Cronenburg and starring James Woods and Deborah Harry (Blondie).

The potential for Death by Television to be an engaging visual narrative was certainly there, but it just didn’t seem to take full advantage of this fertile subject or the medium. The opening scene is the catalyst for the entire play when lead character Phineas (Campbell McKenzie) and his mate Teddy (Matt Wilson) are part of the live audience at a talkback show. Prompted by the auto cues to laugh, at very unlaughable moments, Phineas contracts a condition later identified as Schoenberg’s Syndrome which scrambles his emotional responses. While the audience does certainly get a sense of the awkwardness of such prompting, the scene needed to be stronger, louder and punchier to really convince us of the impact on Phineas and establish the premise for the whole play.

A tenacious solicitor and her psychiatrist cohort try to convince Phineas to sue the television network responsible for his affliction and Phineas is torn between taking the money or exposing the truth; much like a game show. While the staging and effects enhanced the story, it seemed a missed opportunity to not include images along with the audio sampling. There was a lack of light and shade to the work. I wanted the sound to be louder and partnered with images from talk shows and popular culture. This could have distracted from the frequent scene changes and also added more colour and variation to the work; with the audience experiencing the sensory assault that is…

Television, the drug of the Nation, Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation…The Disposable Heroes of Hypocrisy 1990

Kidd is the writer, director and co-producer, which is a tough gig. Death by Television may have benefited from the guiding hand of a director, as this would have afforded Kidd more time to refine the script which at times was clever, funny and poignant. The lack of consistency would have been eliminated with further editing.

Campbell McKenzie (Phineas) and Sara Pensalfini (Evelyn) were the most consistent in their performances. McKenzie’s fate, which was particularly well portrayed, could have been a more effective closing to the show.

Death by Television was presented by Hobart Pavement Projects.

LOVE

2011-09-20T01:12:00.001-07:00

Terrapin Puppet Theatre ,

The Theatre Royal , Hobart.

Sept 16-18

Terrapin's new show Love is an amazingly multi-layered piece of visual theatre. It could even be one of those rare shows that burn brightly forever in the memorys of the young children who are lucky enough to see it, for there is much here that is memorable.

Packed full to bursting with wacky larger-than-life-characters, stories and imagery, Love weaves between moments of scintillating live action, transformative physical and digital animation, and concise puppetry.

Beginning in the kitchen of puppet-narrator Oslo and his wacky, community-minded, storytelling Mum, the strikingly simple retro, domestic set expands and transforms before our eyes; from city-scape to countryside, from small town to graveyard and more.

As a big storm approaches and young Oslo attempts to gather and save the important ‘Love Luggage’ of his neighbours in the tight-knit community of Mellingong, we soon learn that their stories and memories, rather than their ‘stuff’ is most important.

The dextrous Mel King and Jeff Michael embody, enact, puppeteer, sing and dance their way through this heart-warming tale at a cracking pace with much joy and laughter, filling the stage to overflowing with the stories.

This is supplemented by superb digital animation which for the most, cleverly illuminates rather than dominates the many other elements, to create some of the most magical moments of the show.

The music and songs of Matthew Fargher are lively,and delightful, from atmospheric banjo and violin to brass band, and community choir. Mel King’s love song to the river goddess is a notable beauty.

At times there were far too many words and characters to keep up with- and I did wonder why the Oslo character needed to be a puppet at all when most of the time he just talked.

But when all those words dropped away and the domestic transformed into the dream-like star-lit night sky or the towering city or the ocean set with Oslo’s fathers fishing-boat as a light-box, sailing over the waves of the puppeteers body, it was truly and utterly breathtaking.

The penultimate scene – the coming of the rain, as silver droplets increased in intensity as projected animation consuming the entire set and stage – was without a doubt one of those burn-brightly moments.

And with Oscar and his Mother huddled crying with relief and love, back safe together under the kitchen table,the emotional story ended there for me.

So I tried to ignore the rather overstated epilogue that followed, preferring to continue to bathe in the warmth of that luscious memory.

Gai Anderson

There

2011-08-31T23:22:00.000-07:00

“I’m here, you’re there. What does that make me?”

There are many boundaries in life, real and imagined. There are personal boundaries, relationship boundaries, divides between the genders, the mind and body, between maker and viewer. The arts love to play with these boundaries, to test them, to cross them, to highlight them, to create and eliminate them, because artists intuitively understand that there is reward in moving through them.

As reviewers, we slip between the boundary of viewer and maker, ferrymen between worlds, our passage, story, our trade, ink. But there are moments in productions when we lose our place, when the performances are so powerful and sublimely believable that we don't want to cross over. Elbow Room's There was one of those productions for me. It has stayed with me (or perhaps I have stayed with it) as a striking piece of original work.

The stage is set with minimal distractions: a blackened room, a simple black plinth, elemental and ceremonial, a tiny strip of stage that separates the performers from the audience. Emily Tomlins and Angus Grant begin their performance in torchlight, with spotlighted hands that wander and explore, discover and withdraw, fluttering like primal organisms gaining consciousness. We sense the vulnerability - theirs and ours - as they migrate the plinth, themselves, each other, the stage, with only their hands and the hope to communicate.

What begins through silent movement, sensitive expression and primal sound explodes into fervent speech as Tomlins channels Agamemnon's Watchman as he waits for the fall of Troy. Grant responds by spruiking a store sale. It seems speech may not move the divide between their characters any closer, and it provides for intense, humorous and often touching interaction that is completely convincing; it annihilates, not just suspends, any disbelief.

Director Marcel Dorney's There is funny, poignant, moving, challenging and totally engaging, even if not completely accessible. Sound, music and lighting is used sparingly, but what is used amplifies the strength in Tomlins' and Grant's visceral performance, which is contained but passionate; there is a palpable physicality to it, despite this being a two-person no-prop abstract show.

There plays with boundaries: between audience and performer; between implicit and explicit storytelling; between expectation and experience. It does this in such an experimental and experiential way that it might be easy for an audience to say, "I didn't get it". They will, just not in a way they could have anticipated - and this is, of course, when they encounter the real power of the arts.

Forget going to see There. Go to experience it. It is the jewel in the Junction 2011 crown.

Crocheted Chocolate: sweet as

2011-08-29T16:24:00.000-07:00

It’s easy to miss the sweet offering in the window of Nannas Coffee + Vintage because they look so deliciously real.

In fact, an unmentioned colleague of mine went specifically to view the installation by Margaret Barlow and other local artists and came back disappointed because “they weren’t there”. (Mind you, the same unmentioned colleague also insists that Barry Morgan is an organ salesman and actually has an organ superstore in Adelaide. But that’s for another review.)

But a second glance and you’ll notice gran’s woven shopper made out of recycled sweetie wrappers displaying its twinkling boxes of Turkish delight and 1950s biscuits, jars of knitted crocheted truffles and a knitted mug of hot chocolate with its woolly marshmallows. Taking pride of place next to them is an Alice-in-Wonderland three-layered cake stand (which you wouldn’t dream of being anything other than red with white polka-dots) flaunting its white, milk and dark felted bonbons with embroidery for piping, sparkly beads for sprinkles and frilly multi-coloured paper-cases.

Nannas is the perfect setting for this pop-art virtual reality installation. With its vintage clothing, quirky objets trouves and all things polyester, melamine and formica, the crocheted sweets sit happily next to Nannas’ real treats of coconut slice, raspberry bites and choc peanut biccies.

Crocheted Chocolate is reminiscent of one of my favourite installations of Junction 2010, The Knitting Room, albeit on a micro level. Both projects are participatory and collaborative, involving the community in arts that historically have been just that. It’s rich and whimsical and, well, sweet, and one of the delights of this year’s Festival.

Perfect, even if you don’t have a sweet-tooth.

Wendy Newton

Barry Morgan’s World of Organs

2011-08-29T16:20:00.000-07:00

I should start this review by admitting that after seeing Barry Morgan perform on the ABC’s music quiz-show “Spicks and Specks”, this show was high on my list of must-see performances for this year’s Festival.

And I pretty much got what I expected.

The “Magician of Tuition” and “Musician with a Mission” played to a capacity crowd of ‘shoppers’ Friday night in Launceston’s Town Hall Reception Room, which had been theatrically transformed into a somewhat sleazy jazz lounge, thanks to some clever staging and lighting.

There, in front of the black velveteen curtains and spotlight, Morgan, with his trademark safari-suit, man-wave, 1970s moustache and cheesy over-the-shoulder smile demonstrated the versatility and joy of his Hammond Elegante organ - which was also for sale at a “never repeated price”.

And there is the hook of his comedic performance. The flamboyant, big-smiling (yet slightly creepy) organ salesman with the turtle-neck and tacky jewellery mixes up a skilled musical performance of original, honky tonk, classical and theme music with his pitch to sell you his organ – and much of that includes some rather tired innuendo. (If one of the shoppers takes home his organ tonight, Morgan will throw in a year’s membership to the Organ Lovers League of Australia, an organisation that gets together each year to play with their own and each other‘s organs.)

As a character, Barry Morgan is funny and loveable in the way Mark Trevorrow’s Bob Downe or TV’s Kath and Kim are, and he certainly kept the family crowd entertained throughout the hour performance. There was also some delightful engagement with the audience, as Morgan’s discerning salesman eye selected shoppers who might be persuaded to take his organ – and ubiquitous steak knives - home for the special price of $9,999. However for me, disappointingly, Morgan’s one-pony trick-and-shtick humour wore a little thin after awhile.

If you’re going to Barry Morgan you know what you’re going to get. Is that a bad thing? Not if you consider the arts are as much about entertainment as anything else. While I like to be surprised by a performance and taken somewhere I can’t find or imagine myself ever going, some people just like to know what they’re getting for their money. For those people, Barry Morgan’s World of Organs is definitely a deal never to be repeated.

Wendy Newton

That's a Rap!

2011-08-29T14:29:00.000-07:00

When reviewing artwork of any kind, often the biggest dilemma is that you think of so much more after you have posted your article. It’s a bit like ordering off the menu, looking at what someone else has ordered and wishing you had made a different choice. But it’s too late to change your order.

Festivals such as Junction provide access to so much art in only a few days. For the general punter this is paradise; meandering from exhibitions to shows, to interactive experiences to the bar, back to a show... experiencing the excitement and diversity that is a festival.

When reviewing a festival, the experience is somewhat different and often we are left wishing we could see some shows twice. Firstly to let it wash over us and secondly to really focus on what makes the work a success, or not. There is of course enormous excitement at having so much art on tap, but also trepidation at the prospect of actually trying to review everything. It never happens. More time and space can give us capacity to reflect and consider a production. It enables you the luxury of exploring themes, the quality of the work and delve a little deeper.

There are however advantages to skimming as well. If we allow ourselves to be open and accepting right here, right now in whatever we are experiencing then we should feel justified in that first reaction; surely. Does it resonate with us, does it move us, do we feel something and does it stay with us? For me that’s often the litmus test of a good performance. I don’t have to like it, as long as I feel something and I am convinced that the performers, artists or musicians gave their all.

Over the last few days a team of 3 Tasmanian reviewers have been watching, hearing, feeling and experiencing what has been Junction Arts Festival in Launceston, Tasmania. And it has been a ball. Launceston is perfectly suited to a festival such as this, both geographically and culturally. The greatest sense I got from Junction was one of joyous, small morsels of beauty and a few curve balls to challenge a little and keep the locals on their toes.

I am incredibly disappointed that I was unable to get to everything, but walking, and being able to literally walk to everything, allowed me the scope to observe others experiencing Junction.

Wednesday was a day of preparation, but throughout the CBD were hundreds of primary school children being led around the Art Trail by artists involved with Interweave Arts. Flags, murals, material and colour filled public walkways and spaces and added to a genuine sense of excitement in the city. That evening at the Junc Room in Civic Square was a celebration and invitation to get stuck into the program and experience what was about to happen.

I must admit being a little worried when the Junction program came out just a week before the festival. But it didn’t seem to dampen the enthusiasm. I bumped into family who had travelled from the East Coast, there were numerable postings on Facebook from people travelling from all over the state and I saw people from Hobart who had driven up especially for the weekend.

With time now to finally reflect on what I saw, felt, heard and experienced, I think Junction has been overall a great success. There was richness in the programming that began with foundations that were set within the community. Last year one of my favourite things was when Interweave Arts, through its Streets Alive program, attempted the world record in synchronised dancing with an umbrella. I happened to walk onto the street as this was happening, was handed an umbrella by Kim Schneiders and like the other 100+ became part of a work of art. Immensely funny and beautiful, this type of art, that you happen upon, is what makes the magic of a festival.

Similarly this year it was the treasures hidden throughout the city that resonated. Storm troopers on the streets of Launceston, ping pong in the Brisbane Mall, writers awaiting inspiration hidden in cafés, a bus filled with voice and a lifesize inflatable whale in City Park (who doesn’t love an enormous inflatable animal?). And like Pandora’s Box, the Junc Room circus tent, providing the enchanting central hub and a smorgasbord of music, cabaret and performance.

Of course, this doesn’t mean it was all smooth sailing and perfection. Some of the ‘joke’ bands were a bit wearing after a while and would have benefited from shorter, sharp gigs intermingled with other performers. This was also the case with some performances, where once the joke was out, there wasn’t a lot more to offer. While I am unsure of audience numbers, a festival can only benefit from a little more lead in time. More promotion throughout the city and further afield may have assisted with numbers.

But these are minor in the grand scale of what happened last week. Junction Arts Festival was a success because of the program, the planning and the place-Launceston. This is particularly exciting for Northern Tasmania as it often does not benefit from some of the other major festivals and must be extremely rewarding for those who have pushed hard to see a greater arts and cultural focus in the region.

For the WriteResponse writers, we have thoroughly enjoyed our second gig with Junction and plan to be back next year, reviewing performance, visual arts and more. Can I please order back Elbow Room who put on There (great show), something inflatable, the Junc Room, Lazlo and definitely the Art Trail by Interweave Arts. But also, please continue to surprise me and have those treasures that I can just happen upon.

Thanks for having us. x

The Chordwainers

2011-08-28T05:54:00.000-07:00

In the closing hours of the festival The Chordwainers assembled on stage, under the canopy of JAF’s vibrant heart, The Junc Room. Every time I have seen these wonderful players I can’t help but feel as though these are privileged individuals, the chosen ones. Naturally curious of not only performance but also audience, I scanned the room. Over there, some heads nodding; a bit closer, the index finger of one half of a conversation subconsciously drawing the air as he points and explains to his partner, while a cluster of friends shuffle for a spare plastic seat in the D around the stage.

To the best of my observation, there are three things commanding attention here. Firstly, the musicians, secondly the magnificent leather instruments, and thirdly the unique and delightfully surreal music produced. I say surreal, because to me, there is a familiarity to the sound but something is decidedly different. These instruments of course are the exquisite sculptural leather creations by the late great Garry Greenwood. Formed from imagination, passion, and masterful artistry The Chordwainers wield Greenwood’s creations that would not be out of place leaning up against the wall of a muso’s home in Hobbiton. Simply said, they are gorgeous.

When thinking about how I could possibly describe the sound in words, as if on cue, a friend nearby leaned in and informed me that the instruments themselves were limited in their range and that the quartet up on stage had to learn how to play them; not how to play, rather how to play them. Immediate thoughts swirled around my mind and scored with what I felt (not necessarily correct) were medieval tunes. At some point these leather travellers arrived, naked and alien, entrusted to the hands and mouths of Karlin Love, Dan Callahan, Andrew Sulzberger and Lila Meleisea and a relationship was forged, a kind of ordained arrangement from when Greenwood first pounded leather against riverstone. I have no doubt The Chordwainers feel connected to their instruments. They must. I suspect a lot of musicians do, but there is a legacy here that is continued, perhaps entrusted to the Chordwainers, as keepers of sculpture and sound in the memory of a creative visionary.

Patrick Sutczak

ABC Open Air Cinema

2011-08-27T16:25:00.000-07:00

Nestled on the edge of Civic Square overlooking the Launceston Town Hall, the distinct orange canvas of the ABC Open tent provided us with another festival gem; the Open Air Cinema. A chilly evening breeze wasn’t enough to deter me from taking a seat (mind you at the chime of half-six I wished I had allowed enough time to grab a warm Wild Willow coffee). It was freezing, but it didn’t matter because the collection of short ABC Open film projects had my attention and I was determined to tough it out.

Projected onto the internal wall of the tent, a series of beautifully constructed narratives were being played out from contributions as part of ABC Open’s Northern Tasmania One on One: Change project. Black and white still images weaved together to compliment the stories of change narrated in the first person. An experience made even more elegant by the occasional rippling of the tent wall nudged by the breeze in addition to the murmurings of various Junction happenings outside.

With contributions from Kitty Taylor, Janice Turner, Bart Scanlan, and Richard Pree I was drawn into these stories, these lives. Notable montages came from Chris Mead, Stephanie Finn, Nick Higgins and Tameika Brumby with Carla’s Run Out of Paper and my favourite Memory List by Eliza Freeman with such candid insight having suffered a brain haemorrhage;

“ I look at the photograph and I remember it being taken, but I forget how I felt.”

This is a beautifully produced short with Freeman reaching out telling us something we should already know – that she feels things.

The lighter and more colourful Tassie Two Step project followed on from One on On. It featured selected shorts on the history of dance in Northern Tasmanian communities. Having a Ball recalled the romance and innovation of the country ball with quirky facts such as Zeehan’s Gaiety Theatre being decorated with used cash-tin rolls hanging down from the ceiling chandelier-style. Hip Hop Can’t Stop by Kayden Dewar, Scott Fisher and Hosea Heckerton provided an upbeat and uplifting reprise followed on by Moves and Memories by Bessie Smith and Bronwyn Purvis. Hilarious contribution from alter-ego Dave Behringah Breaking it Down for us and finally the delightful Music Box by Lisa Garland and Catherine Thomas.

Rounding up the bill came the Blue Reels project seeing the production of a Forth Valley Blues Festival documentary and two film clips from festival musicians; firstly Pete Cornelius’ Tumbleweed and then ending with Last Laugh from Guthrie (a very slick clip indeed!).

The great thing is that the contributions featured in the Open Air Cinema were simply a taster of the quality and production values of ABC Open projects. There is more, a lot more. Do yourself a favour, if you haven’t discovered your country, your state, your community or yourself – make an effort and tap into ABC Open any way you can. Disappointment doesn’t exist there.

Patrick Sutczak

Talking Skirt (Prototype)

2011-08-26T17:00:00.000-07:00

Libraries are amongst the most magical of places. Indeed, they have changed somewhat to incorporate the shifts in the way we access information, and the way we share it, evolving into information hubs and network centres; but they still have books; books that despite content, have dimension and weight. Evident in the minuscule mangling of pages and bindings lay the history of hundreds, if not thousands, of inquisitive, interested borrowers who unconsciously caressed each leaf corner with certain sensuality, until the words ran out and the page got flicked. Jilted maybe, returned most likely; the books I speak of are compressed into rank and file, but if we find what we want – we can reach out and touch it.

Fitting really that Sonja Hindrum’s Talking Skirt should find itself located centre stage in Launceston’s Learning and Information Network Centre (LINC). Developed during a residency under arts@work’s 2011 AIR program, Sonja Hindrum worked with students from Queechy High School to explore ideas of wearable art and how communication is achieved through textiles. These are wonderful, imaginative explorations that I find particularly engaging because of the potential. We are already familiar with touch-screens and digital content, but Talking Skirt peels back the flash-bang visuals and introduces the idea of a tactile experience by combining touch with poetry. For me, this is using tech to re-connect with something a great deal more emotional. On first encounter I saw that the skirt is, outwardly, not fancy at all, the retro bust that sits above is angular and uninviting, but nearby are two white cotton gloves and instructions. I am like a cat.

Featuring poetry from Mark Tredinninck, Dierdre Kessler and Ray Liversidge the written instructions inform me that I can activate their poems by wearing the gloves and leafing through the skirt pleats as I would the pages of a book. For some reason, I knelt down and gently ran my fingers across the fabric…

(insert record-scratching here)

Arghh! What went wrong?

Well, in one sense, nothing. It was beautifully reactive and did as I hoped it would. Heart by Ray Liversidge began to recite itself to me and the words were masterful. But, on a rather unexpected note – it was loud! All of a sudden, in what I imagined would be an intimate and interesting new media experience just turned a bit awkward. Those in LINC at the time who didn’t know what the dress was suddenly turned to see me, a thirty-something, on my knees in front of a headless mannequin wearing gloves with my hand inserted in the folds of its skirt. Not to mention the blaring vocals of a poem entitled Heart. You get the rest.

Don’t get me wrong, Talking Dress (Prototype) is an inventive and interesting artwork (also made possible by the electronics of Paul Alting van Geusau), and if this is a prototype then I am rapidly awaiting further development, simply to see where this thing goes. As it stands, it is beautiful in its rawness and the poetry it emits evocative of the need to touch, of all things, a skirt. However, my only thoughts that dip into criticism are that I felt (emphasis on I…) that during JAF it needs a space that allows for further engagement open to the inquisitive bystander, not the disgruntled one. That said, Talking Skirt is clever, interesting and unashamed in its infancy. A highlight, for more reasons than one!

Patrick Sutczak

There

2011-08-26T14:35:00.000-07:00

By Elbow Room

Sometimes when you are sitting in the dark waiting for something extraordinary to happen, it does. To try to explain There would be almost impossible. I am still trying to piece it together, but the more I try to gather the threads the more they are pulled from my hands leaving me with a lovely afterglow. And, believe me, that’s a great thing.

What I can tell you is that the performances by Emily Tomlins and Angus Grant in this two-hander are passionate, exuberant and incredibly engaging. Dressed in black, with a black stage and only a couple of black boxes as props, Tomlins and Grant create a believable world that begins with their hands: a spotlight on their fingers walking across the boxes to create the beings that open and close the show.

The performances from Tomlins during her Helen of Troy rave (yes, this show has it all) and later from Grant when he joins the audience to cast doubt upon the integrity of his female cohort, are brilliant. It is intense, fiery and passionate.

Humour is integral in this production. It is such a joyous experience to be part of – And you do feel part of it. The lighting and sound production are subtle but perfect for a work where it is so important that the performers not be upstaged by either.

Microphones become characters or at least another consciousness, hand-held torches allow the duo to read the minds of audience members and there are simple but clever devices used to portray the stories within the show. Marcel Dorney's direction ensures that There never becomes farcical or trite.

There is a show where the players can do whatever they want and it works. It is also a performance that resonates and will stay with me over the coming days, even weeks.

Congratulations to Junction – it’s a little pearler!

Kylie Eastley

The Lazlo Steigenberger Project: You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is

2011-08-25T23:10:00.000-07:00

There's been a massive mistake and the Government has hired Lazlo Steigenberger to help.

The earth is in peril from an insidious misconception that threatens our very species, but don't panic! Lazlo with his planet motion simulator and ten-minute full-bodied sixteen-stage workshop has all the facts, messages and reassurances - and all you need to bring with you is your imagination.

Is he a consultant? Government plant? Motivational speaker? Or the man most likely to save the world since Arthur Dent…

I can't tell you too much about the workshop (I don't have Government clearance); let's just say there's rock music, cue cards, voiceovers, video, white noise, government emails, time-lapse photography, a planet clock, the moon (if you're quick enough!), and important information that covers war, pornography, brown paper bags, ears and bread cupboards. But what else would you expect from a suited man wearing a headlamp who claims, "The planet: it's a ripper, isn't it?"

Take your seat in the Launceston Planetarium at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery at Inveresk, strap yourself in (remember: no questions, no talking, no writing) and enjoy your thirty-minute trip into the space-time-continuum vortex. But be warned: it's the universe, just not as we know it.

Wendy Newton

Lazlo

2011-08-25T18:56:00.000-07:00

I admit that in preparing to write this, I am faced with a personal dilemma. On one hand I want to relate my Lazlo Steigenberger experience, and on the other hand I want to let you experience it for yourself. So, here is what I am going to do…

I will tell you firstly, that the Lazlo Steigenberger Project of which I was granted attendance (more on that later) was held at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery’s Planetarium at Inveresk. As I referred back to my handy-sized Junction Event Guide, I noticed that the pages featuring details on this, er, lecture, had dog-ear corners folded noticeably larger than the rest. In my rudimentary approach to prioritising events at JAF, this basically meant that it was something that I would make every effort to get to. The reason for this was naively, and perhaps ashamedly, because I hadn’t heard of Lazlo Steigenberger.

I will tell you secondly, that I have now.

Thirdly, I will mention that Lazlo surveyed me entering the Planetarium and said, in a way that only he can, it was okay for me to sit down. I smiled quirkily and found my place. What more can you expect from a man that describes in a round-about-sort-of way the jump from the primordial swamp into trousers, while flicking through notes from the government by the light of a ridiculously bright headlamp?

How can I put this? Timers, Space clocks, K.P.H, government correspondence, carefully inserted rock tunes, full use of the Planetarium’s projection hardware, and, well, the delectable insight of Lazlo Steigenberger.

Oh, I almost forgot! The moon. There it goes!

As the JAF Event Guide states, here is your opportunity to experience the universe like you’ve never before. And yes, shoes are compulsory.

So you think you can judge

2011-08-25T16:53:00.000-07:00

THE event of the Junction Arts Festival 2011 program, So You Think You Can Interpretive Dance, was lucky enough to secure me as their celebrity judge to give some credibility to Thursday night's performance.

After pushing my way past the crowds of adoring fans clamouring for my autograph, and the paparazzi competing to get the best photo of me outside Fresh on Charles, I was quickly ushered into the green room (with its distinct lack of Perrier, note to Manager!) with the other VIP judges who were greatly impressed to be working with me.
Host Ian Pidd gushingly introduced me to the capacity audience as “coming straight from powdering her nose” and the uproarious clapping justly followed. Soon enough, I was poised with my judge’s-pen-of-love to offer my critical, but refreshingly fair, feedback to the ten contestants who were waiting eagerly in the wings to hear what I had to say and to see the fabulous faux fur coat and [insert product placement here] sunglasses perched perkily on my newly designed nose.

There were many highlights and touches of brilliance in the show: when I told Gulliver that he had channelled Michael Jackson, Usher and Norman Gunston during his performance to “Right Here Waiting”; when I ran out of 'describing' words that go with 'doing' words after using up all of my big words (like ‘great’, ‘cool’ and ‘wow’), on the first seven contestants; when I renamed Marian as Merriweather-Trixie-Belle-Pixie-Baby-Poodle so I could give myself a bit more mic and camera time.

But some of the contestants provided entertainment too: Bella and Evie, who gave a heartfelt performance to “Wuthering Heights”, with moments of sheer winding, windy, moors; Nick and 8-months pregnant Penny, who not only danced to “I Had the Time of My Life” but had clearly lived it eight months earlier; and Dylan, who managed “Flashdance”, “High School Musical”, “Beautiful People" and something strangely brilliant with a carrot all in two minutes of interpretive dance.

Melody was a clear winner with her expressive performance to Mariah Carey’s “Hero” and not just because all three judges know her; she moved her body continuously throughout the performance, changed her expression more than once, and pointed to the audience at the right moments. All of this resulted in a superior performance of dance that even sour-faced judge Justin couldn’t mark lower than ‘2’.

A dance-off for second and third place, a collective dance to “Bohemian Rhapsody”, and I can critically and fairly say that I had the time of my life. I swear it’s true. And I owe it all to you.

Wendy Newton, ditsy B-grade celebrity judge

JUNKY TO FUNKY ARTS TRAIL 2011

2011-08-25T15:27:00.000-07:00

The streets of Launceston are transformed by art of every type thanks to the work of hundreds of school children and artists involved in the Streets Alive Junky to Funky Arts Trail.

This morning I was lucky enough to have a private showing of the Art Trail, which has transformed spaces within the city to house artworks created through recycling and upcycling. Recycling is something we should all be familiar with but maybe upcycling needs a little explaining. It is about taking something, shifting it and creating something of greater value.
An example of this is Steve Colwell’s Spring Cheer, plastic ball flowers that are planted throughout the Civic Square. Delightful clusters of these colourful creations are made from cutting up rubber balls and reconfiguring them into flowers. Sandbags Alive was created by Access Arts Link artists and sit in a garden on the corner of Cameron and St John Streets. Quirky sandbag people are made from the sandbags that were originally used to protect The Studio – the home of Interweave Arts at Inveresk. These have been made by artists and children through Access Arts. Proud and welcoming, this and many other works on the Art Trail provide humour and an invitation to all ages to enjoy such creations. There is also an overwhelming sense of joy created by both these works.

The aim of the Art Trail is to transform public spaces and that is exactly what they have achieved. Linda Barker’s dragonflies made from bark and sticks are suspended from trees in the civic square. She has greeted hundreds of children over the last 2 days inviting them to make, create and show their pieces in public alongside other artists.

Martin Cole and Karen Austin have produced colourful flags in Tent Dream. These hang along Paterson Street that are made from old tents used at the Falls Festival. It is a delight to wander the streets and find these treasures and that is the intention of the work as curator, Ralf Haertel explains.

‘It’s about putting art in places where people happen upon it and brightening people’s experience of the city.’

If that doesn’t bring a smile to your dial, try resisting Mr Happy Happy, a character created by artist Gerard Smith who uses a computer to generate the images. Copied images of Mr Happy Happy in all sorts of situations are pasted around the city, so look out for them.

Mother and daughter team, Minna and Ro have produced a series of collages exhibited on Gender Lane (ArtTas Building). The piece titled Straight Messages explores the mass media and advertising and its effect on individuals.

Upcycled street art, recycled from Stompin Youth’s production titled Home cover the windows of the old Rik Sloane Cycles shop on Paterson Street. Bold and raw, they leap out at people and are perfectly suited to the urban location.

While there is too much to mention in this short blog there are a few stand out works. A highlight is Liz Russell-Arnot’s Toxic Beauty 2; a collection of underwater creatures exquisitely crafted from plastic bottles. It is clear that this artist has spent time exploring this medium and it has paid off. She has produced a delicate, beautiful and evocative work that is worthy of much greater attention than the passing foot traffic in the Brisbane Arcade. It is quite breathtaking.

What I Say is a work by Aboriginal artist Vicki West that has been recycled from a previous piece. Installed on the front of the Office of Premier Building in Paterson Street, it is a beautifully produced work made from Dodda vine, an indigenous plant and introduced species New Zealand flax. The title gives away a little of the intention of this work that is a commentary on the treatment of indigenous communities by government. Ironic but appropriate then that it hangs on such a building. The loops of textured, plaited and woven fibre that hang on the facade remind me of coronation decorations signalling a celebration.

Another sweet but significant piece is Butterflies in Flight by Louisa Jones and for a big finish check out Richie Ares Dona’s Grasp which is a rhythmical and organic celebration of milk bottles suspended en masse

It took me about an hour to see this, but I still missed some. So get a coffee from Two Hands Coffee in Civic Square and have a wander. It is well worth it.

Streets Alive is a program of Interweave Arts. Maps for the Art Trail are available from the information tent in Civic Square.

Kylie Eastley

Search Party vs Launceston

2011-08-25T06:30:00.000-07:00

The familiar bells of Launceston’s iconic town clock rang to the tune of ten. A small but dedicated crowd began to close in on a seldom seen sight in the Brisbane Street Mall; a Table Tennis table. As I neared, I spotted the Mayor of our city, Alderman Albert van Zetten, decked out in a matching silver sports outfit ready to be the first opponent against Search Party’s Jodie Hawkes. After a rousing speech throwing down the gauntlet to the people of Launceston, Search Party’s co-creator, Pete Phillips, declared that the competition had begun.

Search Party challenges Launceston

And so it did, though providing stiff competition, and after a surprisingly brief amount of time, our Mayor overshot the table at matchpoint and Search Party notched up number one. Not a great start, but with three days of constant competition, Launcestonians still have a chance. Disappointingly, after the initial match, curiosity waned, crowds dissolved and were replaced with casual observers and passers by. This didn’t last for long of course, but it is an indication of the nature of Search Party vs. and I suspect is a clue to the duration of the piece.

Upon initial engagement, to the uninitiated bystander it could be misinterpreted as entertainment, a participatory event by which the public could observe or play for a few minutes and have a bit of fun. While these are indeed elements of the piece, there is more going on here that can be identified as the true undercurrent of the work. One only needs to watch almost any kind of sport to witness, and indeed become a part of, a passion focused on one side or the other. Social divisions in one location and context become unified when placed in another. The AFL springs to mind as an obvious example of people en masse coming down on one side of the fence and letting in be known, often loudly.

It is this fervor of pack mentality that UK art duo Search Party hint at with this clever work. While decidedly outnumbered, Phillips and Hawker host this marathon in their super-slick red jerseys boasting a confident presence, while challenging our community spirit. Why? Because it is important. There are connections that can be made within a community, strengths to be indentified and a unity in allegiance that sport holds high above its head on the podium next to religion and politics. I love the fact that this performance raises questions about audience, the spectator, and furthermore about collaboration, and most definitely about place.

This is the first time Search Party have brought their work to Australia, and I am intrigued by the fact that in which ever town or city they choose to challenge, there is the potential for identification of a common thread. The location will be different, the people guaranteed to be diverse, the atmosphere over three days will likely fluctuate and evolve, but maybe, just maybe, Search Party can hold a mirror up to communities to reflect unification. The kind of unification that isn’t born out of disaster and doom, but rather out of the wielding of a small round bat and the hitting of a small round ball.

Search Party will end the marathon tournament in the final days of the Junction Arts Festival at 4pm on Saturday the 27^th of August.

Launceston, consider yourself found.

Patrick Sutczak

Something goin' on

2011-08-24T20:54:00.000-07:00

The city is unfurling like early spring blossom as I head into the Junction Arts Festival (JAF) 2011 launch.

I follow the long line of dreadlocks, fros, coifs, feathers-in-hair into the outrageously colourful big top of the Junc Room where artists, sponsors, politicians, volunteers and eager participants (like me) are rubbing shoulders; figuratively, literally. The formality is there, the speeches, the acknowledgements and thanks, but we're here to welcome in the festival, to experience the entertainment, and to feel a part of something bigger than we do in our everyday lives.

It is food and wine, music and friendships that pass the night. An artist spontaneously pins a handmade badge onto my dress, another passes me a handcrafted fan, another, yet, offers to personally guide me on their art trail through the city the next day.

As I leave the thumping vibe of the Junc Room I sense the subtle shift of anticipation that flows through the city like a familiar pulse from last year. There are people drifting through the streets. Jim Coad's video overlay spins like a neon Wheel of Fortune on the old post office building, reimagining its conservative cloak of brick and mesmerising me with its implicit message of luck and change. Mr Happy Happy shyly greets me as I wait for the traffic lights to change, unassuming in his black-and-white attire, but unmissable and whimsically delightful on the utilitarian steel of the light pole. A chance encounter with Charles Du Cane and I am the thrilled and unexpected recipient of his CD "Port and Rail!" It drives me home with its pumping funky beat as I pass Rossilli Café with its JAF poster in the window advertising the Letter Writing Service. It will be ink and paper, feelings and tears, served with the coffee here over the next four days.

JAF has only launched and already I am reminded of the generosity of the arts: in bringing community together; in entertaining, questioning, provoking, mediating, equalising, remembering; in transforming our public spaces into places of shared meaning and experience. There's something goin' on around here, growls Charles as I head home. I couldn't have said it better.

Wendy Newton

OPENING NIGHT

2011-08-24T18:33:00.001-07:00

Something a little special happened last night in the centre of Launceston and it all centred on a beautiful big circus tent smack-bang in the middle of Civic Square. It was opening night of Junction Arts Festival 2011: a chance for speeches, for celebration and some great entertainment. The tent was packed with an audience representing every demographic and the atmosphere was one of optimism and excitement.

For the Launceston Youth and Community Orchestra who opened the entertainment, the event allowed a different audience to experience their work. And didn’t the crowd love them as they filled the Civic Square with the big, brassy and ballsy renditions of classics. They were followed by the Transylvanian Gypsy Kings, a trio of machismo rich, mono-browed Romanian rockstars. Their musical talent, which is considerable, was matched by their humour and my only disappointment was that I couldn’t hear some of the witty dialogue - which would have been worth hearing. Female members of the audience were passed fliers that promoted Nicu, Lucian and Zurka, all in search of a bride, who, preferably one who shared their love of ferrets.

It seemed nobody wanted to go home last night, with plenty of people taking time to experience the work of Jim Coad’s Video Architecture, projected onto the side of the State Library and married with the ruminations of DJ Kashishi (Dane Hunnerup) who provided an audio melting pot with indigenous, Brazilian and Sufi influences.

Next door a small troupe of committed artists worked late into the night in The White Box Experiment, painting and inviting others to join them in covering the many white canvasses that lay waiting.

I wouldn’t normally dwell on the speeches, made earlier in the night in the big top, but there were three points made by three different speakers that were important. The first was from Minister Michelle O’Byrne. It’s always great to see a politician genuinely excited, and why wouldn’t she be, especially when given the task of announcing to a local crowd that the state government will provide $600 000 to Junction over the next three years. Great news for a fledgling festival and particularly for the north of the state which has, until now, been a little neglected in this area.

The second point was from Tasmanian Regional Arts President, Lee Cole, who stressed the importance of regional community arts in festivals and the integral role that volunteers play in putting on such events. And the third point was made by Artistic Director Ian Pidd who made his pronouncement that...

‘Love will conquer fear’.

As a passionate optimist and idealist (well most of the time), this statement particularly resonated in a financial environment where festivals can sometimes be seen as risky. Festivals are challenging to fund, difficult to produce and can be tough finding the audiences. But it is crucial that they happen and that they do bring new concepts, experiences and performers to existing and new audiences. They also provide an opportunity to showcase local and regional work that may not otherwise be given a platform.

Opening night gave us a taster of what is to come over the coming days and nights. While I pulled the pin around 10pm, there was still a good crowd in the Junc Room and every indication that more were on their way to experience The Lawless Quartet. A successful opening night for this festival.
Kylie Eastley

A day of preparation

2011-08-24T05:58:00.001-07:00

I begin my meandering on a sunny spring day to see what preparation is underway for Junction Arts Festival 2011 in Launceston. A Facebook message teases me with the prospect of seeing a huge inflatable whale in Princes Park, but instead I am drawn to Civic Square to see how preparations for opening night are progressing.

The Willow Cafe is already set up and attracting onlookers with its range of intriguing willow creations. A crew of Junctioners are busy putting the final touches to the Junc Room while the aroma of freshly brewed coffee is pumped out of the Two Hands Coffee stand. The ABC Online Producers are wrestling with their tent that will play host to a photobooth and voxpox of favourite places, while punters are already lining up to buy tickets for Barry Morgan’s World of Organs; a favourite for many from last year’s festival.

There is undoubtedly a sense of anticipation that makes me say ‘don’t you just love a festival?’ This excitement began the moment I sat down with a cup of tea to peruse the program, marking the events at the top of my list. Ping pong, Lazlo, Talking Skirts and Mr Happy all vie for my attention, and my aim is to do it all. After all, there is plenty of time for sleep later.

Kylie Eastley

The Scale of the Whale

2011-08-24T00:16:00.000-07:00

Each year off the coast of southwest Victoria, a natural event known as the Bonney Upwelling occurs in which changes in wind and ocean currents draw in a feast of krill attracted by their primary food source, phytoplankton. In turn, the tiny krill attract the magnificent and mammoth blue whale, and, if you are lucky enough, you can catch a glimpse as they feed tens-of-kilometers off-shore.

It is fair to say that a great many of us who live comfortably on dry land rarely experience the opportunity to see the awesome sight of a blue whale, let alone up close - however, if you happen to be wandering around Launceston during the Junction Arts Festival, I guarantee that will change.

First created as part of the Portland Upwelling Festival in 2009, Mark Cuthbertson’s inflatable whale has now migrated to Launceston to the delight of anyone who should encounter her. I must admit, this full-sized whale is hard to miss; at 27 meters in length, Cuthbertson’s whale appears to swim on the spot as it sits in Launceston's Prince’s Square. The whale’s tail, towering high above, rises and falls as if propelling itself through an invisible ocean, its eye curiously peering back at those looking up at it. Crafted from parachute material and beautifully finished, the darkened flesh subtly draws breath as the discrete air-pump nearby keeps the scale of this majestic creature true.

Not only existing as a work of art, a project of this execution and accuracy simply begs to attract the curious of all ages. As I sat nearby and observed, children were playfully interacting with the blue whale while the Mums and Dads dutifully attempted to keep at least one eye on their children, while the other inevitably scanned the length, breadth and height of the whale - no doubt lost in their own awe of the fact that the average blue whale really is that big.

The easily transportable properties of the inflatable whale (I was assured that it fits inside a modest bag) will see it travel to four locations around the city during the Junction Festival, all of which, I am sure will add new points of reference in which to appreciate the size and beauty of this magnificent creature.

JUNCTION ART FESTIVAL 2011

2011-08-18T07:16:00.000-07:00

A team of three writers are hitting Launceston next week to check out and write about the performances, exhibitions and experiences of Junction Art Festival 2011.
While the program is certainly smaller than last year there are some favourites along with some interesting assortments. Check out the reviews throughout the festival, listen in to ABC Radio and go to ABC Open to find out what's hot and what's a little less so...

The Harry Harlow Project

2011-08-17T17:32:00.000-07:00

Written and performed by James Saunders
Presented by the Salamanca Arts Centre

by Stephenie Cahalan

There is one deep flaw in the inclusion of The Harry Harlow Project in the Salamanca Arts Centre’s Mobile States Festival of New Australian Performance: it only runs for two performances. There should be at least ten.

Written and performed by Melbourne-based James Saunders, the performance is engrossing from the first second, drawing the audience into a slightly uncomfortable relationship with the lone, innocuous-looking character on stage. The house lights stay up for easily the first ten minutes of the performance, making the audience not just observers, but companions in the bland room that could be an office, could be a cell in an institution, or could be a bedroom.

Harry Harlow was a groundbreaking psychologist who, through his scientific experiments using baby monkeys, taught us what we now take as given around the effect of touch and nurturing in child rearing, behaviour, development, depression, neglect and abuse. His findings have shaped modern psychology yet his methods were cruel; reminiscent of the Enlightenment days’ prevailing assumption that animals are non-sentient beings. Saunders’ portrayal of Harlow shows the blurring lines between brilliance and madness and suggests that in Harlow’s case the two were enmeshed.

Saunders is alone on stage , yet this is by no means a monologue as the skilled use of Harry's voice recordings create multiple personalities, commentators and companions. His performance is slick in its physicality and delivery, and our introduction to Harlow’s Pulitzer Prize winning biographer Deborah Blum is simply perfect. Every element of sound, visual recording and projection is used seamlessly and is highly effective. Video artist Martin Coutts and composer and sound designer Kelly Ryall sit like two modern-day Foley artists, poised to compliment the performance, while blending perfectly into the era with staid fifties-style shirt sleeves and oiled hair.

The Harry Harlow Project is exciting, satisfying, challenging new theatre at its finest and all credit to SAC for bringing it to Hobart. There is one more performance tonight on Thursday, August 18 at the Peacock Theatre so cancel any other plans to make sure you catch it.

2011-08-14T03:23:00.001-07:00

"Art is like a staple, like bread or wine or a warm coat in winter. Man's spirit grows hungry for art in the same way his stomach for food."
— Irving Stone, writer

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2011-08-07T22:29:00.000-07:00

Salamanca Arts Centre / HyPe / Miss Despoina’s Hackspace
Peacock Theatre, 4-6 August

Anica Boulanger-Mashberg

Nancy Mauro-Flude sits at a laptop at a desk cluttered with papers, facing away from us; we’re watching over her shoulder, snooping as she fiddles around in chatrooms and semifunctional programs: playgrounds of code. The theatre’s dominated by the huge projection of the screen across the back wall, making the human figure on stage look almost incidental. The interface is dressed up in retro DOS style, the way someone much trendier than you wears hand-picked, op-shop-wrinkled 1940s twin sets.

When we first walk in, she’s navigating some kind of ASCII-based Star Wars reenactment. And then she begins some kind of code-based journaling – a ‘to do’ list and a dream diary entry. This is the bit of the show which appeals to me most – there’s a mike somewhere on the table and that inimitable noise of computer keys eerily fills the space as we hang on every blinking-green-cursor-heralded word. We’re dropped in the middle of this ‘world’ (whatever it is) without much context, and we’re not really sure of our role in it. How ‘performative’ is she? How much is she just doing what she does, and not particularly caring what we think? It’s a strange hybrid; unintelligible and yet weirdly addictive. The sounds of the tapping, the back of her head in occasional movement, the irregular and captivating rhythms as she pauses, rewrites, backspaces, pauses, writes, rewrites – each editorial change leaving no physical trace but contributing as much to what we read as does the final set of words. Sometimes she corrects spelling mistakes and sometimes she ignores them: a kind of screw you tone as a reminder that we’re intruding into her intimate relationship with her computer.

Then she’s in chatrooms – multiple ones, flipping between them faster than we can actually see; some peopled by people, and some by bots. Hard to say which conversations were more interesting. And then she’s writing requests to some kind of electronic concordance/collocation program – in response it spits out lists of word pairs from A Room of One’s Own, Hamlet, and others. All these things are in her control, not ours, and it’s frustrating. After a while I refuse to start reading them, because I know in a second she’ll scroll down at double speed, or change the page all together. Is this what she wants? To demonstrate how easily the computer dominates us instead of vice versa?

I haven’t a clue, really, what the text (the code, the conversations, the extracts) means half the time – but that fits the sense of voyeurism, as if you’re walking past a window at dusk when you realise that through the gauzy curtains and half-lit, you can see two people in the middle of something, and even though you’re not sure what it is (lovemaking? an argument? interior decorating?), you stand there watching, feeling a little guilty and a little titillated.

It did strike me in a similar way to the dance improvisation work I saw earlier this year: what difference does our presence as an audience make? Strangely – in her program notes Mauro-Flude talks about getting behind the ‘user-friendly facades’ of computers – the stripped-back code landscape is alienating and distancing. The novelty of the voyeurism wears off after a while, but luckily the performance is short, leaving us wondering what to make of a relationship between human and machine – succeeding at what I think were some of her goals.

The Breath of Life

2011-08-06T17:20:00.000-07:00

LOCo Productions in association with the Salamanca Theatre Company
Backspace Theatre
Wednesday, August 3-Sunday August 7

By Stephenie Cahalan

In The Breath of Life by David Hare, two women meet to reconcile their feelings over the man they have both loved.

On a set cluttered with books we find professional, willful, aging Madeleine who has retired to the Isle of Wight to make her diminishing years pass more slowly. Frances visits ostensibly to write a memoir about the two women, but this thinly veils her true motivation for seeking out her former husband’s mistress; to learn more about the man she loved and find closure for her own failed relationship. The women circle each other as they settle into reveries around their relationships with the same man, the losses, the regret and bitterness they both harbour.

David Hare’s script is demanding, with long monologues that often render one actor stranded and uncomfortable — no doubt how I would feel if I were stuck in a room with my ex-partner’s ex-partner. However, I found the script unnecessarily wordy so the play may have benefited from trimming the excess dialogue that added little to the story, yet drained the dynamic of the actors. The repetitious banter between the two defensive women (oh really?, you tell me, I understand) left too much important information to supposition. I was frequently left guessing at events that had wrought a profound effect on the women. As one woman would declare ‘Yes, I understand’ I felt like calling out ‘I don’t! Why did you leave if you loved him so much, why did you love him when he sounds like an insensitive, selfish prig? Where is this going?’

Jane Longhurst’s fine portrayal of Frances, with her innocent pain and dignified bewilderment, was the backbone of the production. Madeleine, played by Helen Noonan, was less well-defined and it was not until the second act that Noonan really found her character’s voice and personality, helped by some of the sharper lines of the whole production. Clearer direction and more time in rehearsal may have helped resolve this. The intense discomfort of the two characters was keenly conveyed; by their rigid stance, well-held distance and inability to sit and communicate. I saw the play on opening night, so this would have improved with each performance. The lighting enhanced the middle-of-the-night mood, yet at times was a bit to dim to invite the audience in.

However, the script failed to really convey why these two intelligent, successful women ever fell for the absent character of Martin, who comes across as a spoilt man who has moved directly from adolescence to mid-life crisis, skipping the maturing process altogether. Somewhere the script has missed something vital in the explanation of the spell-binding man, which in turn robs the characters of Madeleine and Frances of their third dimension.

I love seeing productions at the Backspace Theatre, with its stiff chairs and the occasional intrusion of a noisy car rattling by outside. I love seeing strong two-handers, especially with actors of Longurst’s calibre and ability. The Breath of Life is a good opportunity to enjoy the athleticism of a dialogue-driven performance such as this.

However, I felt cheated as these two robust, intelligent female characters sparred over an undeserving bounder and could not help but conclude that, like Madeleine and Frances, actors deserve better from a writer.

Art On Legs 2011

2011-08-01T03:56:00.000-07:00

Saturday 30 July 2011

By Kylie Eastley

ArtOnLegs began 10 years ago as Fashion Fantasia. Hobart-based textile artist Rossy Roberts-Thomson wanted to provide textile artists and creative makers with the opportunity to showcase wearable art in Tasmania.

Its focus, as indicated on the website, is clear:

Fashion is taken to its limit into the area where the body is the canvas on which an installation, an idea, an aesthetic creation ….. is exhibited to an audience for their admiration, appreciation, inspiration and possible sale, whilst at the same time giving the maker/designer/creator an opportunity to make an impact as an artist in a legitimate sense. (www.fashionfantasia.com.au)

On Saturday night I attended the 10^th Annual Awards, this time held at the Farrall Centre at Friends School. It was a perfect venue, providing ample opportunity to view the wearable art pieces. This competition brings together students, emerging and established designers, but it also attracts artists who would otherwise work in ceramics, textiles and other 2-dimensional pieces.

This was my second foray into the ArtOnLegs Wearable Art Awards. I attended it 4 years ago and remember being impressed with the quality of work paraded before us on the runway, but surprised at the number of empty seats and lack of support for the event. I was hopeful that this had changed.

For two hours the audience experiences designs that range from the classic and glamorous, to the crazy and confronting. This is followed by the award presentation, with the major award being the $2 000 acquisition prize. Tasmanian designer Sabrina Evans, recently named one of Australia’s top emerging designers, received this award and her winning garment will be profiled as the face of ArtOnLegs 2012.

While the type of work presented ranges from conservative ‘ready to wear’ to more artistic creations, any suggestion that this isn’t art can immediately be dismissed, especially when you see the work of Bonnie Beck and Christine White. ‘Have a chat’ is an exquisitely designed and executed piece; cheeky, dynamic and interesting, it leaps out at the audience.

Maggie Wretham’s (QLD) ‘Silk to Junk Mail Kimono’ is exquisitely fashioned from catalogues, remnants of silk and cane matting, while Hannah Johnstone from Friends School amazed the audience with ‘Queen of Coke’, which included an aluminium coke can bustier and tiered skirt. Sustainability and recycling is encouraged and celebrated in this competition.

Kim Pen Pang provided much of the evening’s theatre and humour, especially with ‘My Breathing Apparatus’, which was part of the W’underwear category. Clad in medical tubing and catheters, he gyrated and thrust his way across the stage to the amusement of the audience. This was one of a number of pieces he presented throughout the evening, but was without doubt the most memorable.

ArtOnLegs entries are inspired by just about anything; events such as the children overboard incident, convict history, global warming and the recent earthquake in

Japan

. Others look to a more humorous musing of contemporary culture, such as pop icon Lady Gaga. This year’s categories included Feral Wedding, Riches to Rags, Nautical Ball and Dreamtime and materials ranged from tanned cane toad skins, coke cans, hessian, plastic bags, junk mail, chicken wire as well as the more conventional fabrics.

It is clear that the organisers and designers are passionate about continuing ArtOnLegs. It is political, humorous and above all entertaining and interesting. It should be an event that packs the house and attracts more Tasmanian entrants, government support and corporate funds. I know I would have jumped at the chance as an art student to present work like this, which to me definitely embraces performance artists. So the question is after ten years, why is it still only attracting small audiences and limited sponsorship?

Next year I am going to book my ticket and get along to ArtOnLegs 2012 ; it’s a good night out. Maybe I’ll even make a piece, who knows.

See a snapshot of ArtOnLegs at http://youtu.be/Qv97zIQwHZI

BEAUTIFUL

2011-07-13T20:19:00.000-07:00

Mudlark Theatre

By Kylie Eastley

13 July 2011

Beautiful is a dark, challenging and menacing production that is also riveting. Last night I sat in the Backspace Theatre to see this new work, written by Carrie McLean and directed by Kate Gaul. I am not going to detail the storyline too much, as I don't want to give anything away, but I will say it is a Tasmanian production that audiences should make the effort to see.

Set against a stark, domestic scene Beautiful is the telling of three interwoven stories. The common thread is the ghost Rachel, played by Jane Johnson; in a simple cotton dress, who floats, twists and tortures her way among the other players. Hers is a very physical performance that is genuine, raw and energetic. For me, Rachel was a highlight.

The combination of well-executed elements make this production successful. A simple set including large, white, floating curtains at the rear of the stage add to the haunting nature of the stories. Darren Willmott's lighting design provides a seamless and vital accompaniment to the storyline. The use of projection and film converts the simple set into a rich tapestry of memory, while Daryl Wallis's composition and sound add significantly to the mood.

However, it is McLean's crisp and choreographed script that is the driving force behind this production. A mix of dialogue and prose, which is captivating and poetic.

'You can't shut us out, we bite you at night'.

For the most part the script is overlaid; a barrage of stories unravelling around each other, punctuated with ghostly gasps or chorused words. This works exceptionally well, and even at its most chaotic and incomprehensible, it succeeds in heightening the sense of trauma, anguish and hunger of characters that have all been damaged by grief.

I loved the direction the work took towards the end. It was challenging, confronting and exactly what I want to see when I go to live theatre. It wasn't comfortable and easy, and must have been such a pleasure for the performers. All of them were consistent and convincing and worked beautifully as an ensemble.

I will certainly look out for more work by McLean and would encourage audiences to experience the debut season of Beautiful.

Beautiful is a Mudlark Theatre Production presented by the Tasmanian Theatre Company that runs until July 16.

Construction of the Human Heart

2011-05-23T03:30:00.000-07:00

fluidity of assemblage

The Backspace Theatre, Hobart .
As part of the Tasmanian Theatre Company’s Associate Program

Grief and the death of a small child are not easy subjects to broach at any time, and I must admit to sometimes feeling uncomfortable during the performance of Ross Muellers award winning play Construction of the Human Heart at the Backspace Theatre last Friday night (June 13). But while it was a brave choice of subject for this new Hobart-based ensemble it was also a delight to experience such a skilfully-directed and subtly-performed version of this cleverly-constructed very modern play.

With two actors onstage throughout, they are known own only as Him and Her.
Both are playwrights, reading a script, stepping in and out of that action as if in rehearsal. Slowly the relative safety of the scripted drama is neatly injected with the realities of their unravelling lives and relationship until the wall between the two worlds dissolves.

Whilst grief is a palpable character in this emotionally charged drama, it is also interspersed with moments of humour and insight, delivered with great joy by Anna Freeland and Matthew Stolp .
So, just as the quite Pinter-esque domestic claustrophobia builds to breaking point as the couples sparring spirals out of control, beautiful visual moments and memories of their son break through from the outside world like proverbial rays of sunshine to save us all.

I congratulate this new ensemble on this tightly worked piece of theatre and hope to see more from them soon.

Gai Anderson

Artery

2011-05-19T16:58:00.001-07:00

Tasdance
The Peacock Theatre
April 14-16
Anica Boulanger-Mashberg

Four dancers, four emerging choreographers, four points of the compass. The bafflingly-named Artery offers us four commissioned works shaped by direction: Adam Wheeler’s ‘North’, Solon Ulbrich’s ‘South’, Trisha Dunn’s ‘East’ and Alice Lee Holland’s ‘West’. Artery also incorporates a screening of Anna Smith’s dance video Momentary, an elegant though constricted portrait of age, youth, stillness, energy, eucalypts, and bodies which somehow reminds us how undemocratic it feels to be the audience of dance on film rather than dance on stage.

The four live works are very different to each other, the first two closely woven around the four dancers (Sofie Burgoyne, Trisha Dunn, Sarah Fiddaman and Malcolm McMillan) and the second two much less personal in their narratives.

In ‘North’ we are literally introduced to each dancer as Wheeler creates a work which both textually and physically integrates the stories of each performer. Spoken word sections are amusing though somewhat awkward and bland in cadence, presenting an odd contrast with the mundane, honest, and funny biographies each dancer narrates about their own career. The concrete, text-driven sections lead into a more abstract quartet of bodies spinning and melting (though not always peacefully) into each other, concluding with a sense that the dancers’ subjective identities are absorbed into the ensemble of their work.

‘South’ carries on the threads of humour and ridiculousness, as the dancers make a perplexing progression from overclothed and rhythmically connected humans through gibberish-jamming voiceboxes to strange bird-people who disrobe into bathers, in a gawky and exacting echo of a highschool change room. ‘South’ is reliant on improvisation within a framework, again directing focus to the dancers themselves, and their relationships. Entertaining yet odd, the piece left me wondering what it was all about.

In Dunn’s ‘East’, there’s a stillness and gravity contrasting beautifully with ‘North’ and ‘South’. A strong coherence holds the three dancers together (Dunn’s role is solely as choreographer here); this is built out of the simple but strong costumes, the focus and tone of the movement, and the carefully woven soundtrack. The three bodies feel like parts of an organism, almost unaware of each other but always coexisting as harmonious parts of something larger. Their meditative movements depend on each other for subsistence, and together they navigate the life of this abstract organism as it drifts through a world, ending with a distinct and inevitable expression of death and closure.

Finally, ‘West’ is full of the weight and restriction of longing and the ache of loss: the tension and pressures that seem to accompany any form of desire. The dancers are deeply engaged and grounded in this strong choreography where there is a tethering of gravity and rhythm, an unavoidable and reassuring dependence on the floor beneath them, and an aerobic connection to the moment and to each other. The program notes, which I always avoid before seeing performances, tell us this work is about sunsets and endings. I didn’t get that at all, but when I look at my own interpretation I can read intriguing intersections between my experience and the choreographer’s intent. Such intersections of intention and interpretation – their boundaries, their strengths, their fragilities – are surely the dangerous and magnificent realm of art’s potential to connect with its audience.

Connected

2011-04-13T20:05:00.000-07:00

Director Choreographer Gideon Obarzanek
Sculptor Reuben Margolin

It would be a mistake to believe the dancers are the only performers in Connected.

This is a richly layered work by Chunky Move’s Director/Choreographer Gideon Obarzanek in collaboration with Californian sculptor Reuben Margolin; a diptych in dance and theatre connected by the quiet unfolding of a ‘living’ sculpture and an electric score by Oren Ambarchi and Robin Fox that pounds with an almost physical narrative.

The stage is set with Margolin’s kinetic sculpture, a giant wooden loom with innumerable luminescent threads suspended over the empty space. Already the performance has begun. It is a da Vincian study of machine, imagination and the promise of flight. The program tells me that it is 17th century engineering, but it sits out of time like all invention. And art.

A dancer throws herself across the stage; it is a tumbling, a writhing, a frenetic hurtling to the jangling industrial music that punches into the space. It is a practiced freefalling form joined by other dancers frantic to unite and separate, as the techno music pulses like a charge snapped from the main; ricocheting and loose, punctuating the movement. Two dancers move together as if acquiring the other’s kinetic energy, an impulse born of Newton’s Cradle, as they connect and divert by the force of the other's trajectory; bodies drawn into each other’s orbit, pulled and repelled, as if in slow motion. It is a perceptual guidance: they are bending light waves in a mirage of dance to wonder at.

But it is the quiet activity across the stage that begins to draw the eye.

A dancer methodically starts connecting the sculpture’s strings with magnetic strips of paper. It is a meditation on making, vivid and fascinating against the wild distraction of constant motion; a moment of pure concentration that requires nothing more than a slow, steady building. The dancer leaves but others join; it is a collaboration of making, a reverential melange of purpose.

The languorous allure of the sculpture comes alive as dancers are bodiced to its threads. The dancers shift and sway, the sculpture floats and lifts and turns and drops like a sigh. It is unfolding and luminescent, it moves on waves of light, it is the wave. In a tender moment, a sole male dancer still held by its strings draws the sculpture to the lips of a waiting female dancer. This is no lofty object; it is an intimate expression of earthly love.

Contrast this to the second act where the theme of disconnection is palpable.

The sculpture is now set in a gallery, its movement enacted by a mechanised pulley. It is an automated machine, still moving, but devoid of human touch; plugged in on life support, rather than living. Dormant, but not dreaming. The dancers become gallery guards who, through voiceovers from actual security guards, relate the monotony of their role. It is distraction, rather than connection, a disguise by circumstance. Gone is the loving reverence in work, the meaning in the making, for nothing is made here – not even feeling. The sculpture is object and commodity; it has succumbed to the anaesthesia of the gallery guards. The moment asks us what the real value of art is – to maker, to viewer. Is there life beyond the making?

Perhaps the answer lies in the final sequence, when the pounding music surges again like a shock, stripping the guards of their uniforms and personas, and reanimating the sculpture like a crash-cart. Living again, it gently descends, enveloping the guards in a final moment of touch.

Perhaps the answer lies in whether we believe we possess art, or whether art possesses us.

Connected is structure and grace, engineering and allegory, production and poem. Atom and dream. A constant collaboration between each, where one does not crowd or hide the other. An exquisite hybrid arts performance of logic and feeling. It is heaven and earth, but the real territory is us. We knock, we bounce, we crack, we cry, we follow our own or a new trajectory. But first we connect.

Wendy Newton

Artery

2011-04-07T23:39:00.000-07:00

Artery
Artistic Director Annie Greig
Ten Days on the Island
Launceston, Earl Arts Centre, 7 & 8 April

Each of us has a map we live by, an internal compass. The body has a territory.
It is this territory that is explored in Tasdance’s fresh new work, Artery, as part of Ten Days on the Island. Given the task to create a work based on a compass point, four emerging choreographers navigate us through their individual creative territories – and it is a fourfold journey of heart.

It is the artistic strength of ‘East’, by Trisha Dunn, that particularly captivates. ‘East’ is an exquisite, languorous meditation in movement, set to an ambient score that lulls us into and along with the transient beauty. The dancers drift and glide, sometimes in duos, sometimes apart, mesmerising with their languid gestures and soulful exploration. They are breath and tides, sunrises and sunsets, firefly and flower; nature with its temporal beauty, swept away in a poignant moment like a Buddhist sand painting.

The other three works are less mesmeric, but still have sublimely beguiling moments: in ‘North’, a male dancer creeps across the stage, sliding and undulating, a primitive organism mouthing a silent scream to the pounding techno music; in ‘South’, the dancers spontaneously re-costume into bathers in a delightful exhibition of childlike innocence and whimsical self-consciousness; in ‘West’, the four dancers move as one mystical goddess, all undulating arms and living vibration.

The body has a territory, the heart a map. Artery is innocent longing, irony, humour, evanescent splendour – the heart in motion. If the four directions symbolise the periods of a man’s life, then Artery is a geography of soul: four emerging choreographic talents who are orienting themselves as an iconic part of Australia’s contemporary dance landscape. We are privileged to witness it.

Wendy Newton

Connected

2011-04-06T05:03:00.000-07:00

Chunky Move
Dance Massive
Chunky Move’s latest production marries an exquisite installation by American sculptor Reuben Margolin with choreographer Gideon Obarzanek’s ‘installation’ of moving bodies.
Describing a work like this felt counterproductive.
For me, the most honest and dynamic response is a ‘creative’ one. A kind of prose poem dreamed up inside the emotional space into which Connected welcomed me.
***
Reuben Margolin : ‘There’s two different ways to approach art. And they’re both true. And one of them is that the world is a beautiful place. And it’s full of highlights, and it’s full of sparkles. And it’s full, you know, kind of... dawns and dusk and mystery, beauty... And the other one is that it has a structure behind it [...] And to me, the... the difference between the two ways of sort of looking at the world is sort of the difference between whether you are reaching out to touch the world, or whether you’re letting the world touch you.’

- Part of a discussion with Gideon Obarzanek and Reuben Margolin on the Malthouse Theatre’s YouTube channel
***
Reconnected
Imagine a loom.
Imagine the two of us.
Imagine a thread. A hundred threads.
A breathing, soothing, suffocating web of all we have been and all we can be.

And there it is: above us, around us, between us, connecting us, restricting us, contouring us, protecting us, mapping us, celebrating us, archiving us, and preventing us from ever moving forwards, backwards, or even sidewards from where we are.

It is a complex net of mathematical equations, modelling each and every moment of contact between us. The first time I touched your skin – there, that thread, and its interaction across an axis of memory. There – that curl and twist of the cloth, that is our last misunderstanding.

We created it. But now its tangles are our tears and ridicule. And the space is empty of us.
***
I used to love you, you know. I can’t imagine when it was that things began to change. But it was like something unravelling at unbearable speed. A breathless loss and the watching of something undone. Something once beautiful and careful. Something safe.

It’s just that it wasn’t a mystery, any more, once we stopped touching. I knew you too well, and we read each other with too much history and not enough empathy. I tried to let go of the things that mattered to me, so that you could still breathe the way you needed to. And you tried the same, I do realise. But it was our habits that knotted us together, and they relied on us as much as we did on them. And without the tangles there was nothing left to Us.

But this isn’t how the story was supposed to go.

There was this one time – do you remember this? – when you took me to the beach. And I’d never swum in the sea, only in the river near where my grandfather lived in the wooden cottage left by an apple picker before him. It was a freak of a hot day in mid-March, and we drove the three hours in your old green two-door. No air conditioning. Except none of our cars had air conditioning then, so I only add that part now, looking back.
I would have been scared of the sea if I’d stopped to think about it. But I was caught up in other things. Watching you. Learning you. Being a part of the thing that wrapped around us two. I don’t think I told you I’d never swum in the sea.

It breathed around me, swallowed me, heaved me up again, forgot me, embraced me. I wanted to know what drowning felt like.
***
You pull me closer, and I feel lost. You push me away, and I am claustrophobic. I try to touch you, but instead there is just the memory of Us. There’s an illusion of strength, when really all that’s there is this incredible fragility, and anyone who’s anyone can see that.

A cloud of our thoughts hangs above us, impermeable like a thunderstorm, porous like skin. Your frustration weaves its way through my desperation and we’re trapped and comforted by the cloth we weave around each other. It breathes with us and expands and contracts as we bless each other’s sadness.

I can see you straining against the weight of it: all our history and entanglement. It’s a beautiful, beautiful weight and it holds you in arcs and inclines of peace and anticipation, and your resistance against it is full of intent and integrity. But I see your exhaustion and I want to lift that weight away from you so just for one moment you can breathe. Or perhaps I want to cut you away from me?

And at the moment I release you I see that it was a mistake. With nothing to heave against, your heart falls slack and you are empty.

Gone.

But it is still there: above us, around us, between us, connecting us, restricting us, contouring us, protecting us, mapping us, celebrating us, archiving us, and preventing us from ever moving forwards, backwards, or even sidewards from where we are.

Hidden Republic

2011-04-04T04:43:00.000-07:00

The Black Arm Band & Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra

Wrest Point Entertainment Centre

Ten Days

Sat 2 April 2011

Sitting in the packed audience I was struck by the enormity of it all. What we, the audience and performers, were experiencing: The history. The growth. The death. And again the unstoppable growth, of everything that’s taken place to create the musical gestalt of Hidden Republic.

Like two deep rivers, each one cascading with its colossal history, merging together:

The Aboriginal culture, forming The Black Arm Band

The predominantly Anglo-Saxon culture, forming The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra

The hollow trunk or branch that’s become Mark Atkins' didgeridoo

The brass tube of Shannon Barnett’s trombone

Both played with vibrating lips

The lives of the players and their devotion to music

The duet

The waters mixing, the sound transfixing

This was just one symbolic piece of nearly twenty that ran fluidly, one after another. The concert began gently with Genevieve Lacey’s whistle, evoking excited goose bumps. It gradually revved up with tempo and a ‘Nicky Winmar moment’, recalling the iconic image Winmar made during an AFL game when he faced the racist crowd, lifted his top and defiantly pointed to his skin.

The musical pace picked up with smooth transitions through celebrated songs like “Black fella, white fella…” By the time Yothu Yindi’s ‘Treaty’ sang out punters jumped up like seagulls to dance. The tempo moved to a definitive reflective finale (without whiff of even the possibility of an encore) by Leah Flanagan “Goodbye is so hard to say when you know you won’t be saying it again…”.

The line-up of musicians was phenomenal. Featured artists (not already mentioned) included Lou Bennett, Emma Donovan, Tasmania’s Dewayne Everettsmith, Shane Howard, Bunna Lawrie, Jimmy Little, Djolpa McKenzie, Shellie Morris, Stephen Pigram, Archie Roach, Ursula Yovich. The TSO conductor was Ben Northey with  overall concept and direction by Steven Richardson.

It was strange to pass through the bingo machines of Wrest Point for this gig, but once in the Entertainment Centre venue, the quality of the sound was tops. Driving home, it wasn’t hard to imagine the camaraderie of the performers backstage, and I thought about Uncle Jimmy Little’s words “And joy complete us in our new dream time”.

Everytime I See Your Picture I Cry

2011-04-03T04:42:00.000-07:00

8.30pm Friday 1st April
Peacock Theatre
10 Days on the Island
It's called a 'manual animation', and as soon as Daniel Barrow's Everytime I See Your Picture I Cry begins, you can understand why. Using an old-fashioned overhead projector, Barrow animates his narrative by manipulating a series of two or three layers of hand-drawn screens. Visually, it's both touching and spellbinding. The precision and depth of creativity is constantly surprising as we are treated to his comic-style characters acting on the screen. Effects, symbolic elements and small visual jokes are spread throughout the story, leaving us now laughing, now sad and whimsical.

The show is accompanied by a well-conceived soundtrack by Amy Linton and Barrow's own live narration. Centring on 'Helen Keller', a disenchanted, reality-tumbled artist turned garbage collector, it poses as the story of his attempts to collect a world together in a personal phone book, an imaginative construction built from the figures he spies through windows on his rounds. However, even as he enters his characters in the book, a serial killer is stalking and murdering the people he has been describing.

I say poses, for the narrative elements are spare and you get the sense that Barrow is barely attempting to tell a story in the classical sense. Rather, Every Time I See Your Picture I Cry functions as a series of confessional reflections on our responses to suffering and isolation. The Helen Keller nickname is a fairly straightforward clue; for the garbage collector, the original Keller serves as a seemingly impossible ideal. So often, the real world scars us more terribly, leaving us broken and disappointed individuals; we may even, perhaps, be stalked by a serial killer.

While he has a fine, hypnotic vocal style, at times Barrow's almost poetic prioritisation of reflection over narrative becomes a little ambling. It's a delicate balance, and one that should not be judged too harshly. For the mood is consistent, the sensibility clear and pronounced.

And Barrow's visual manipulations are wonderful enough to transcend any of our questions and our doubts.

WHEN THE PICTURES CAME

2011-04-03T04:40:00.000-07:00

Terrapin Puppet Theatre and The Children’s Art Theatre of China Welfare Institute
The Playhouse Theatre, Hobart
April 1st
Gai Anderson

It’s hard to pitch a show for family audiences – communicating your ideas to small children through to their adult companions is always a challenge- especially when you add the cross-cultural and language factors associated with Terrapin Puppet Theatre’s “When the Pictures Came “, which is a Hobart – Shanghai co-production.
Add the complexities of “digital puppetry” , animation and live character-based clowning as chosen storytelling mediums, and you get a very challenging mix, which, more often than not in this case, borders on chaos rather than clarity.

This beautifully designed and slickly executed show begins with a playful introduction as a Chinese and an Australian performer speak alternately in their own language - and objects and animations fly and float through space.

But when the box they bring on stage reveals a strange and threatening sci-fi machine, we step into a confused and surreal world of four ugly narcissistic clowns who are never clearly defined and seem perpetually stuck in a state of fear and chaotic babbling.

Whilst their slapstick evokes some laughter, their continuous argument slowly escalates to unbearable screaming, which only subsides with the unexplained appearance on stage of a huge white screen … thank goodness!

This magical screen then transforms them into to startling colourful cartoon animations of themselves, and here some of the most beautiful and satisfying moments of the show are evoked :- a coyote flies out of the strong man’s mouth, the opera singer’s head is disconnected from her body to be thrown physically through the screen and out the other side, an animated bird flies across the screen dropping real feathers onto the stage, and the ugly clown characters are transformed into their happy, better selves.

However, all too soon we are back to the reality of the nasty machine and the live characters on stage trying to overwhelm it. There are some extremely beautiful and entertaining moments and endless great ideas in When the Pictures Came … maybe too many ideas.
But perhaps if I was a six-6 year- old Chinese girl sitting in the audience it would all suddenly become clear?

Mim Suleiman & Trio Rafiki Jazz

2011-04-03T04:36:00.000-07:00

City Hall

Fri 1 April 2011

Ten Days on the Island

Mim Suleiman sings like the sun – her voice shone, as she raised her arms out wide, sometimes flicking her black curly hair, dressed in a yellow African gown. Accompanied by Trio Rafiki Jazz, the sound had an ease and pureness of groove, which permeated throughout the City Hall among the smiling groups of ‘Rafiki’, which means friends in Swahili.

Connected to our Ten Days Island festival, is the island of Zanzibar (semi-autonomous region of Tanzania) in East Africa, which was the birthplace of Mim Suleiman. While Suleiman linked us strongly to her origins with song, East African drums and influence, the repertoire gathered musicians, instruments and sounds from further afield, pulsing into a free-flowing easy-going dance vibe.

Suleiman introduced the kora (originally from West Africa) player, Kadialy Kouyate as the “sexiest machine you’ve ever seen”, and while he seemed uninterested in yielding this persona, his presence and the ease with which he played certainly was, though I’m not sure ‘machine’ is the description I’d use.

Guery Tibirica played the berimbau, a single string percussion instrument that looks a bit like an elongate bow with a gourd resonator at one end. It’s Brazilian, with African origins, and is synonymous with capoeira, the Afro-Brazilian martial art. For the final number Tibirica joined the comfortably spacious dance floor, with his high kicks and quick leg sweeps into a spinning dance with lots of hand to floor contact ground acrobatics.

The only white skin in the line-up was bass guitar, cello banjo and percussion player Tony‘tk’Koni. His steady, funky and again easy rhythm was seamless, though his leopard skin safari suit raised a few eyebrows.

Suleiman sang in English, Fula and Kiswahili (her native tongue), and sang a familiar and favourite song by Angélique Kidjo.

The vibrance of the music largely overcame the acoustic challenges of the City Hall, but unfortunately the deeper subtleties were missed, but thankfully it wasn’t too loud. Most of all it was a warm and very friendly night.

POXED

2011-04-03T04:28:00.001-07:00

The Tasmanian Theatre Company

Ten Days on The Island Festival

Backspace Theatre, Hobart

From April 1st

By Gai Anderson

The true story of Lady Mary Montague, a strong, independent 18^th century woman who bravely pioneered the vaccination of children against smallpox, is a certainly fascinating one. However I was greatly underwhelmed and frustrated by the Tasmanian Theatre Company’s production of Stella Kent’s play at the Backspace on Saturday night. For that strong and strident woman and her dramatic story were almost lost amongst the endless details of petty argument and gossip of a group of self indulgent and largely uninteresting characters.

Whilst Melissa King as Lady Mary and Guy Hooper as the ridiculous Colley Cibber gave fine performances, even they struggled to lift the story above the tedium of a boring costume drama, as the interesting action seemed always to be sidelined or glossed over.

So, Mary’s time in Constantinople, with the orphan children and her own child, as well as her championing of the radical medical procedure against the odds were only ever spoken about and never seen on stage. Meanwhile, the most unlikeable Alexander Pope and his relationship with Mary, dominate the first half of the story ad nauseum.

Perhaps it’s the nature of historical drama, with its basis in academic research, that leads the script to get lost in the details, and Director Jillian Keiley’s use of shadow puppetry silhouettes an inspired way of dealing with some of this material.

Similarly, the clever set-up of the play-within-a-play allowed for the development of a great comic character in Colley Cibber, who as a hack playwright and the “worst Poet Laureate ever appointed” was able to step in and out of the action, with wit, ridiculous flourishes and great melodrama.

The slowly drawn development of Cibbber’s deep and generous friendship with Lady Mary enacted with great subtlety by Hooper was the true highlight of the play.

Chronicles of Long Kesh

2011-04-03T04:28:00.000-07:00

Theatre Royal

Thurs 31 March

Ten Days

“The only time you get to see the sun is when you fall asleep and dream.” (Prisoner Oscar)

“How do the fuck do you fly?” (Prisoner Toot talking to the birds)

“There is freedom in laughter” (Prisoner)

Such was life in Long Kesh/The Maze in Northern Island throughout the 1970’s and 80’s, when members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) were imprisoned because of their fight against the `iron rule’ of Margaret Thatcher.

The Chronicles of Long Kesh coloured in the decades of shocking headlines I recalled flashing through the newspapers of my childhood, giving them the comprehension and understanding of all the small print and much more. Playwright Martin Lynch is a listener, a reader and a passionate storyteller. His script shows the political enormity as well as human fragility of one in ten Northern Irelanders who were involved in the prison: either as prisoners, employed as Prison Officers/staff, or family and friends existing around the rioting perimeter.

It’s a powerful play without fancy sets; there are no showy costumes or flashy lights, just the full power of six actors on stage doing their thing. After an initial adjustment to a couple of strong accents, I was effortlessly focussed for over two hours, through their physical presence, voice and comic timing.

The unaccompanied singing and harmonies conveyed the `realness’ and the Irishness of the humour and pain. Prisoners singing to each other through their cell doors kept them buoyant in their fight for freedom and human dignity, while it was also an indicator of how a ‘Mr Charisma’ can become a crumpled man. Fight Direction from Paul Burke and the actors own physicality showed well the tension between the prisoners’ insubordinate attitude and the roughness of the officers.

The audience responded with despairing gasps, at other times in utter silence, or with laughter and finally with a hearty ovation.

As yet another political drama featured in this Ten Days festival (along with Animal Farm and Hidden Republic) I wonder whether Artistic Director Elizabeth Walsh had a political intention, or if she’s merely exposing to us what’s currently being staged in the international theatre world?

Power Plant

2011-03-30T04:33:00.000-07:00

Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens
29th March 8.30pm
10 Days on the Island

Our worlds are constituted by what we see and hear. Change the lights, modify the sounds and our worlds metamorphose into new and unexpected shapes. This is wonderfully effective at night, when the darkness frames the differences, leaving our focus on what is new and enthralling.
Such is the strength of the series of strange dreams that make up Power Plant. The Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens are familiar landscapes to residents of Hobart, but each light and sound installation has transformed locations around the gardens into something unrecognizable. It's enormously effective, and terrifically diverse.

Yes, there are simple greens and reds that light the trunks of trees like sandstone country churches, leaving the leaves quietly in shadow, but there is also a tree of glass bells that ring out as they brighten, a promenade of lamps and benches, a field of trees emulating organ pipes, an alien conservatory, a glade of flowery dresses, moodily and spooky lit. And of course, spurts of fire bursting from the duckpond, each spout of flame emitting trumpet-like blurts.

It's as though, as the title of the installation suggests, the trees and shrubs have literally been empowered. Every use of lighting, from the birds built from globes, swinging in the trees, to the cracks of branch lighting, suit their moods superbly; each is a measure of their individuality. The almost primitive sounds that their trunks and branches appear to emit seem a language they would speak, if only they were given the ability.

Power Plant is a new song that has set the gardens singing; an exciting and accessible example of how to make the familiar eerie and surprising, it's a highlight of this year's festival. Not to be missed.

Djupid (The Deep)

2011-03-27T23:47:00.000-07:00

Campania Tavern, showing at various locations around the state
6pm Sunday 27th March
10 Days on the Island

It's a dark pub, a simple, wooden elongated room and a minimal set, but the whole audience is with Liam Brennan as he lives the final moments of a doomed fisherman swimming in the freezing, hopeless ocean. We have the privilege of listening in on his last words, as, never more alone, he says what he needs to say before it's time for him to leave us for The Deep.

It's a stunning forty minute monologue - we learn about the fisherman's day, his simple, uneventful morning, his crewmates, his hopes and desires, made alive in a tremendously energetic Scottish patois. We gradually become aware that something isn't quite right; it emerges violently as his story reaches at the sinking of the ship, his desperate efforts to stay afloat, and then the loss – loss of his friends, and loss of the opportunities and relationships that seemed so full of hope and life at the beginning of his narrative.

This is a remarkable performance, superbly paced and gut-wrenchingly moving, the kind that audiences should be seeking out in Forth, Wynyard and the other regional venues to which the production is touring. Brennan is desperately real as the shaky, almost hyperactive storyteller, strongly supported by director Graeme Maley's fine translation from the original Icelandic script of Jon Attli Jonasson.

Only at one point does this performance seem to wander slightly, as the fisherman ponders, towards the end, how he would spend a final day, were it given him - a flaw in the script highlighted only by how seamless the rest of this production is. But the lag is brief and we are quickly recaptured by his slow, inevitable journey. The fisherman is still swimming, but we know he has already been claimed, and it is only a matter of time. Soon, as he repeats at the beginning, and the end of the monologue. Soon.

In Glass

2011-03-27T20:24:00.000-07:00

Choreographer Narelle Benjamin
Performers Kristina Chan and Paul White
Dance Massive

The symbolism of the mirror has long been used to explore and represent a variety of implicit themes in the arts: self-reflection; introversion; ego; vanity; illusion; duality; deception. In Glass by Choreographer Narelle Benjamin is a sublimely choreographed and exquisitely danced work that unfortunately suggests far more than it reveals.

The performance begins in the dark, with dancer Paul White searching the stage for Kristina Chan, who appears to be asleep. All he has is a pinpoint torch to light the way and the yearning to discover his slumbering anima. Then begins the dance of fascination with the other, the fascination with the self. The desire to merge, the desire for freedom. The exploration of dream, reality, love, longing, ego, of sensual innocence and erotic craving.

Dancers Chan and White are mesmerising in their relationship to each other and in the fluidity of their movements. At times their individuality merges; you cannot tell which arm is which, where one starts, where the other ends. It is a contortion of symmetry, a symbiotic love affair in movement. It is inordinately skilful and deeply moving. The mellow but targeted lighting emphasises each vein, each muscle; it is beauty intensified, idealised, spotlighted for its own sake. It is chest, forearm, back, we see, obscuring the whole that would shatter the illusion of perfection in the dance of love.

But the psyche has many strata, and the mirrors tell a story, too. Through projections we see altered worlds, ephemeral yet perpetual dances in another reality, layers of consciousness that morph with the physical dancing. The mirrors reflect, deflect, light, obscure, deny, reveal and hide their movement, their expression – from the audience, from each other. Chan and White move in and out of them, physically and reflectively, the mirrors gateways to the inaccessible parts of themselves and their relationship.

At times the lush layering of images in the mirrors is a distraction to the immediacy and sensuality of the physical dancers whose corporeal presence is eclipsed by the too-clever technology. Other times, the images were banal, (Chan reaches up and plucks an apple from a tree in the nether world of the mirror, disappearing into it to run through an Edenic orchard), and disappointed. The magnificence of Chan’s and White’s dancing was enough in its simple physical splendour.

A mirror reflects truth and reveals faults, much like the work that is In Glass. The movement of the dancers is an exquisite interplay of physical skill and poetic expression, at times transcending the bounds of individuality and earthly possibility. It is supremely beautiful. I enjoyed it for its aesthetics and sheer physicality, but I’m not sure that these parts are enough to create a meaningful whole. Like the reflection in one of its mirrors, the beauty of In Glass is insubstantial, a fleeting veneer that leaves no lasting impression beyond the gaze.

Wendy Newton
Attendance at Dance Massive (Melbourne) was made possible through the arts@work Critical Acclaim program. Critical Acclaim is an arts@work (Arts Tasmania) professional development program aimed at increasing the breadth of critical discourse and discussion in both the arts industry and the public arena.

Fantastic Fun in our Enchanted Garden!

2011-03-27T15:44:00.000-07:00

POWER PLANT
Hobart Botanical Gardens
Saturday March 26th
Ten Days on the Island
Gai Anderson
The real star of Power Plant - the extensive, inspired and eclectic series of light and sound installations set amidst the Hobart Botanic Gardens - is the garden itself. Wandering along the stone paths amidst the ancient trees, flower-beds and ferns, it’s a real treat to be here on such an enchanted, still and star -studded night.
This is a charming collection of objects, projections, ambient- sound and endless combinations of spinning and twirling, electric- flouro-coloured- light piercing the darkness. And its quite a spectacle.
Electrified trees flash staccato red as botanic projections arise and fade on an old stonewall. Tiny spinning lights high in the branches animate the foliage as shadow puppets, to expand like some wild creature revealed momentarily racing across the lawn. Crickets click and foliage groans as fog engulfs geraniums and I wonder if Peter Cundall dressed as Doctor Who might appear from behind that kaleidoscopic garden of spinning electric diode flowers. It is such a feast of the senses - I feel like a small child at a psychedelic fun fair, and this is only the beginning!
Further down the path glass bells hang like giant martini glasses in branches to sing their vibrated notes as lights fade slowly in and out like electric glow worms, and a small child’s delighted giggling at the multiplied projection of live snails crawling in the bowl right in front of us sums up my feelings exactly.
Many of the ideas in this show are not new, having been explored by artists at mainland and overseas festivals in recent years, possibly inspired by access to the technology as much as anything. But that doesn’t matter at all, as the spectacle is such a treat, and the variety of imagery explored here is so expansive that it’s almost too much to take in at once.
If I have any complaint at all, it is the crowds thronging to the lights, but hopefully a second viewing at a less crowded mid-week session will give more time to savour my favourites.

DBR and DJ Scientific with Emeline Michel

2011-03-27T15:37:00.000-07:00

City Hall, Hobart
Ten Days on the island.
Friday March 25th
by Gai Anderson

Virtuosic performance builds to driving crescendo
The combination of virtuoso violinist DBR and DJ Scientific with Haitian vocalist Emeline Michel was an interesting choice for the opening night of the Dance Hall on Friday Night. Not because the somewhat subdued initial atmosphere in the beautifully tarted up City Hall transformed instantly into wild dancing when DBR began to play, but rather because the audience’ focus was drawn instantly to the amazing talent and performance of the artists on stage.

Beginning with a beautiful classically inspired bowed melody backed by lilting sampled piano riffs the music was led right from the start by DBR’s unusual six- stringed violin style. His instrument transformed at once into a beat box, bow hitting the strings like a drum stick, then into a plucked double bass and again to wild electric lead guitar reminiscent of Jimi Hendrix.

Backed by DJ Scientific with hip hop singing, driving drum and base, scratched rythmns and world music snippets the music ranged through jazz, classical and hip hop to wall of sound dance music. Emeline Michel added her earthy and beautiful voice to the mix for a few traditional heart felt songs sung in French with much grace.

By the second half of the program DBRs rapid fire fingers and wired stage presence drove the music into full-blown dance beats and everyone was soon up on their feet (and even onto the stage) cheering and stamping for more as the midnight curfew brought this fantastic evening to an unwanted close.
If this concert sets the standard for the season of Dance Halls across the state then don’t miss the chance when it comes to your town.

Animal Farm

2011-03-27T04:04:00.000-07:00

Singapore – Ivan Heng & W!ld Rice

Theatre Royal Sat 26 March 2.30pm

Ten Days on the Island

From the island of Singapore, whose history like Tasmania’s charts a familiar path of colonisation, comes a stage adaptation of George Orwell’s 1945 classic political tale, Animal Farm. This zappy, hoof-prodding production deftly exposes the unfortunate universal trait of pig-faced hypocrisy.

Animal Farm, a story about claiming to have moral beliefs but which one's own behavior does not conform, is one that Orwell struggled to publish, and celebrated Director Ivan Heng was questioned for choosing to stage over 50 years later. Yet many of us read Animal Farm at school, and Ten Days is giving us the opportunity to re-live “The cycle of Tyranny, Revolution, Freedom & Corruption and then Tyranny (which) is irresistible and repeats itself, across time, places and cultures” (Ivan Heng) in this Australian Premiere.

Heng uses writer Ian Wooldridge’s faithful adaptation, which at times is so literal that much of the dialogue is taken directly from Orwell’s text. Sometimes didactic, though always clear, it shows the animals’ rebellion, and in their very act of revolt, arguing “FOUR LEGS GOOD, TWO LEGS BAD” they use human benchmarks and historic idols like testing a horse’s knowledge of the alphabet, and a pig studying Julius Caesar.

There are times when the text lifts off the page and into animal-human touch that holds humour and poignancy. In these moments of theatrical suspense, something truthful reaches deeply into the heart of the audience: for example, when a pig’s hoof goes to shake a human hand.

Heng’s energetic direction is matched by the spirited, multi-lingual and powerful skill of seven performers, who dynamically sculpt the animal characters with detailed physicality, while interchanging between roles, non-stop for an hour and a half. Napoleon’s (Lim Yu-Beng) pig hoof hands and Boxer’s (Gani Abdul Karim) heavy plodding horse hoofs were enduringly evocative, while it was hard to take my eyes off the zestful Pig Squealer (Alecia Kim Chua). Musician Philip Tan’s spicy score was played from the stage, like another animal in the barn.

No one will tell us...

2011-03-26T16:52:00.000-07:00

Rosalind Crisp with Andrew Morrish and Hansueli Tischhauser
Dance Massive
It isn't every day you have the privilege of watching artists so influential and respected in their fields. But then, sometimes such reverence comes posthumously, and improvised dance is about being present in the moment, not creating Enduring Works of Sublime Art. Or possibly that's just my sparse and academic appreciation of this Thing called Dance Improvisation?
I’m not a dancer. I’m not a dance academic. I’m a writer and reviewer with a background in theatre and a reasonable (and developing) dance literacy. I come to the field with a respect both for the expertise and precision required of trained bodies, and for the freedom of expression/presence/experience that it can allow dancers unbound by choreography. And I come with some understanding of the principles, processes and possibilities of ‘improvisation’ as a form.

I’m not completely uninformed.

And yet. And yet, I am flummoxed when it comes to reading/accessing the work of an artist like Rosalind Crisp.

And this work, on this occasion, was being performed to a very tight-knit ‘inner circle’ of contemporary dancers, makers, choreographers – really the ‘who’s who’ of a certain sector of Australia’s dance community. And they get Crisp’s work. They’ve known her oeuvre for many years and they are immersed in the scholarship, the practice, the experience, the principles, and the beliefs of this kind of movement. (The camaraderie is palpable and alienating.) My basic understanding of Crisp’s history and of some of the fundamentals of the work are close to useless in actually appreciating what she does.

Maybe I’m being a bit dramatic. But I’ve been wrestling with this frustration and bafflement for days now: how does work like this speak to a non-dance audience? What is it that Crisp wants to offer us, or provoke us with, or affect us with? Or does she make work purely for herself and for an audience of dancers and improvisers, and not for us at all? Or is it just my own dilemma, and other watchers are less fraught? (I have a sneaking suspicion that the latter may be true...)

I should be more specific.
In ‘No one will tell us...’ (the original title continued, ‘when it’s the end of the world’), Crisp collaborates with performer Andrew Morrish and musician Hansueli Tischhauser for a sixty-minute improvised work in which there’s little rest for performers and, though we’re seated and still, none for audience either. The three bodies in the space feel very independent of each other with moments and sequences of intersection, which were where I felt most capable of ‘entering’ the work. In between, it isn’t always easy to see the connection between Crisp’s movement, Tischhauser’s loop-pedal-rich electric guitar, and Morrish’s linguistic humour with an absurdist tendency and occasional earnest highlights of slightly awkward movement. (Or even to know whether there is such a connection, or whether it’s absurd – and counter to the work’s intentions – to search for one.)

Crisp herself moves with a remarkable vocabulary, one which seems composed of anger, tension, humility, determination, humour, enquiry, certainty, and immediacy. Had I asked, any one of those collegial audience members would no doubt have passionately advocated her ability to be completely present in her work, to be fully in the moment. This is slightly cryptic for a non-dancer. What exactly does this presence actually look like in a performance -- how do you observe and experience that as a watcher? For me, it translates into this enormous scope of movement available to her; not once did she repeat a phrase, a gesture, a shape, a moment. And her energy is heightened and seems to infect the other two performers and much of the audience. Sometimes her movement ‘speaks’ so clearly that it is almost like watching a conversation: between Crisp and her collaborators, Crisp and herself, and, on rare moments, Crisp and her audience.

But much of the time I didn’t feel very welcome. Or very necessary. I didn’t feel that my presence, the presence of all of us in the theatre, changed the way they were working. Or, perhaps more importantly, the why they were working. I don’t mean to say that I didn’t enjoy the work: for much of the hour, I did. Which actually rather invalidates what I’m trying to say. (I don’t apologise for my inconsistencies.) But I was saturated with deep doubt and confusion about the role of the audience in improvised work. Indeed, the role of the audience in any performance or artwork, with improvisation simply holding down one end of a long continuum of style. When is art selfish, and when is it about a connection with an audience, an ‘other’? A completely unanswerable question.

And still I’m left wondering how to ‘read’ a work like this. For me, the movement (and the interaction between the three performers) was less a communication than a series of punctuation marks, with all the linking text/language/thought rendered invisible (though apparently still present, somehow internally for the performers). The punctuation was indelible and very often intriguing, but I felt denied access to the intelligible essence between.

Art is categorically not about complete understanding. Or about comfort. Or ease of digestion. Of course it isn’t. But without morsels of those things, art can simply bewilder And maybe that’s what it is sometimes supposed to do.

Anica Boulanger-Mashberg
Attendance at Dance Massive (Melbourne) was made possible through the arts@work Critical Acclaim program. Critical Acclaim is an arts@work (Arts Tasmania) professional development program aimed at increasing the breadth of critical discourse and discussion in both the arts industry and the public arena.

Now Now Now

2011-03-25T19:52:00.000-07:00

Luke George
Dance Massive
Now Now Now was my last experience at Dance Massive, and my third brush with improvisation. My first (Rosalind Crisp’s No one will tell us...) was characterised by, and fraught with, a philosophical anxiety about understanding improvised work; the second (Shaun McLeod’s The Weight of the Thing Left its Mark) saturated in a guilty pleasure at the comforts of structural, narrative, and aesthetic certainty; this third experience is still a bit of a mystery to me.
It didn’t really get off on the right foot – on an unexpectedly hot Melbourne March evening (at least 30º), Dancehouse’s small foyer was smotheringly packed with a full-house audience who had to queue interminably to collect pre-booked tickets, then wait more than 20 minutes beyond the show’s advertised starting time before being asked to remove our shoes and enter the curtained and white-felt-lined auditorium, which was suffocatingly warm. Perhaps it isn’t fair to discuss prosaic details, but they certainly made it hard to feel generous about the show we were about to experience. And another good reason to mention it is that the more engaging sections of the show did manage to overcome such inauspicious beginnings and genuinely entertain.

I use the word ‘entertain’ quite deliberately: where Crisp’s work was physically and intellectually demanding, and McLeod’s (sometimes self-consciously) lyrical, Now Now Now is brimming with humour, ridicule, even triviality and a willingness not to take itself too seriously. And mixed in, a few sequences of more contemplative improvisation, including a rather vibrant text-based segment; isolated fragments of dialogue escape each dancer’s mouth and slowly, through seemingly erratic repetition and rearrangement, begin to form an unexpected unification, with the scene dispersing before becoming too weighty.

Like McLeod’s work, Now Now Now (despite proclaiming that it explores the question, ‘can we be in the now?’) is heavily structured and replicable. Within each new segment or improvisational game, presumably there is a degree of freedom, but often, the ‘now’ seems elusive or at least illusory.

The work is frequently indulgent, occasionally irritating (the extended blackout in such heat was almost panic-inducing; and the perplexing presence of an obscured television or monitor seemed to occupy too much of the dancers’ attention, closing them off from their audience with whom at other times they make concerted efforts to connect), and often thoroughly amusing. One sequence involves all three dancers simultaneously, frenetically, rhythmically and emphatically announcing whatever each one is seeing (‘foot! foot! foot!/audience! audience! audience!/lighting bar! lighting bar! lighting bar!’). What began as a silly cacophony became – through the performers’ commitment and senses of humour – irresistibly funny, and it occasionally still echoes in my memory as I go about my daily business... ‘blinking cursor! blinking cursor! blinking cursor!’

Anica Boulanger-Mashberg
Attendance at Dance Massive (Melbourne) was made possible through the arts@work Critical Acclaim program. Critical Acclaim is an arts@work (Arts Tasmania) professional development program aimed at increasing the breadth of critical discourse and discussion in both the arts industry and the public arena.

In Glass

2011-03-25T19:50:00.000-07:00

Narelle Benjamin
Dance Massive
In Narelle Benjamin’s In Glass, Kristina Chan and Paul White are suspended in a space bordered by mirror, calling to mind the reflective and reflexive quietude of a rehearsal studio, but never particularly acknowledging this allusion. On the contrary, the work initially seems purely about organisms moving through space, sometimes impacting on each other, but rarely exploring the psychological, or the intersections of personality.
This isn’t a reprimand: Chan and White move so fluidly together that, particularly in the early sections, they are eminently watchable and there is a certain liberation in observing a physicality without persona.
With the aid of Huey Benjamin’s (sometimes excruciatingly) New-Age-ish soundtrack, the experience is one of observing some strange sea creatures of the deep, perplexing but patently controlled in an almost evolutionary sense. Or a beautiful piece of machinery in which every intersection of its parts occurs in exactly the right way and at the right time.

Unfortunately, as the more psychosexual narratives emerge, the titular symbolism is lost, and the great potential of the reflective surfaces is rarely realised: the mirrors’ presence is at best incidental, at worst pointless, and for the most part downright uninventive. In one oddly emotive sequence – amongst such a meditative absence of ego – White carefully spins two large oval mirrors against the floor, holds them up, licks them (perhaps a mythical allusion – Narcissus?), and generally twiddles them. It’s largely uninteresting: sightlines in the Malthouse’s Beckett Theatre seem to preclude, for most audience members, any useful view of the reflective surfaces and instead we’re watching an otherwise accomplished dancer muck around with two unwieldy and unattractive props. Mirrors are not always magnanimous with their reflections and the choreography fails to overcome this practical challenge.

In their best moments the large ‘mirrors’ are cleverly manipulated so that they both reflect what is before them and reveal what is behind, or so that they swallow dancers whole. But at other times they are cluttered with a series of digital projections alternating between uncomfortable sentimentality and weighty artistic expressionism. With two such poetic dancers present, why try to embellish the work with anything that distracts from a simple elegance of bodies in space? Why not just embrace the indulgently romantic movement?

And speaking of unfathomable, why on earth did White have to make four meaningless costume changes, between almost indistinguishably neutral costumes?!
There were just too many disappointments in this work, detracting from the satisfying conversation choreographed for two skilful and compatible dancers.

Anica Boulanger-Mashberg
Attendance at Dance Massive (Melbourne) was made possible through the arts@work Critical Acclaim program. Critical Acclaim is an arts@work (Arts Tasmania) professional development program aimed at increasing the breadth of critical discourse and discussion in both the arts industryand the public arena.

The Weight of the Thing Left its Mark

2011-03-25T19:42:00.000-07:00

Shaun McLeod
Dance Massive
Improvised work by its very nature carries an ever-present sense of risk. There will often be failures, but those who embrace working in or watching improvised forms will recognise that those failures balance the intense successes – the times where things just come together magnificently. Those successes are inherently heightened by the presence, or at least the possibilities, of the failures.
This strange binary of risk is an element of every form of live performance. It is what differentiates live work from any kind of recording, whether dance, music, theatre, or some hybrid. Audiences seem strangely electrified by the vulnerabilities, exposure, and uncertainties faced by all performers the moment they step on stage. It’s rather perverted. And also slightly peculiar because, really, no audience member truly wants to see a performer fail.

But it seems to be that abstract risk factor which imbues live performance with some of its mystique and value.

This argument is more applicable to improvisation than any other performance genre.
As an audience member I’m not terribly fond of the risk factor, although I often think I should be, and feel guilty for seeking reassurance and security. So, for me, The Weight of the Thing was the perfect improvisation work: there was a lot of safety there and not necessarily a lot of risk. I found the lack of rawness comforting and beautiful, while recognising that it also divulges a certain lack of immediacy, presence (that abstract word again), and depth which might be possible through less safe modes.

Unlike some improvised works, McLeod’s contains a very definite sense of structure. The improvisation happens within a rather neat set of narrative frames, and it is often clear what the ‘rules’ behind improvisation have been: how the four dancers were working with each other, and also when one section ended and another began. At first I found this interrupted any sense of flow, but then I began to think of the sections like the movements in a musical work: like linked sketches describing one large image.

McLeod’s four dancers – Olivia Millard, Paul Romano, Sophia Cowen, and Luke Hickmott – inhabit a sometimes nightmarish domestic space also colonised by swarms of cutlery and by Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey’s delicate improvised soundscape, While not always adventurous, the sound is a strong partner in the creation of a focused energy throughout.

Interactions swing wildly between conflicted and loving, with the cutlery inscribing now fear, now desperately clinging adoration between the characters the dancers embody. The ‘weight’ of the title invokes for me a weight of desire, a weight of need, a weight of being so intimately and claustrophobically connected with lovers, friends, and family that you can barely breathe.

One of the things I enjoyed most about this work was the empathetic connections between the dancers. Whether moving together or watching each other, there was a compelling sense that each individual’s presence was of greatest consequence, fascination, and import to each other, and this also extended to the audience. It inscribed a cohesive ‘weight’ of consciousness across the work and the experience.
Certainly not all sections of the work succeeded. But that just reminds us of the nature of risk (even when mediated, here, by reassuring structure and a certain level of restriction/reservation -- perhaps even uncomfortable performativity?).

Highlights for me included four simultaneous ‘studies in cutlery’ – explorations by each dancer of a fork or spoon, sometimes a familiar extension of a limb, sometimes an unknown foreign object; Romano and Hickmott’s aching duet filled with compulsive and near-destructive embrace and a simultaneous yearning for solitude; and Hickmott’s strange pitchfork solo, where the weight of the thing was tangible and elegant.

Anica Boulanger-Mashberg
Attendance at Dance Massive (Melbourne) was made possible through the arts@work Critical Acclaim program. Critical Acclaim is an arts@work (Arts Tasmania) professional development program aimed at increasing the breadth of critical discourse and discussion in both the arts industry and the public arena.

DBR and DJ Scientific: Dance Hall

2011-03-25T19:39:00.000-07:00

Friday 25th March
Hobart City Hall
Ten Days on the Island
Is it an electric guitar, or a violin? Certainly, for the first set you may have been confused, as DBR arced about the centre of the stage, looking (and sounding) like a lead guitarist from the 1980s, channelling his six-stringed instrument and allowing it full reign.

Unfortunately, his frenzy lacked contagious elements. Yes, there were beats and a little mixing going on from DJ Scientific underneath, but the performance seemed to fall somewhere between music that could actually be danced to, and music that was interesting enough to make you want to just sit and listen. For a dance hall, that's something of a problem. Guest vocals from Emeline Michele brought a little more engagement with the audience, providing a way into the performance, but this was too soon dissipated by an interval.

Post-break, the lights went down, people were encouraged to come forward and DJ Scientific brought a more traditional, rhythmic mix to the table, with DBR's sparer use of violin facilitating an atmosphere more conducive to dancing. The hall appeared appreciative, but even at its height the crowd was relatively small. Perhaps the higher ticket prices kept the mass of punters away.

Possibly the set-up was part of the problem. Dominated by tables in the centre with a small area up the front for those wanting to shake it, Hobart's City Hall resembled a well-resourced but slightly dreary cruise ship, enabling sitting and listening, eating cheese and drinking wine – but sad to say, hardly appropriate for a feverish dance hall.

The Revery Alone

2011-03-18T09:11:00.001-07:00

Billy Cowie
Dance Massive

Perhaps the clue is in the misspelled title of this melodic work.

‘The Revery Alone’ is one of three 3D installations from Stereoscopic Director/choreographer/composer Billy Cowie in the Dance on Film program at Arts House, and it is fascinating in both its abstraction and illusion.

From the comfort of strategically placed mats around a darkened room, we watch as a naked dancer appears to hang from the ceiling above, her hands and feet gripping handles as if she is fighting the gravitational pull to fall. Performer Eleonore Ansari mesmerises with her slow, controlled movements and feline postures. The screen is her stage, confining her range of movement in both breadth and depth, almost claustrophobically, as hands and feet pass from hold to hold, and her body sways and stretches to its absolute muscular limit.

The background score is soothing, repetitive, mellifluous, and it lulls like a cradlesong. This is not music from this time or this place; perhaps it is something played in deep space and the dancer is truly moving through another dimension or gravity. Maybe it is a chimera, after all, and the music is something only dreamed.

‘The Revery Alone’ is a study in movement, in grace, in the corporeality of dance on film. But the question remains…is the dancer really hanging there or is this a trick of the camera? She bends backwards, her face upside down, her eyes looking directly into mine and there is a slow understanding that passes between us: the only important thing is, the body must move.

Wendy Newton

Attendance at Dance Massive (Melbourne) was made possible through the arts@work Critical Acclaim program. Critical Acclaim is an arts@work (Arts Tasmania) professional development program aimed at increasing the breadth of critical discourse and discussion in both the arts industry and the public arena.

Sunstruck

2011-03-18T08:10:00.000-07:00

Helen Herbertson/Ben Cobham
Dance Massive

You’re ushered carefully into a very dark space. You are offered sake (or tea, the choice is yours) in a small white cup. You are led to a seat in the circle of chairs in the centre of the dark space (or, if you are unlucky/lucky?, further away, in a line along the raised stage). You are seated. You are a part of a boundary, a threshold, a mark against the space. You are part of what might occur.

‘In’ the circle (mostly) will be two dancers (or just one, at times), two bodies. ‘Outside’ are a single enormous theatre light on a track, an almost-unseen cellist and violinist who peripherally (mostly) inhabit the space with their sound, and quiet moving shadows which might or might not be a director/choreographer/dance-dramaturge, conducting the work.

You’re about to be sunstruck.

Except that ‘struck’ is such a violent word, and one not suited to the tender opus about to happen. There’s a little text, there’s a lot of exploration of the space inside the circle of watchers, and exploration of the flow of those curved boundaries, there are gorgeous intersections between the bodies and the string duo, there are moments of humour, moments of uncertainty, moments of deep loneliness.

This work is different for every audience – even more so than is usually true of any live performance – because the music is improvised live, and the dancers too are ‘live’. They work to a clear structure and shape, but within it they are new each time.

The work offers threshholds: between what is comfortable and what is not; what can be seen/heard/felt and what cannot; what you can understand and what you might not.

* * *

An end is nearing. A crying in the darkness, and a hushing. Somewhere far off, a bird. A little light now – but barely more than a glow, barley a blush of heat – and an exchange between the cello and the violin (low and rich, perhaps on the E string). They’re so close in sound, their difference only measured by their location in space and by their tonal quality. A sad sort of conversation, but with a certain refusal to submit. Not a goodbye, but a resigned, familiar kind of sadness at the impossibility of it all.

And still the warming light is barely an illumination.

And now a man alone in the circle. Was he the crier, or the comforter?

Eyes open, eyes closed – and barely a difference, in the loss of the small light, where all that’s left is a state filled with the taste and texture of sound.

Ending, somewhere, in a long, long stillness so complete that no-one was entirely sure where the silence lack of light came from or would ever go to...

Anica Boulanger-Mashberg
Attendance at Dance Massive (Melbourne) was made possible through the arts@work Critical Acclaim program. Critical Acclaim is an arts@work (Arts Tasmania) professional development program aimed at increasing the breadth of critical discourse and discussion in both the arts industry and the public arena.

Dance on Film

2011-03-18T07:51:00.000-07:00

Various artists
Dance Massive

Upstairs at Arthouse, above the Sunstruck watchers, dancers on film loop over and over, not caring whether an audience is there. Are they different to ‘live’ dancers, or do audiences just want to believe that dancers mind whether we are there? We want the work to be about us, about communication with us, about connection, but what if it isn’t? What if it is only for the performers? And would we know/feel the difference anyway?

Some of these niggling questions are alleviated when we watch dance on film. We’re not confronted with breathing bodies, so it is perhaps easier to detach and to simply watch the work before us, and not to get caught up in the pseudophilosophical concerns about relationships between the performing bodies and watching bodies.

Other than this, what is the defining difference between dance on film and dance on a stage? I should probably warn you, I don’t have a defining answer (and nor do I necessarily think the issue is at all problematic). But I’m interested by the question.

Two of the films I saw at Dance Massive, ‘The Revery Alone’ and ‘Tango de Soledad’ (comprising two thirds of Billy Cowie’s Stereoscopic: the screenings cycle, and the third was not showing on the night I attended) furthered this inquiry for me.

‘Tango’ is a beautiful work, a five-minute solo with a mournful cello soundtrack and a melancholy yet buoyant monologue voiceover. A woman and a chair rest in a room which looks like it is made of an old blackboard, haunted by traces of every sum, every diagram, every sentence ever sketched on it. Her movements are gentle and unsurprising, a kind of ode to the lost companion addressed by the abstract letter in the voiceover (a teacher? student? lover? friend? all of the above?). Oh, and there’s one other important feature. It’s filmed in 3D and when you don the old-school red/blue cardboard and cellophane goggles, the depth of that room is replicated and you might as well be sitting in it.

‘Might as well be.’ So what is the value of putting a conventional work like this on film? Apart from the obvious economic benefits of being able to much more easily tour a work, and even exhibit it simultaneously in multiple locations? (And, possibly, inspiring wonderers like me to idly query the nature and implications of ‘reality’.)

Well, ‘The Revery Alone’ is a perfect example of a dance film which really makes the most of its own form.

Instead of sitting or standing to view, here, the best option is to lie down on one of the comfortable recliners provided. Above your head, a woman hangs, naked, in the space above you, and as your eyes adjust to the unsettling colour of those 3D glasses, she turns and slowly arcs to look over her shoulder, right into your eye and so close you could touch the small mounds of her vertebrae. For seven minutes she hangs above you; slowly adjusting her position on the four handles that her hands and feet cling to; twisting and tangling and inverting her body, all with a mesmeric languor. You lose all sense of perspective, direction, and gravity (which, of course, are illusory) and at the same time it feels remarkably ‘real’ and natural that a dancer be above you. And it is the medium that allows this simultaneously disrupting and satisfying capsizing of reality.

Afterword

When I first went into the room which holds ‘The Revery,’ the image was static, the woman mid-hang, and the room empty of other viewers. My companion and I lay down and watched for a few moments, wondering whether the movement was so slow as to be imperceptible, or whether the work began with a long freeze. After a while, we suspected that probably the projector was misbehaving. But we stayed in that empty room looking at the image for many, many minutes. We stood up and moved around (noting that, incidentally, the 3D image had a strange and eerie Mona Lisa-esque capacity to tilt around the space to follow you!). I wondered, briefly, whether there were people beyond the curtained-off edges of the viewing space, watching us and being entertained by our response and our discussion.

Eventually, we did seek someone to fix the projector for us, and we were so entranced by the work that we lay through two cycles of the projection, feeling equally engaged the second time.

But the point is that we were confronted by that old chestnut: What Is Art? If the work was a static image, with a ‘running time’ of seven minutes, signposted on the door, then how would we respond to it? Was it a dance film equivalent to John Cage’s 4’33’’? What right did we have to expect more than a static image anyway? Or, conversely, what right would the artist have to offer us nothing but that? And what would it mean if that were the work? Perhaps I’m being too esoteric and/or flippant. But the accidental experience really stuck with me, and I thought I’d attempt to ‘review’ it. So. There you have it.

Anica Boulanger-Mashberg

Music for Imagined Dances

2011-03-18T07:42:00.000-07:00

Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey
Dance Massive

I love the idea behind this work. I love it so much I can barely express it. I’m obsessed with its poetry and its possibility.

There’s nothing cryptic about the title: Flynn and Humphrey fill an empty room with soundscape and lights, and invite you to people it with your own imagined dancers. This invitation is, for me, so overflowing with potential that I almost couldn’t breathe when I first sat down on the long, low, white bench in the white room.

But the execution of this idea is so poor that I left the experience feeling furious with disappointment.

To begin, the space is unfortunately nowhere near soundproof, and while we were there, a nearby electric guitar distracted us from the quieter moments in the soundscape, and even some of the louder ones. One of those ‘louder ones’ was an extended sequence beginning seconds into the work, consisting of a piece so distorted (principally with an effect like speakers blowing out) that it quickly became unlistenable, unpleasant, and therefore extremely distancing. I’m fairly sure this wasn’t the artists’ hope for our reaction, and the estrangement eclipsed any connection that the rest of the experience might have offered.

Soon, coloured lights shone through what had first appeared to be a solid wall, but was now revealed to be lacklustre, pierced chipboard. The large square lights slowly cycled through red, orange, green, blue, and after their first surprise appearance, added absolutely nothing to the experience. Rather they were so irritating and bland that I felt the need to close my eyes for the remaining 25-odd minutes.

I wondered why the work was presented in this way – why not, for example, set the piece in a theatre or a studio, with more evocative lighting, filling the space with shadows and uncertainty, into which we might inject our own imagined dancers, or even be tricked by the space and the familiar theatrical convention into thinking they were really there?

To be fair, there were moments when the small, still space, and the carefully chosen musical extracts in the soundtrack helped me conjure some really beautiful imagined dances, and I enjoyed these moments immensely, revelling in simultaneous wonder about what kinds of performances the four other people in the room might have been ‘seeing’.

But the enduring feeling from this work is one of regret, that the beautiful potential of this concept remained almost entirely unrealised.

Anica Boulanger-Mashberg
Attendance at Dance Massive (Melbourne) was made possible through the arts@work Critical Acclaim program. Critical Acclaim is an arts@work (Arts Tasmania) professional development program aimed at increasing the breadth of critical discourse and discussion in both the arts industry and the public arena.

Sunstruck

2011-03-18T06:37:00.000-07:00

Helen Herbertson and Ben Cobham
Dance Massive

The ephemeral can leave a lasting resonance. So it is with Sunstruck, a dance performance full of fleeting moments of exquisite beauty and infinite feeling.

This is dance stripped back to the moment, conjured from seemingly nothing: an empty stage; one light; two dancers; no costumes or props; a violin and cello for the score. The audience is seated in the round, containing the performance, holding it, strange silhouettes that perimeter the landscape and bound the empty space that both defines and restrains the performance.

The staging is deceptively empty, but it is the emptiness that first draws us in; the nothingness is alive with possibility. Dancers Trevor Patrick and Nick Sommerville slowly inhabit the stark space and we are drawn with them into the deprivation: a cry in the dark, a strangled laugh, a careful word, an unfolding of movement as they investigate the space and each other, pushed and pulled by the orbiting light, the dark, the haunting notes of the violin and cello that seem to pluck them as strings, and the uniqueness of moment that activates their imagination.

It is a seduction by movement, gesture, rhythm, sound, atmosphere and a slow-burning intimacy. We see each moment full, if fleeting, and cannot escape the feeling or the experience; we are part of it, it has permeated as if we too are rising and falling with the fluidity of the dance. We are immersed; at the end of the performance, no-one wants to break from the dark, the emptiness, the quiet captivation that has overtaken.

All things are evolving from, or devolving toward, nothingness. But in this constant state of dissolution and inauguration, there is a place rich and alive with imagination, emotion and experience; and it is at the evanescent intersection between stillness and movement, dark and light, absence and longing, where we are all Sunstruck.

Wendy Newton

The Cauliflower Homicide: A Love Story

2011-02-09T20:03:00.000-08:00

Mainstage Theatre Company
Peacock Theatre
February 9-12

Ever wondered what would happen if you took a giant cauliflower, a confessional, a CWA band, feet that kiss, a rooftop gift of love, and a selectively handicapped electro-funk keyboardist, and tossed them all together with a dash of funny and a pinch of poignant?

First-time writer Sarah Hodgetts manages to pack an awful lot into this script – it is consistently funny, frequently sweet, and enthusiastically wacky – and in this production for Mainstage, she also takes on the roles of actor and director. While her performance is amusing, sincere, and poised, and the direction sound, it is in the text that Hodgetts excels.

The script is well-structured and paced; for a first work, plot twists and complexities, comic timing, and dialogue are all handled with unexpected grace and confidence. The humour is both absurd and honest, and even the more ridiculous of narrative and character developments are, for the most part, within the realm of suspended disbelief. (Several moments and a few repetitive character habits could still do with refinement.)

Hodgetts, as the earnest, naive Edie, is supported by David Adlam as Fergus (an anxiety-ridden but gentle priest-in-training, whose ‘wildest dreams’ are surpassed by chips which come hot, and by being ‘outside after dark’ and near ‘some shrubbery’); Don Gay (as Clive, a bumbling, not-quite-as-holy-as-thou priest; and Paul Levett as a truly repulsive (in the best way), sleazy would-be entrepreneur.

The script and performances are somewhat let down by rather lacklustre production values, and by a slight uncertainty of genre (it’s there in the title: is this a comic love story or a clever murder mystery?). Mostly, the script is sure of itself, and it is the laughter which takes precedence, but several moments require a more dramatic engagement from the audience: a challenge not always met. But the humour in the lines and the energy with which these four actors deliver them almost makes up for it. Adlam is distinctly (occasionally unbearably) Basil Fawlty-esque, physically and emotionally embracing Fergus’s quirks and despatching the role with great vigour. Levett is wickedly funny, Gay thoroughly enjoys Clive’s moral contradictions, and Hodgetts is always watchable.

Oh, and there’s a scene with milk crates, plastic buckets, cooking pots, drum sticks, and cheerful gusto which can’t fail to impress.

This is a genuinely entertaining piece of writing well worth supporting. Long live the cauliflower.

Anica Boulanger-Mashberg

La Casa di Signori

2011-01-02T22:09:00.000-08:00

Peacock Theatre
Salamanca Arts Centre
As part of the Taste of Tasmania
December 29th 2010

Great potential, but in need of more cooking

It is wonderful to see Salamanca Arts Centre supporting the creation of local theatre for inclusion in the Taste of Tasmania – a festival which offers such a huge potential audience.

Writer/performer Marisa Mastrocola’s re-enactment of an Italian family dinner, as the backdrop for the telling of her own family stories, is a great and fitting choice to offer within this annual food extravaganza.

So, at the Peacock Theatre, a long table of family and friends enjoying a meal together is set diagonally across the stage as some of the audience join Mastrocola to become her family and guests. In a striking red silk dress, as the beautiful Italian Hostess, she welcomes us all, taking her place at the head of the table to lead us through a collage of incidents, characters and family history: personal stories she has gathered on a trip with her father back to his ancestral village. The wine flows and the soup is served as stories are interwoven with song – tales of her father and ageing Nona, of village life, goodbyes and many tears.

This is a wonderful idea and an inspired setting - the stories are varied, full of potentially interesting characters and at times I was transported, but unfortunately for the most part this show felt greatly in need of some clearer direction.

The split focus between the audience on stage and those in the tiered theatre seating created a very basic disconnection which was almost never bridged, and the set up of the story telling and introduction of the characters was confusing from the start.

Mastrocola is obviously a talented performer, and in the moments when she was able to free herself from the confines of the table to launch into lively Italian or to actually embody the quirky characters, rather than just talk about them, then the performance lit up. But most of the stories were narrated from the table, where her confinement seemed to suck the energy out of the performance. Sometimes it was difficult to follow the narrative, and clear definition was needed between the performer as hostess, and as storyteller.

The soundtrack, which varied from loud arias to live acoustic guitar, generally worked well but sometimes, like the stories themselves, felt misplaced and worked against the creation of atmosphere.

The highlight of the show was when Mastrocola finally escaped from the table to pull the curtain back and reveal the stone back wall of the theatre. She then narrated and enacted a touching tale of her father’s leaving, and of the bottles of tears her grandmother collected and kept hidden on the top of the cupboard. Heart-breaking, visually rich and totally captivating, this scene left me with a real sense of the show’s potential but also with frustration that so much was under-cooked.

I know how difficult it is to get support for independent theatre in Hobart and really hope that La Casa di Signori gets a chance for further development.
The stories and the performance hold such promise, which with dose of dramaturgy and some greater clarity in direction, could become a delicious piece of live theatre for Hobart audiences to savour in the future.

Gai Anderson

Mathinna

2010-11-04T22:31:00.000-07:00

Mathinna
Bangara Dance Theatre
Theatre Royal
November 3^rd 2010

It is fascinating how the story of Mathinna has become so emblematic, holding the appalling treatment of the Tasmanian aboriginals before our conscience. Fascinating, especially, given that Mathinna's life was so unusual. Adopted by Lady Jane Franklin, only to be abandoned when the Governor, Sir John, was recalled to England, the story gives us a powerful sense of betrayal, of outrage at the treatment of Tasmania's indigenous population.

The beauty of Bangara Dance Theatre's adaptation lies in its ability to tell her life anew in a superb marriage of dance, music and technical elements; a tremendously engaging performance with a strong narrative thread.

Mathinna opens with a wonderful use of lighting as we are introduced to the hands, and progressively, the body of an aboriginal dancer, before the dawning of the whole set, a backdrop of intermeshed poles; a kind of stylised forest representing the interlinked wholeness of the aboriginal world. The dancing is measured and balanced until we are faced with inevitable interruptions from the Europeans. And in time, the anxious, wrought figure of Lady Jane.

Yolande Brown is memorable as the Governor's wife – I was particularly transfixed by a wonderful piece of choreography. Making Mathinna's striking red dress, she is drawn into the sewing machine's activity in a jerky, mechanical series of movements, constructing the 'civilised' Mathinna before us.

Indeed, fine choreography is well-realised throughout in a fresh, arresting and fast-paced series of scenes that tell the major parts of the story – from Mathinna's exhibition on a pedestal, in a frame, as society visitors parade around her, to the malevolence of her eventual rapists.

Elma Kris as Mathinna is a passive figure throughout the performance, staring from the stage or trying to adapt herself to the activity around her; we are struck by the unfairness of it all, the unreasonableness, and ultimately the tragedy of a lost woman drawn from a life of her own and thrown into increasingly degrading worlds, not of her making.

The Golden Age

2010-10-15T17:39:00.000-07:00

The Golden Age
Old Nick
The Peacock Theatre
15 – 30 October

This production is disturbing on a number of levels – many of them just as they should be, but some the fault of an imperfect script.

On one hand, I wholeheartedly recommend that you get along to the show. It deserves support: it is challenging and worthwhile, and performed with strength and commitment. Set primarily in Tasmania during the Second World War, the play has at its heart the fate of an isolated, perhaps genetically compromised, tribe discovered in the wilderness by two young men struggling with their own place in Australia at this point in history; Louis Nowra’s preoccupation with ‘otherness’ is evident.

Despite its powerful choices and intentions, I find the script profoundly problematic. It is structurally awkward and textually clumsy. Written in the mid-eighties, its commentary on Australianness has dated and now lacks subtlety. The play ambitiously unleashes a multitude of complex issues (language barriers, love, Australians’ settler/indigenous relations, urban vs. non-urban existence, racial purification, disability and mental impairment, the importance of history, cultural authenticity...) but only ever manages to glide over them all, sadly relegating many to the level of self-conscious and yet naive didacticism and cliché. The script’s illustrious history and reception contradict me, but if it were up to me, I’d ask Nowra for a rewrite.

Despite my concerns about the script’s naivety and clumsiness, there are many affecting moments, and director Matthew Wilson has capitalised on these; his cast follow his lead in committing fully to the world of the play. Wilson, as well as directing, is responsible for a moody set and soundscape which (particularly in the first act) create just the right sense of unease.

The scene in which the young men (Campbell McKenzie and Benjamin Winckle) first sit down with the lost tribe, the two cultures observing each other for the first time, is captivating; this is exemplified in Bryony Geeves’s nuanced and remarkably genuine facial expressions as the intense, perceptive Betsheb. McKenzie and Geeves sensitively navigate the relationship between Betsheb and Francis, but even here the gauche dialogue sometimes gets in the way – the most powerful moments are non-verbal.

Other cast members provide strong support – Scott Farrow sustains a remarkable physical energy as Stef, and Peter Reardon’s unassuming work in dual roles as both Melorne (in the tribe) and Dr Archer earns a genuine empathy. All the others are capable but barely given a chance to move beyond competency, thanks to the epic scope of the script. Unfortunately, there is an inordinate amount of action taking place on the floor – restricted viewing for the vast majority of an audience in this particular theatre – which hinders engagement.

Would this company and cast have been better served by a different script? I think so. Could the script be better served by a different interpretation? Perhaps (although I haven’t seen it happen). Have Old Nick produced something valuable, regardless? I think so.

A Day in the Death of Joe Egg

2010-09-20T14:58:00.000-07:00

Theatre Royal

Hobart 17 September

A Day in the Death of Joe Egg has stayed with me but not allowed me to write until now. I have indulged my thoughts, reflecting on the familiar stories that resonate with this strange and difficult to digest play.

Without question this is a play that audiences must see. This production is beautifully staged and realised by a dynamic and committed cast who, through humour, take us to the raw grit of pain and despair of lives unrealised.

The story is that of Sheila, played by Julia Davis, Brian (Jonathan Gavin) and their 10 year old severely disabled daughter Joe, (Sophie Webb) nicknamed ‘Joe Egg’. This well scripted play has the two lead characters reliving their story through vaudeville dance, singing and replaying their life scenes to the much obliging audience.

Joe Egg premiered in Glasgow in 1967 and it resonates as much now as it would have then. Playwright Peter Nichols was known for writing about his own life and Joe Egg reflects his experience of raising a handicapped child. This is a strong and convincing script that is timeless in its debate and discussion around complex issues.

The relationship and tension created by Gavin and Webb is believable. We see how the tired young couple operate within this strange construct; Brian through his jokes and games and Sheila, filling her day with tasks. Feeding the budgie, the fish and the stick insects. Completely devoted to her daughter and still hoping, after 10 years, that there will be a sign of improvement.

‘A terrible sense of duty, my wife’, is how Brian describes her to the audience.

Both of them talking around Joe, creating characters for her; a life for her. A girl whose grandmother, Grace (played by Genevieve Mooy), wistfully imagines running around the house.

The entire cast should be commended but particularly Gavin, David and Webb, who are untiring in their performances. Surely the challenge when undertaking such a project is to maintain the integrity of the script, not go too far and to keep it real. Kim Hardwick’s direction appears seamless and light, giving space for the performers to live the characters.

The stage, lighting, sound, design, cast and crew of Critical Stages and White box Theatre production should be commended for presenting an excellent production. I will be looking out for these companies’ upcoming shows.

A Day in the Life of Joe Egg continues to tour the country.

Primed – New Painting in Tasmania

2010-09-13T20:27:00.000-07:00

Academy Gallery, UTAS
Curated by Catherine Wolfhagen
By Anneliese Milk

Following the straightforward premise of Tasmanian artists and their latest journey with paint, Primed is anything but simple. Curated by Catherine Wolfhagen, Primed brings together complex new works by diverse artists: Amanda Davies, Annika Koops, Jonathan Kimberley, Richard Wastell, Catherine Woo, Neil Haddon and Megan Walch. Beyond the common ground of Tasmania and the medium of paint, these works find a symbiosis that is at once surprising, challenging, and alienating.

The Academy Gallery proves to be the perfect host to this eclectic show, incorporating a different artist into each fold of the space. Amanda Davies’ latest offering reveals a preoccupation with anonymous, fragmented limbs. It is a curious moment rendered in Clear (2010) – stretched across a seat with one leg wrapped in plastic, an individual thrusts their hand out in time to obscure their face from the viewer forever. A recurring image in other Davies paintings, limbs that look as though they have been fashioned from plaster lie discarded in industrial spaces.

Continuing the theme of fragmentation, Megan Walch detaches her subjects from their surroundings – luminous jellyfish and fungi emerge from black canvases. An oriental plant mystically spirals upwards across seven black masonite panels in What goes up (2010). A glittery plinth presents itself at each new level – upon one, a tiny house of cards has been erected.

Annika Koops’ latest work challenges the viewer in its cold, disconcerting perfection. The sense of disconnection that is embraced in Walch and Davies’ work also appears in Koops’ paintings. Sleek, disembodied hairstyles are rendered on pure white canvases – Blue Black Bob (2010) and Long Black Hair (2010) become advertisements for desirable wigs.The subject of Koops’ Clarity Jam (2010) averts her gaze from the viewer. She stares unnervingly at dead space beyond the frame. Replete with a flawless, peachy, high-cheek-boned beauty, she looks every bit the librarian or secretary from a by-gone era, primly fastened -up with an absurd pastel bow and a bun that would make a ballerina weep.

Showing until 17 October, Primed represents one fragment of the effervescent visual arts scene unfolding in Tasmania.The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Arts Tasmania.

A Map of a Dream of the Future

2010-09-12T17:52:00.000-07:00

Lead artist: Nicholas Low
Tram Shed Function Centre, 4 Invermay Rd, Inveresk

By Anneliese Milk

Slipping behind a black curtain into the cold, dark shed, I try to adjust my eyes while simultaneously lurching forward across a narrow path of stepping stones. Strategically laid out in a cross-axis, the stones are surrounded by glistening water – an ankle-deep black pond. As I shuffle and sway my way through, I pray not to be the girl who lost her footing and ended up in the water.

The challenge of staying dry is augmented by the fact that one must negotiate one's way through one hundred suspended pot plants. Like leafy green marionettes, some thirty varieties of Tasmanian native plants hang from the ceiling at different heights. Some have come to rest completely in the water.

Having ventured out as far as I can, I return to the safety of solid ground in time to hear artist Nicholas Low explain the highly sophisticated ideology behind this surreal, compelling installation. The seemingly random positioning of the pot plants is revealed to be a strategic analysis of data. Each plant, in turn, represents a single Tasmanian school student and their responses to a survey conducted by Low concerning climate change. Who should be accountable for climate change? What is contributing to it? What does the future look like?

The higher the pot plant is suspended, Low explains, the more optimism the child holds for the future. As I cast my eyes up to the ceiling, I feel a sense of relief to see that the majority of plants are suspended somewhere in between.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Arts Tasmania.

Sex, Death and a Cup of Tea

2010-09-11T07:42:00.000-07:00

The Tasmanian Theatre Company
The Backspace
2-25 September

By Anica Boulanger-Mashberg

This program comprises Sue Smith’s The Seagull, Debra Oswald’s Bull Kelp, Adam Grossetti’s Sex, Death and Fly Fishing and Finegan Kruckemeyer’s The Exceptional Beauty of the First and the Last. The playwrights were commissioned for a week’s residence in remote Tasmanian towns, producing four plays describing (sometimes circumscribing) place as a way of framing narrative.

Having seen the readings of these works during Ten Days on the Island in 2009, I anticipated this production’s landing in Hobart after its state-wide tour, including Zeehan, King Island, Miena, and Swansea, where the residencies were.

All four plays disclose beautiful preoccupations with water – be it in rain, lake, sea, or shoreline – reminding us of our island existence. Smith, Oswald, and Grossetti’s palettes offer concrete experiences and tales of their locations, while Kruckemeyer’s is a more abstract exploration of what place means – how it shapes our lives and how we live within ‘place’. All four write with sensitivity and perception, creating strong and never patronising portraits of these places.

Performers Guy Hooper, Jemma Gates, Scott Farrow and Joan Murray are versatile and energetic in all four pieces, and Robert Jarman’s direction largely achieves engaging contrasts of tone, staging, and energy. Grossetti’s very prose-like two-hander could, in the hands of a lesser team, be quite laboured, but Hooper and Farrow manage to sustain our interest. Bull Kelp is the stand-out, brimming with quirky yet entirely believable interactions, and again Hooper and Farrow glow; Oswald’s work exemplifies the imaginative possibilities of such a commission.

KP11: producing communities

2010-09-06T17:57:00.000-07:00

The Academy Gallery at the School of Visual and Performing Arts is currently host to four outstanding exhibitions, one of which is KP11: producing communities. There is diversity here in both medium and message.

KP11 is deals with the cultural hearts beating within communities across mainland Australia. The work (some of which dates back to the inception of the project in 2007) has been realised by 11 Australian art and cultural development organisations.

Each of the pieces in this exhibition are as unique as the communities they came from; however, this isn’t a tourism showcase. The art has been developed to complement the work being done by the organisations themselves, developing artistic cultural exchanges. Evident in every community are the challenges facing the people who are creating it. The exhibition encompasses social issues surrounding youth, the elderly, disability, life, death and ethnic background – to name but a few.

A Map of a Dream of the Future

2010-09-06T17:55:00.000-07:00

Imagine how climate change will affect our life eighty years in the future. What will happen? How will we deal with it?

In fact, the question needs to be asked, can we deal with it? Eighty years from now will see the issues being tackled by another generation. It is the children of today who will build upon ideas and formulate solutions to ensure our survival through a changing world. Having said that, how do our children feel about climate change?

A Map of a Dream of the Future will give you the answer.

In an incredibly immersive experience, artist Nicolas Low with the University of Tasmania’s School of Environment and Geography’s Associate Professor Elaine Stratford have brought together a contemporary art installation that represents data collected from one hundred Tasmanian students from grades five and six. The students were provided with an education kit and then given the opportunity to respond to questions about climate change.

Data of any kind can have a stigma attached: we expect dots on a page or numbers on a chart. The beautiful thing about this data is that it is represented in the form of a three-dimensional living graph suspended in space. A hanging garden made entirely from Tasmanian native species that accurately pinpoints the thinking of each individual child. Even the plants themselves have been specifically chosen based on their resilience and then assigned accordingly to the respective data.

As I moved through the dimly light space, treading carefully across the axis, it became clear how many of our children are optimistic, how many are pessimistic, how many will rely on technology and how many feel that the solutions lay in a return to nature.

Powerful, beautiful, surreal and factual.

A must-see.

PANE

2010-09-06T17:53:00.000-07:00

Settling myself down on the pavement in the middle of Charles Street is not something I would normally do on a Friday afternoon but I felt I had a valid excuse. And so did the crowd gathering around me. We were there for Pane.
The large shopfront windows of established retailer Jessups Retravison became host to a delightful yet surprisingly complex performance. Set against the huge fifties-era photographic backdrops of Nicole Robson, seven middle-aged women began the first cycle of dance choreographed by Glen Murray.

What is so interesting about Pane is that this is essentially a two part performance; one show during the day and one during the evening. Though catching one or the other will not lessen the experience, Pane addresses a different perception with both. During the day, reflection is everything. The onlooking crowd become aware of their own voyeurism through the transparent mirror of glass. The dancers move behind and while we can see them, they can see us and we can also see ourselves. Without being directly an interactive experience the audience are collaborators in this performance and add to the complexity of the piece. At one point I was looking at the reflection of myself when a shift in light allowed the dancer more illumination and she came to the fore. A look of agony trapped on a female face was superimposed over mine.

Expressions of pain, joy, and at times playfulness are all evident as the dancers move skilfully throughout their routine. A return to the evening performance will see the same thing, however the internal lighting and atmosphere - not to mention the stunning backdrops and costumes - become more apparent and the true sense of entrapment in a suburban domestic lifestyle resonates with music and movement. This piece disguises itself in an era, yet I feel the underlying emotions are still very present in contemporary times.

The shopfront provides the aspect of looking in. However this isn’t perhaps the idyllic lifestyle that one would normally associate with the marketing used by shopfront displays. Pane is a clever, beautifully performed piece and one that I thoroughly enjoyed. Both times!

WeTubeLIVE

2010-08-29T20:40:00.000-07:00

Stompin

By Lucy Wilson Magnus

There are a gazillion hours of YouTube. Too many for anyone to see if they devoted their life to it. Yet, Stompin’s WeTubeLIVE had me walking into a vast fantasy of live solo clips, where I felt so immersed and saturated, I had the impression I’d walked into the brain of YouTube and taken a dozen slippery slides down its pulsing cells.

This hour-plus walk around, look, listen, touch, smell and do as you please performance show-cased the individual YouTube desires of 45 teenagers, into a WeTube collective of humanity exposing humanity watching humanity recording humanity. It was a blast.

The audience was as much of the performance as the carefully nurtured Tube creations, each neatly packaged into white uniform squares laid out on the old flamboyant carpet of the Albert Hall. It was hilarious to watch the teenagers of the audience dancing and mouthing the words alongside the performances in the squares. It was almost an impulsive cliché to see how many audients took photos and videos with their iPhones, possibly already uploaded onto YouTube itself.

And then it stopped. Silence. A creeky floorboard spoke a nothing. And the stillness sustained. And finally broke, returning to the noise, to the layered sound bites, DJ decks, screams and air slowly released from a balloon. Somehow the room relaxed with the return to sound. That was cool. Yes it was all very cool. In concept, content, form and frame.

Well done Stompin. You nailed it. And the best bit is the experience you open up for Launceston’s young dancing people.

I went with my one year old. She hijacked my pen and note book and crawled around, watching and scribbling and listening and doodling. And this is what she scrawled…

Haircuts by Children

2010-08-29T20:37:00.000-07:00

Presented by Mammalian Diving Reflex

By Lucy Wilson Magnus

“Hair cuts by kids, free of charge,” they trumpeted in their blue and yellow uniforms outside the Studio Hair and Beauty in Charles Street, Launceston.

Can you imagine the incredulity on pedestrians’ faces: what? A strange child with scissors, with my hair, and near my ears?! No way.

What a crazy idea.

The concept, by Toronto’s Darren O’Donnell and produced by Natalie De Vito, began four years ago, and is now well into several thousand haircuts by kids in the UK, Ireland, Italy, Norway, the US and Australia.

And as I walked through the door I discovered these were much more than haircuts. It’s a daring exercise in powerfully empowering young people.

De Vito says the reaction is always the same: the assumption that ten-year-olds can’t take on such responsibility. That’s why their workshops – this time with Grade 6 Mowbray Heights Primary School – begins with children’s rights and contextualising the project within a social practice. They ask, how is cutting hair an art project? And how art can create a political statement? And how such a happening can prompt people to think in different ways?

One outcome to these broader questions is a buzz of organised excitement. The salon was cranking with the noise and flurry of 20 kids running the joint – taking it in turns to welcome clients and take bookings, cut hair and assist, as well as managing a lemonade stall – all the while grooving to the louder-than-usual local radio station.

Launceston Trainer and Assessor Evon Gelekai had the job of teaching them how to cut hair, in three sessions. She initially doubted the whole idea, but surprisingly learnt that ten year olds “can do what they’re instructed, don’t forget a single thing, and they’re so careful with clients”.

I saw Allan cut a young girl’s hair with absolute precision, using fancy techniques including twirling her hair into four sections. I watched students welcome strangers and talk with them about their hair and execute the cut, colour and style. I heard a story about a boy who hardly speaks in class, and could hardly be shut up while doing a TV interview. Others who cried with terror before doing their first cut, as they’d never been trusted with such responsibility, and then felt so confident after their efforts that they want to do more more more.

I left the salon smiling, and kept seeing people around town with creative haircuts also smiling, and was inspired by this witty, artistic political act.

Did I tell you the one about…?

2010-08-29T17:59:00.000-07:00

Presented by Only Human Communication
Presenter: Moya Sayer-Jones
Friday 27 August, 9:00 am

By Anneliese Milk

There is something infinitely arresting about watching an unknown individual on film: imparting the quotidian, the tragic, the intimate details of their lives to the camera. It becomes both a forum for, and a record of, a person’s story – a validation of their self-worth.

Only Human Communication is an innovative company using story-based strategies to assist and celebrate the lives of people within not-for-profit organisations, government agencies and corporations. Only Human founder Moya Sayer-Jones is a firm believer that storytelling can bring us closer together. ‘Stories,’ she opines from the lectern, ‘are capable of turning us around and opening up the world in a different way.’

Turning to us, the anonymous crowd before her, Sayer-Jones swiftly and eloquently breaks us down as individuals. ‘So, who is here?’ she asks, and proceeds to fire off a series of questions that require us to stand if our answers are in the affirmative. Sayer-Jones’ point is thus: everyone has a story. Yet not everyone has the forum in which to tell it.

By listening to, validating and celebrating marginalised groups, Only Human create short films (under five minutes) of individuals’ stories. Produced through the simplest of means, Sayer-Jones explains that the films are ‘recorded only with what we can keep in our back pockets.’ In this case; the ubiquitous iPhone.

The Only Human philosophy of interviewing is clear-cut: ‘Find your heroes, ask the questions… don’t forget your ethics along the way… get it out there.’ At the same time, Sayer-Jones stresses the importance of valuing the process of the interview over the outcome. An interview can be beautiful, surprising and spontaneous, if one lets go of the agenda and embraces the story at hand.

Following the forum, I meander across to Only Human’s Story Lounge, temporarily located across from the Grand Chancellor Ballroom. Here, people can have their photograph taken and fastened to a postcard upon which they can then scrawl their names, their origins, their roles, their hopes. Awkwardly posing for a Polaroid picture, I too join the growing wall of individuals who find themselves in Launceston this chilly week in August. Another story added to the fold.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Arts Tasmania.