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Great range of artists: (Clockwise from above left) The Sydney Festival expects more than one million spectators, of which about 700,000 will be headed for the free concerts. ‘Mozart of Madras’ AR Rahman did not make the
opening night but performed in another concert at Parramatta Park on Jan 16; a dancer at Rahman’s concert; and internationally renowned soul man Al Green, who performed on opening night
Let’s stay together
The Sydney Festival is hosting more acts from the Asia-Pacific as it seeks to hold up a mirror to the city’s diversity, reports CLARISSA TAN
T
HE summer sun is setting, the
mood is mellow on the
green-grassed Domain and right
before you is Al Green, the ulti-
mate soul man, crooning Let’s
Stay Together. What could make
this moment on Jan 9, opening
night of the ongoing Sydney Festi-
val, even more perfect? Why, if the legendary
AR Rahman, the “Mozart of Madras”, were to
get up on stage too, of course.
Unfortunately, this didn’t happen, due to
some scheduling difficulties on the part of the
Indian composer, who bagged two music-re-
lated Oscars last year for his contribution to
the movie Slumdog Millionaire. But no wor-
ries, mate – Rahman performed in another
concert a week later on Jan 16, in a full-on Bol-
lywood extravaganza at Parramatta Park.
Green and Rahman are just two of the in-
ternational names appearing at this year’s
Sydney Festival, which is hosting some major
performers from Asia and, as things tran-
spired, particularly from India, says festival di-
rector Lindy Hume.
“Essentially, I Googled AR Rahman and
that’s when it really sunk in – that this artist is
someone with about a billion fans,” says the
vivacious Hume, who is directing her first Syd-
ney Festival. “I finally got through to his film
agent, who was intrigued because we were
talking about Festival First Night at that
stage. That would have been fantastic, but for
a range of reasons, it all morphed into what it
is now.”
Long-term relationships
Hume, who used to head the Perth Interna-
tional Arts Festival and has signed on to di-
rect three Sydney Festivals, says that the an-
nual event wants to cultivate long-term rela-
tionships with “interesting Asia-Pacific artists
and voices”.
“We want to be a festival that holds up a
mirror to Sydney, and Sydney has an incredi-
bly multi-dimensional demographic mix, in-
cluding lots of people from the Asia-Pacific re-
gion,” she says. “I’ve always been interested
in a properly global festival. Sydney is such an
Asian city that it would feel wrong if the cultur-
al mix isn’t part of the texture of the festival.”
Hume is careful to add that an increase in
Asian performers would represent an addi-
tion to the 34-year-old Festival, rather than a
subtraction in other areas of the programme.
“We’re not radically changing directions; obvi-
ously we’re always going to have major Euro-
pean and American companies, as this is very
much part of the Sydney Festival DNA. But
we’re trying to engage with the neighbours,
meet the neighbours, instead of being so An-
glocentric and Eurocentric.”
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Author:KATMAN Date:22/01/10
Cultural smorgasbord: The Manganiyar Seduction from the Thar Desert of Rajasthan (left) is one of the notable Asian acts this year.
Hume (right) says that the annual event wants to cultivate long-term relationships with ‘interesting Asia-Pacific artists and voices’
Another notable Asian act this year is The
Manganiyar Seduction, which features a caste
of musicians from the Thar Desert of Rajas-
than. Their repertoire, which ranges from bal-
lads about kings to Sufi songs by mystics to
tunes commemorating births, marriages,
rains and feasts, is given a modern-day twist
because each musician is seated in a box mo-
delled after the windows of Amsterdam’s
red-light district. This performance received
rapturous applause at the Seymour Centre
last week.
The presence of high-level Indian artists is
particularly pertinent in the current Austral-
ian context, given a recent wave of attacks on
Indians studying Down Under, including the
fatal stabbing this month of a Punjab-born stu-
dent in Melbourne. According to Hume, Rah-
man was especially concerned by this turn of
events and viewed his visit to Australia not
just as an occasion to entertain, but also as a
bit of a cultural, diplomatic venture.
It’s undeniable that arts festivals do foster
greater transnational awareness and ex-
change, no matter how cliche that may sound:
after a Manganiyar Seduction performance,
director Roysten Abel made a short speech on
stage, received with much laughter and good-
will, in which he pointed out that all the Man-
Time:16:08
THE BUSINESS TIMES
ganiyar musicians are Muslim except for one
Hindu – “and he’s still alive”.
He also mentioned that, since all the musi-
cians bear the surname Khan, it’s often diffi-
cult for them to get past the Customs of va-
rious countries (a reference to racial profi-
ling), but the Australian authorities made
their passage particularly smooth and quick.
The Sydney Festival is definitely one of the
most sumptuous, most enjoyable cultural
smorgasbords on the planet. Not only does it
span a great range of artists from different na-
tions and ethnicities, the festival embraces
the plethora of artistic expression – music,
drama, dance, the visual arts, comedy, vaude-
ville. In music alone, it’s a showcase for jazz,
soul, classical, pop, folk, world and all the vari-
eties in between, with the focal point being a
series of free concerts where fans need only
stroll to one of the city’s many outdoor venues
and lay claim to a patch of park (although, if
an act is particularly popular, they may have
to engage in an hours-long stakeout).
The festival often lasts about three weeks,
taking off a few days after the famous New
Year fireworks at Harbour Bridge. This year,
it ends on Jan 30. Some of the performances
so far include an electrifying Hamlet per-
formed in German (with English subtitles) by
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FRIDAY, JANUARY 22, 2010
PHOTOS: PRUDENCE UPTON
Berlin’s highly acclaimed Schaubuhne; a mes-
merising, large-scale exhibition by contempo-
rary Danish artist Olafur Eliasson, in which
he draws upon light, fog, ice, fog, arctic moss
and lava rock to present pristine architectural
spaces; and The Arrival, a whimsical if some-
what obscure and overlong stage production
of Shaun Tan’s illustrated book of the same
name.
There has also been Brazil’s Bale de Rua,
a joyous, pulsating and often poignant mix of
hip-hop, African dance, samba and capoeira
(though at just over one hour, surely rather
parsimonious in terms of length); the
part-dance, part-theatre Tempest: without a
body which draws on worthy topics such as
our post-9/11 society and the plight of indige-
nous peoples and which features some aston-
ishing, slow-motion bodywork by New Zea-
land company MAU, but which is emphatical-
ly not for those already in a gloomy frame of
mind; and the intelligent, arch and beautiful
Smoke & Mirrors, which draws from the
vaudeville and circus traditions but is signifi-
cantly more than the sum of its parts.
Notable performances this week and the
next include Oedipus Rex & Symphony of
Psalms, a rarely performed double bill of
Stravinsky’s masterworks epically staged by
ARTS
Immersed in the
images of water
PAGE 32
SYDNEY FESTIVAL 2010
PHOTOS: PRUDENCE UPTON
Peter Sellars at the Opera House; Six Charac-
ters in Search of an Author by the UK’s Head-
long company that has been described as a
“radical re-imagining” of the Pirandello play;
Giselle by Irish choreographer Michael
Keegan-Dolan, also publicised as a “radical”
interpretation of the romantic ballet; and the
world premiere of Happy as Larry by Austra-
lia’s Shaun Parker & Company, a dance thea-
tre work which explores the nine personality
types – Seducer, Performer, Observer, Tragic
Romantic, etc – as mapped by the psychologi-
cal system Enneagram.
Showcase for the city
Hume says that the Sydney Festival expects
more than one million spectators, of which
about 700,000 will be headed for the free con-
certs. The festival, she says, wants to work
more closely with the tourism authorities – in
this case, Tourism NSW – to make the event
an international tourist attraction in itself.
“We want more people to see Sydney Festi-
val as a destination in its own right,” she says.
“We believe Sydney Festival has now reached
a point in its life where it’s more than just an
arts festival. It’s actually a kind of a showcase
for the city, in a way that no other arts festival
in Australia is.”
In its turn, Tourism NSW (which invited
BT to the first week of the festival) appears to
be pulling out all the stops to attract travellers
to the state of New South Wales, emphasising
that Sydney Festival is part of a larger pro-
gramme called Vivacity that includes the New
Year fireworks and Australia Day – while Vi-
vacity is itself part of a year-long, perennial
tourism endeavour that encompasses a win-
ter celebration called Vivid Sydney and a food
festival called Crave Sydney.
Hume, while understandably delighted
with her new role, is also acutely aware of the
enormous cultural weight it carries. She sees
the Sydney Festival as offering a truly unique
programme, pointing to the fact that the Festi-
val First Night with Al Green, for example,
was opened by Black Arm Band, a group of vi-
brant, highly talented aboriginal musicians
who are gaining prestige worldwide.
“You realise the potential of a festival to be
more than just a bunch of arts events. It’s an
actual civic vehicle for public goodwill, for cul-
tural diplomacy,” she says. “It’s not just about
Sydney offering a backdrop; it’s not just the
scenery. What is even more exciting is that
it’s about streets full of people celebrating
with music and art. It’s people coming toge-
ther to talk about our shared humanity and
about what connects us, rather than what
sets us apart.”
The Sydney Festival is an annual summer
event and ends on Jan 30 this year.
Find out more at www.sydneyfestival.org.au