Legendary writer and 1970s rock performer Patti Smith will perform in Melbourne for the first time in more than a decade.
She will also join composer Philip Glass on stage for one performance of music and poetry in tribute to the late beat poet, Allen Ginsberg.
The October festival will features no fewer than 15 world premieres, and new Australian works will be at the forefront.
Melbourne-born Barrie Kosky, now an it-boy opera director on the world stage, will kick off the festivities with the premiere of Melbourne composer Liza Lim’s The Navigator.
The Schonberg Ensemble from Holland will also be a first-week feature, as well as Israel’s spellbinding Batsheva Dance Company, on its first visit in eight years.
Transformation and ecstatic states are themes in this year’s festival. Writer/director Jenny Kemp’s Kitten travels from despairing depths to the heights of hope, and Geelong-based Back to Back Theatre is back, with cult band the Necks, to present Food Court, a near-death experience in a shopping centre food hall.
In a similar vein, UK writer, director and performer Tim Crouch transforms audience members into actors, and movement artist Wendy Houston in her Desert Island Dances and Happy Hour asks if we are ever able to transcend the clutter of life.
Turkish flute virtuoso Kudsi Erguner transports audiences with Sufi Invocations, featuring his ecstatic compositions for the Whirling Dervishes ceremony, and Sufi Jazz.
Edmunds also brings us New York artist Chris Doyle, who will create a monumental vision on the walls of the National Gallery in Ecstatic City.
Lucy Guerin, “one of the great choreographers today”, turns dance on its head in her moving Corridor and also collaborates with Gideon Obarzanek in Chunky Move’s Two Faced Bastard.
Kate Denborough, who directed Frank Woodley’s hit show Possessed, has created Appetite about a woman who has a “transformative epiphany” on the eve of her 40th birthday.
Melbourne group Not Yet It’s Difficult’s David Pledger opens a three-bedroom house to look at life changes in The Meaning of Moorabbin is Open for Inspection.
Even the Famous Spiegeltent features artists who transcend their trademarks to surprise audiences. Every show is a premiere.
In British director Tim Etchells’ witty and unsettling That Night Follows Day, a show for adults, children “feed back to us what we’ve taught them”. And children become judge and jury in a red-carpet awards ceremony, Children’s Choice Awards.
Aboriginal song sensation Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, whose debut album has made a rare breakthrough into mainstream charts, makes his Melbourne debut before a national tour, and Edmunds has chosen Hidden Republic by Black Arm Band, who gave us the London-bound winner Murundak, as a “vital way to end the festival”.
DJ Spooky, aka New York-based musician Paul Miller, brings his multimedia concert Terra Nova Sinfonia Antarctica down under for its Australian premier at the festival and will also deejay at the Beck’s Bar festival club.
Kristy says her greatest gift to Melbourne, before she becomes head of VCA Performing Arts in November, is that her successor, Brett Sheedy, will inherit a much more diverse audience.
“What’s very important is, ‘Can we include the voices and interests of complete strangers?’ ” she says.
“If we play to a single constituent base, we lose the point.”
Filed under: Melbourne | Tagged: festivals, holidays, travel
