Walter and wife, Dorota, have established a rather niche cooking school across the road from what is undoubtedly the gastronomic temple of Melbourne cuisine, the Prahran market. I recently joined a group of avid foodies for four hour snapshot of what Walter does. I’ll be honest – I was a bit hesitant at first as I’ve always ended up going along to cooking classes where they teach you how to make a lasagne or other mundane Wednesday night home meals. That preconception was whipped from my mind as we walked into the enormous kitchen/classroom. A fully kitted out homage to everything that is great about preparing food; Le Creuset as far as the eye could see, pimped out Kitchenaids, copper pots, Electrolux induction and gas cook tops, oversized canisters of ingredients. I didn’t want to leave.

After we sat down around the enormous kitchen bench/table set for dinner it was clear this was no ordinary cooking class. Walter explained his heritage, the amazing restaurants he has worked and his recent appreciation of organic produce. Our first, I would call amuse bouche tied into Walters philosophy of understanding produce and using it appropriately. We were served tomatoes in a number of configurations, simply to illustrate that each part of the fruit delivers a different textural and flavour component (it also helped they were the best quality organic tomatoes and tasted amazing).

This idea flowed through to the appetiser which was the same dish served with Sydney Rock Oysters and then Tasmanian Oysters; garnished with diced cucumber, beetroot jelly and a seafood velouté with a nice hit of fresh horseradish. The subtle differences between the two oysters were intriguing and were matched well with Piper NV Brut.

We went on to enjoy three more courses carefully matched with a range of Shawdowfax wines each more perfect than the last, whilst still learning about how to best use ingredients (even in a home kitchen).

Trupp Cooking School has been open since August and offers a range of classes, with many including a visit to the Prahran market to learn how to pick great produce. This session ran for about four hours and with prices starting at $129 and a huge range of courses available, it’s a great way to spend an evening, enjoying amazing food and learning the tricks of the trade. My tip, this beats an awkward first date at a very good restaurant.

The Menu

Entrée
Amuse Bouche
Textures and flavours of Tomato

Apetiser
Sydney Rock/Tasmanian Oysters w/ diced Cucumber, Beetroot Jelly, Horseradish velouté

Entrée
Salmon Ballotine with Cauliflower, endive salad with blanched school prawns and spelt.

Main
Roasted Beef Fillet w/ a herb crust, sautéed vegetables, pomme fondant, vegetables stuff with crushed peas.

Dessert
Goat milk/yoghurt vanilla panna cotta with seasonal fruits, saffron syrup, saffron jelly and wildflowers.

For more information, head to the Trupp Cooking School website.

Laneway food writer, Charlie Cunningham, is a social media and digital marketing whiz by day and blogger, booze aficionado and Modern Warfare 3 expert by night. Catch him via Twitter, Facebook or his food blog, Lusciousness.

Sure, contemporary dance has the potential to work with popular music and tough politics.  But in Political Mother, it doesn’t.  It fails – big time.

The piece opens with a lone figure on the stage: a soldier, judging by his costume.  The theatre is filled with smoke, the air is silent and expectant.  The soldier draws his sword, and stabs it through his gut.  Pared back, graphic and direct, it should be a pretty affecting moment, right?  But it isn’t.  The dancer’s jerking motions as he pretends to writhe in agony are awkward, almost comic.  And then the crashingly loud score begins mid-crescendo, destroying any subtlety the moment might have had.  A disappointing opening from a company turbo-hyped as the next big thing in contemporary dance.

From here, things kind of get worse.  Other soldiers turn up wearing armour that looks a bit like that plastic chocolate you can get in two dollar shops.  A hard rock band – complete with raspy-voiced grindcore vocalist with big hair and cocked hips – makes regular appearances that make you almost wonder whether this is in fact some kind of a Spinal Tap sequel.  Oddly, a gorilla mask turns up a couple of times, prompting audible giggles from the mid-sized audience.  The score continues to alternate between oh-so-eerie windswept silence to oh-so-edgy full-throttle cock rock.

It’s not as if the show didn’t have promise.  Touted as a rage-fuelled treatise on the dangers of mass ideology, Political Mother could have raised some of the important issues of the day that too many contemporary performances shy away from.  The trouble is, it’s too vague – its anger, while palpable, is too unfocused and hysterical to have any meaningful impact.  Scenes of some kind of military or political leader addressing an imaginary crowd are farcically didactic – they might be intended to ‘make you think’ but in fact they make you cringe…and maybe even bristle at the implication that you aren’t capable of a more nuanced critique.

Similarly, the idea of marrying the bombast of a rock show with the elegance of dance has wonderful potential to invigorate both formats.  Sadly though, Shechter is too enamoured of the thrill of alternating from silent to deafening to find any subtle middle-ground.  The head-banging performance, which might be quite fun at the Arthouse, feels laughably affected at the Arts Centre.

There are moments of beautiful choreography that interweave folkdance with military punishment, as gleeful circle-form whirling dervishes become glum work gangs sapped of life.  Repeated wildly erratic jerky motions play well against ordered formations among the eleven performers, offering a lovely tension between regimented order and desperate resistance.

But these moments of lyrical dance repeatedly degenerate into generalisations and histrionics.  Political Mother, hotly anticipated after a successful world tour, disappoints relentlessly.

I’m not sure what comes to mind when you hear the words “multi-talented” but for me it’s now this: Tom Tom Crew.

The lads and their gasp-inducing act are back in town, debuting at Melbourne Festival, after travelling the world over for the past five years doing what no other does.

Half a decade on the road doesn’t seem to have wearied them though – or, judging by the appreciative squeals from ladies in the audience, their bodies – because the energy and pace circulating The Forum Theatre come 8pm had the old foundations rocking.

Tom Tom Crew is drumming with such speed the eye can’t keep up and acrobatics that defies gravity to elicit how-the-bloomin’-hell type gasps. But they’re also much more.

The beat boxing skill of Tom Thum is quite probably beyond description. Suffice to say, you’ve never heard anything like it. Unless, of course, you’ve happen to stumble across a single gent who can replicate the aura of a twenties jazz club – vocals, sax, trumpet, trombone, bass included – using only his voice, a mic and a sampler.

And while it’s an accepted fact that most shows tends to lull at one point or another, down-time for this energetic mob came from an effortless display of contortionism. During which the audience were so fixated, be they squirming or not, that attentions did not waiver for a second.

Yet the most impressive aspect of Tom Tom Crew is not the beat-boxing, acrobatics, percussions, break-dancing, drumming, contortion or scratching, but rather the guys themselves. They are cool. And they truly love what they do. It’s something you notice not only by watching them, but by feeling the energy they’re putting into each performance.

I guess if the artistic director of Melbourne Festival, Brett Sheehy, had referred to your act as “probably the coolest show of the festival” you’d be buzzing with positive vibes too!

Catch yourself some cool-factor before they sell out.

An unlikely combination of dancers and singers, movement and sound, ancient and modern, the simple and the stunning: Assembly is a triumph of mix ‘n’ match.

Over 60 performers gather on a stark plywood staircase on the otherwise empty stage: eight Chunky Move dancers, seven solo singers, and over 50 Victorian Opera choral singers.  There is no music, there are no movements – it’s just 60 people standing there staring.  As the lights come up, you’d be forgiven for secretly sighing to yourself, dreading the oh-so-po-mo ‘the performers are the audience’ snorefest to come.  But over the next hour, this crowd of people hum and click with voices and feet, tumble and teeter up and down the stairs, and trill and croon a cappella compositions ranging from 1600s early-music Plainchant through to ‘60s Motown.  It turns out that this is a performance that’s every bit as entertaining as it is intelligent.  (Incidentally, much of the Plainchant early-music was composed by a guy called Carlo Gesualdo, who is famous for brutally stabbing his wife – who was also his first cousin – when he caught her in bed with her lover in his locked-up castle.)

Assembly was conceived by Chunky Move founding Artistic Director Gideon Obarzanek and will be his final work with the company.  The piece has all the familiar hallmarks of a Chunky Move production: a mischievous sense of humour, a blending of virtuosic (largely floor-based) dance and deliberately amateurish movements, and a refreshingly fast pace for we of the YouTube generation.  The choreography focuses on poetic patterns in and rhythmic repetitions in anonymous everyday activities – there are no lifts or aerial acrobatics, but the magic of 60 people moving as one is in its way every bit as impressive.

The collaboration with Victorian Opera is seamless.  The dancers hum and hiss along with the singers, and the choir surge and sway in near-perfect time with the dancers.  While there are a few beautiful solos (both sung and danced), Assembly is really about the crowd: the individuals lost to the collective, their motions and murmurs blending together, surging and subsiding in overlapping unison.  The pitter-patter of soles slapping against steps becomes the percussion and the subtle rhythms of colour in the deceptively simple costume changes becomes the set.  Assembly succeeds in finding a subtle yet striking sense of wonder in the everyday.

‘I thought this show was going to be about crowds, but it seems to be more about a need to experience something greater than one’s individual self,’ Obarzanek writes in the comprehensive (and free) program.  That might sound worryingly new-age and spiritual…but Assembly is about the magic down here in the streets and the subway, not up there in the sky.  It’s life-affirming stuff.

Half-Real
The Border Project
Malthouse Theatre
Tickets: $20-$30
malthousetheatre.com.au | melbournefestival.com.au 

Half Real is currently showing at the Malthouse Theatre as part of the Melbourne Festival. The performance by the Border Project, an Adelaide theatre company that formed in 2001, is another show reflecting their unspoken ethos of ‘trying to make work that connects with an audience that doesn’t normally go to the theatre’.

The format of Half Real is that of a video game, best described by David Heinrich, when I spoke to him. ‘Half Real is an interactive theatre experience,’ says Heinrich, co-founder of The Border Project, and both co-creator and performer in Half Real.

 ‘It’s probably more like playing a game than seeing a show. Basically, the way it works is the audience are each given a wireless controller and they use that to navigate their way through the show and try and solve a mystery. The mystery is that one of the characters has been murdered, there are three suspects and through a series of investigations the audience then has to choose who they think the murderer is. It’s sort of based on a choose your own adventure kind of plot, not in the linear narrative tradition.

And after seeing the show, that description is apt. As the ‘game’ progresses the audience eliminates options based on a majority vote (democratic theatre, gotta love it) to uncover the mystery. And the audience were really into it. The laughter and discussion as we voted was a pleasure to see, and at no point did the attention of the audience drift, no shifting uncomfortably in seats or grumbling, the format of this show captured their attention for the duration.

And that is because this is SO much fun to see. A genius idea to change the format of theatre to make it interactive, to appeal to the ‘gaming generation’ (because, let’s be honest, they’re not that prone to going to the theatre). It followed the game formula perfectly, and took the piss out of itself! It was hilarious! There were some great moments of humour, even though this was – at its core – a murder mystery.

When I asked David how they came to have the idea for Half Real, he told me:

‘For this show we were looking at the murder mystery and computer game formats. Gaming is a popular pastime, but it’s a solitary pastime, and we wanted to try and take what that experience is, turn it into a live event that’s also a communal event that you share with 85 other people in a room, and turn it into something exciting and fun to see. And entertaining too, we want our shows to be entertaining, if nothing else.’

I think the thing that I really loved about this, was that whenever someone says to me ‘contemporary theatre’ I freeze in dread of loud bright flashy interpretative dance, probably with some warbling thrown in for good measure. Half Real avoided every single cliché of modern interpretive theatre, with grace.

One of the (many) clever elements of this show were the ‘sets’. One room with a chair, but the background was projected, so it became a bookshop, a bar, a lounge room, a bathroom – fluidly without awkwardness. And even more interestingly, as the three suspects were solitary on stage, when other characters were required for a scene, shadows were projected onto the background and were voiced by the other performers.

David described some of the technology that they used to make the interactive element work to me:

‘We’ve got this whole projection mapping thing going on, where this piece of technology knows where we are in the stage as actors, and during the scene different things may pop up that will be the choices for what you would like to explore and they are actually projected above the performers head and they will follow the performer as he or she walks around the stage.’

The only thing that let down the performance was some weakness in the storyline. While we were only able to investigate two of the three suspects’ motives, only one of the two storylines that I got to see was genuinely interesting, whilst the other two were very much the generic stereotypical crime storylines. I would have really liked to see some originality in those storylines as opposed to what appeared to be a capitulation to the formula.

All things considered though, this is a really interesting direction, and possibly the future of contemporary theatre. This is something new, it is theatre for a new generation.

I cannot sum up a recommendation better than David when he said ‘Don’t even think about what theatre is, just come to this entertaining event where you’ll have a good time, and be engaged by watching a story.’

Nuff said.

[Editor's Note: Tickets for Half Real had sold out at the time of publishing :'( Sorry if you missed it, be sure to catch it next time it rolls into town]

All Images Courtesy Steve Tilling

]]> http://lanewaymagazine.com.au/mf2011-half-real/feed/ 0 http://lanewaymagazine.com.au/at-the-sans-hotel/ http://lanewaymagazine.com.au/at-the-sans-hotel/#comments Mon, 19 Sep 2011 10:56:22 +0000 Meisy Cheong http://lanewaymagazine.com.au/?p=5277 At The Sans Hotel
Nicola Gunn
La Mama Courthouse
Until October 02
Tickets $15/$25

At times confusing, and others, pure comedic gold, Nicola Gunn’s At The Sans Hotel is a dark, sinister piece of work played out brilliantly by an extraordinary performer.

Written, directed and performed by Gunn, the plot begins with our introductory encounter with Sophie, a seemingly bubbly girl, full of life and excitement. As the story unfolds, we discover there is more to Sophie than meets the eye. There is something not quite right under the surface – she’s anxious, nervous, attention-seeking and self-absorbed. And beneath that, there is a deep sadness, which she conveys through her storytelling, body language and demeanour. It’s as though she is making a direct cry for help towards her audience.

Moving through the story, Sophie’s sadness becomes more apparent as she shares her thoughts on loneliness, despair and hopelessness. It is a touching, emotion-fuelled, thought-provoking performance which begs the viewer to question their own fulfillment…or lack thereof.

As humans, we have an innate need to be loved and acknowledged. At the Sans Hotel is a tumultous exploration of the soul, more specifically, the part of us that switches on when we don’t get the love we crave. It’s about anxiety, depression, sadness and loneliness. Gunn’s haunting performance asking us to recognise our feelings of desperation and hopelessness, and to remember that everyone – you, your best friend, your neighbour, your colleague – will, at one time or another, be overwhelmed by these very same feelings.

With Belong, Bangarra Dance Theatre achieves the impossible: this is the magic in movement we have come to expect from Australia’s premier Indigenous performing arts company.

Belong is dance that enchants as well as confronts, that draws on tradition and also on the future, that is both funny and furious…and perhaps most amazing of all, this is dance that gets the audience to hoot and cheer in vocal appreciation – more like a footy crowd than an Arts Centre audience.  Bangarra are that rare thing: self-proclaimed ‘cultural ambassadors’ that actually live up to their name.  Just back from a sell-out tour around Europe, the company has taken on artists in residence as well as new performers and displays a sense of confidence and fun that both delights and disturbs.

Belong is a double bill.  The first work, ‘About,’ transports us from the packed basement theatre below St Kilda Road to the open plains of the Torres Strait.  The piece is an abstract portrait of the four winds that shape the seasons of choreographer Elma Kris’ home in Thursday Island.  As Kris explains in the handsomely presented catalogue, the Torres Strait winds ‘paint colour in the day, the sky, and the seas.  They are like spirits swiftly passing by, and merging with nature; they guide and nurture day-to-day life.’

If that sounds hard to get your head around, maybe it is: this is a quintessential example of the way in which often the very best dance resists being translated into words on a page.  But it works.  Like many in the audience, I’ve never been to Thursday Island, but ‘About’ really did give me a feeling for the way in which the breeze gives rhythm to island life, shaping emotions and activities and marking the passage of time.  Each season – the cool, blue-hued south wind or the gusty white-hot dominant breeze – is expressed with a different colour and announced by an animalistic storyteller, performed by Kris herself. Climactic puffs of Bangarra’s trademark powdery white chalk add a drama that perfectly sets off Emma Howell’s subtly textural costumes.  As only her second production, ‘About’ confidently announces Elma Kris as a choreographer and dancer to watch.

Following a short intermission, ‘ID’ marks quite a shift in tone.  Whereas ‘About’ referred mostly to nature and traditional stories of spirits and origins, Bangarra Artistic Director Stephen Page is here intent on confronting audiences with very contemporary and political concerns.  ‘ID’ addresses the confusions and hypocrisies of how Indigenous identity is felt and depicted in the 21^st century.  One squirm-in-your-seat scene has a class of school kids smear Vegemite on their faces to pose for a photo; these same dancers are later emblazoned with ‘1/8, 1/4’ – fractions used in an attempt to ‘quantify’ Aboriginality.  It’s an uncomfortable reminder of the eugenicist history behind the racist stereotypes still perpetuated today by likes of Andrew Bolt.

Even more confronting are scenes of torture and killing brought devastatingly to life by the pained twitching and angularity of the choreography, the pulsing staccato of David Page’s score, and the starkness of the set.  This isn’t feel-good theatre made for a Qantas ad: this is a challenging reminder that Indigenous identity is shaped by trauma as well as tradition, by hardship as well as by hope.

Belong is Bangarra at their best.  It may come as a surprise that dance can be both poetic and political.  The chorus of whistles and cheers from the sold-out audience is proof that I wasn’t the only one totally wowed.

All Images Copyright Jeff Busby

Look Right Through Me is the story of one man’s journey from sorrow to serenity.  It’s also the story of a wild night on the turps.  It’s dance that will make you cry, gasp, and grin: it’s Michael Leunig with a huge ‘wow’ factor.

A lot of dance performances these days can be subtle to the point of ponderous.  Not so for this show. KAGE are renowned for the physicality of their productions, and here the performers tumble and twist and catapult across every corner of the wide and deep stage – even climbing up ladders and trees so you never really know where to look.  Laneway chatted to Gerard Van Dyck, who is co-Director of KAGE and co-devised and performs in Look Right Through Me.

‘KAGE has always been hugely theatrical and so any “wow” moment in a show may be the culmination of choreography, lighting, sound, illusion etc. And in my view this is the real art of theatre making,’ Gerard explains.  ‘Look Right Through Me has some highly energetic and physically exhausting choreography.’  But Gerard’s not complaining: he once clocked up over fifty performances of his acclaimed solo show The Collapsible Man.  Gerard sure doesn’t look tired.  None of the seven performers do.  Stripped to their underwear for much of the show, they are so strikingly athletic and vital you’re going to wish you went for that run this morning.

But the show isn’t all about energy and exuberance.  Look Right Through Me has moments of truly affecting anguish and pain.  ‘We’re telling stories about human situations,’ Gerard agrees. ‘Potentially they are the audience’s stories…’

They’re not stories in the conventional sense.  Like so much of the very best dance, Look Right Through Me is narrative in an open, suggestive way.  But if you’ve ever gotten drunk in an abandoned lot, perhaps down by the docks, then these are your stories.  If you’ve ever been terrorised by barking dogs and writhing lovers on the same night, these are your stories.  If you’ve ever been mesmerised by ducks, ever dreamed of resting awhile in a little rowboat, ever wanted to tip over the whole cart of apples – these are your stories.

As Gerard says, ‘the lead character finds new meaning for himself after experiencing some kind of spiritual breakdown…the way he views the world has been transformed or perhaps even evolved.’  If you’ve ever felt like that, these are most certainly your stories.  And they’re a lot more magical and meaningful when they’re told in dance by these dazzlingly gifted performers than they are when you’re telling them yawningly over your fourth beer to no one in particular.

The scenes in Look Right Through Me might be familiar from your own life, but chances are they’re also going to remind you of the work of the show’s Creative Collaborator, Michael Leunig.  A Melbourne institution, Leunig has published over twenty books and been a regular feature of the dailies for over forty years.  Gerard describes him as ‘a gentle giant. He’s tall, quiet, funny, disarming, gracious and generous.’  Apparently, Leunig visited the KAGE gang frequently during the rehearsal process, and his input helped Gerard and the other performers to explore ‘themes of beauty, humour, innocence, surrealism, humanity (to name only a few) we wanted to represent physically.’

The show isn’t trying to be a literal translation of Leunig’s work.  ‘From the outset we knew we were not trying to act out his cartoons or play out the scenes he has created,’ Gerard explains.  ‘We are mostly inspired by his very “humane” view of the world.’  Director Kate Denborough writes in the catalogue that ‘each scene has been inspired by particular cartoons or pieces of his writing.’  But while at some moments specific references are clear, most of the time it’s more suggestive and impressionistic, richly allusive without becoming just a game of ‘guess which cartoon this bit is.’

Look Right Through Me is an exhilarating performance.  It’s dance at its most fun and also its most evocative.  It will excite dance connoisseurs and newcomers alike, and Laneway joins KAGE in hoping that their collaboration with Leunig will bring them new audiences.  It’ll certainly put your next wild night into perspective.  As Leunig once suggested, may you lie in the gutter and look at the stars.

 All Images Copyright Jeff Busby

The name Randy Newman will set alarm bells ringing in everybody’s head.

The American composer has become synonymous with the children’s animated film, with six Disney-Pixar scores under his belt – yes, that does include Toy Story – the one-time singer/songwriter has, in the last couple of decades, redefined his career and now boasts cross generational appeal. It is therefore little surprise to see the State Theatre packed to the brim with an audience whose age range is approximately 4-100 – a feat that is impressive on its own. However, with accompaniment from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Newman ensures that his set satisfies not only the Disney fans.

A mild-mannered and well-humoured humble soul, Newman excels at relaxed banter and works his way through a diverse collection from his back catalogue, with the inevitable highlights Political Science, You Can Leave Your Hat On and You’ve Got A Friend In Me proving audience favourites.

However, at times the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra are left in the shadows, with Newman preferring to perform as a soloist. The decision is met with mixed emotions. Having been billed as a collaboration, Newman’s insistence to go it alone has initial appeal, but his solo sound is at times too soft for such a large forum.

Equally perverse is the minimal focus on his scores. Though four make the bill, they are positioned as the mid section and might have benefited from spacing. That said, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra work their magic and they would easily have stolen the show had it not been for the late minute inclusion of encore closer I Think It’s Going To Rain Today, which allows Newman to do away with his comical tone and try a little tenderness. For three minutes, not as much as a head turn as chills were sent down people’s spines. Proving his original rendition still beats all the covers, Newman ends his set on a high and is met with a much deserved standing ovation.

Pin Drop
Tamara Saulwick
Malthouse Theatre
Tickets $26-$40
Until August 07
malthousetheatre.com.au

Pin Drop is currently playing at the Malthouse Theatre, a venue that I have not had the opportunity of attending previously. Malthouse Theatre is great, the perfect setting for a play like this, its surroundings are quite eerie anyway and the theatre itself is intimate, and lends itself well to small scale productions.

Pin Drop is a play about fear, from various women’s points of view. It explores feeling and being unsafe, the reactions and advice that different women have – what happens when they have found themselves threatened.

Tamara Saulwick is the performer (she’s the creator as well, I mean, how talented do you want to be?) in this production – and she performed very well.

She used objects (that she had been arranging as we filed into the theatre) to make the noises that make us nervous. Those noises you hear late at night, that you know is just the wind, but will get up and check just in case. The noises that if you heard when walking home, would make you walk faster, grip your keys and try to look over your shoulder without turning around.

Tamara tells the stories of women from the first person, imitating their carriage, and at certain points in the stories their audio would play in synchronisation with her voice. It was powerful reiteration. It jumped between the narratives fairly quickly, but because Tamara was so good at the characterisation of these women you could always tell who was who.

It did of course have the obligatory interpretive dance, flashy lights and almost too loud sinister music but it didn’t feel contrived – it worked within the narrative.

I wasn’t so sure about the thing with the watermelon, but hey, you can’t please everyone.

I have to say that I was impressed with the whole production – all the elements of this play were well thought out and perfectly executed. Even if I did leave the venue feeling a little unsafe, and for the first time in a long time, found myself looking over my shoulder as I walked. Pin Drop is an incredibly clever production, although probably best not to go alone if you’re particularly skittish.

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