Yeah, I know, Falls was a billion year ago. But that doesn’t mean you can’t check out our gallery, okay? Props to Olivia Blackburn for the rad pics….

Only in its second year, this year’s lineup is loaded with gigs, events, seminars, workshops and films, so trying to whittle down the 170+ acts to a Top 5 was pretty damn hard…so I took the easy way out and opted for the best-looking-slash-performers-I-like-and-I-don’t-care-if-you-don’t-like-them approach.

Here we go…

KUBIK Melbourne
DJ Krush, Cut Copy DJs, Midnight Juggernauts, Lewie Day, World’s End Press, Gaslamp Killer, Alexkid…anything at Kubik, really…

Have you seen this thing? Constructed by some clever design people in Berlin, the travelling open-air pop-up venue is made from industrial water tanks which light up in sync with the performance. Video mapping and sound design complete this truly immersive musical experience, a visual and aural (and delightful) feast for the senses.

Details and tickets via Kubik and peep the vid below to get a glimpse of Kubik in action.

kubik hamburg 2009 from Balestra Berlin on Vimeo.

Live Music Safari
Joelistics, Spiral Stairs & Wally De Backer, Puta Madre Brothers

So the purpose of MMW’s Live Music Safari is thus: a huge spread of free gigs, DJs and seminars will be splayed across Melbourne for one day only and your mission is to traverse the city and get to as many of these gigs as possible. Kick off at 1000£ Bend for an up-close-and-personal conversation with Spiral Stairs and Wally De Backer and make your way to venues like Revolt in Kensington, Roxanne Parlour, Cherry Bar and The Toff in the CBD and the Town Hall Hotel in North Melbourne until the wee hours of the morning. Put your running shoes (or rocket boots) on!

Giant Theremin – Move’n’Mash-up
Dexter

Oh, this reminds me of that time when I saw Dexter on the 109 tram. In real life, he is every bit as freakin’ cool as you would expect him to be. Dexter will be hosting a workshop for sampling and sound design enthusiasts. Warning: there will also be some hip-hop dancing, krumping and breaking involved so make sure you bring your sickest moves with you, yeah?

Face The Music

This two-day workshop focuses on every single behind-the-scenes facet of the music industry including recording, production management, PR, festivals, touring and record deals and is a must for both bands and anyone wanting to break into the industry. Some of the most influential local and international figures will be holding seminars and workshops and sharing their experiences with the audience with one of the highlights being a keynote speech by Brent Grulke of SXSW.

Ponyfish Island Presents Aesthetics of Sound

Over the course of Melbourne Music Week, bars, cafes, galleries and retails stores around the city will interpret Aesthetics of Sound by way of live music, installations, exhibitions or product offers unique to their venue. Ponyfish Island will host a series of live music gigs by artists including Isaac De Geer, Hiatus Kaiyote and Yeo.

For all the details including dates, venue info and ticket prices, hit up the Melbourne Music Week website

Joelistics image: All Aussie Hip Hop

Gaslamp Killer image: I Heart Comix

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/the-interview-marcia-ferguson-ganesh-vs-the-third-reich-melbourne-festival/ http://lanewaymagazine.com.au/the-interview-marcia-ferguson-ganesh-vs-the-third-reich-melbourne-festival/#comments Mon, 03 Oct 2011 13:03:15 +0000 Jeremy Williams http://lanewaymagazine.com.au/?p=5385 Ganesh Vs The Third Reich
Back To Back
Malthouse Theatre
Until October 09
Tickets: $26-$58
Ganesh Vs The Third Reich website | Melbourne Festival website

Jeremy Williams gets the lowdown on the beginnings of Back to Back’s new piece, Ganesh Vs The Third Reich and why this performance has come into fruition. Co-creator, Marcia Ferguson, tells all…

“Ganesh Vs The Third Reich has been in development over the past three years. Back to Back develops new shows at the same time as touring its exisitng repertoire and running an extensive community programme.” Marcia Ferguson is on a train to rehearsal, our line keeps cutting in and out, but rather than become agitated, the clearly spoken artist keeps her cool and ensures that each time she has to restart her point, she keeps it concise but clear.

With Back to Back’s latest work all set for its debut as part of the Melbourne Festival, Ferguson starts our chat by introducing me to the conception of the rather oddly titled piece. She explains, “The piece came about initially when one of our actors Sandi Therbin came in wearing blacked up boots to the knees and a big leather jacket. The class we were running on that day was voice modification and she had a shaved head and she looked like neo-nazi. As they played with voice modification, she began to develop quite a powerful persona, and also quite a weak little person as the voice developed.”

“At the same time another member, Risha Halabarak was fascinated by Ganesh. One of our guest directors was adopting an Indian child at that time. These two elements of interest were really obsessing the cast.” With two such opposing characters at the centre of focus during the workshops, it was not long before someone stumbled upon the well-known connection.

“So the filmmaker went in and Googled ‘Nazi’ and ‘Ganesh’ and discovered that Ganesh’s religious symbol, the Swastika, was appropriated by the Nazi’s as the symbol of the Third Reich. Pretty quickly the cast developed a narrative that Ganesh went to the Third Reich to re-appropriate what was rightfully his. To re-appropriate his cultural symbol from evil.”

While once explained it becomes clear that the piece is far from malicious in intent, the title and premise alone have been enough to raise questions amongst the Hindu community, both on home turf and overseas. When probed if there had been any consideration of the pieces controversial nature, Ferguson remains calm and explains her take on the events.

“There have been two commentators who have quite different views. One of those commentators feared that the production would make a mockery of Ganesh, the other commentator could see the logic in the narrative and was worried that if the production was insensitive it could unsettle Indian-Australian relations. It is very hard for these people to judge as they haven’t seen it. Actually the play does directly seek to examine some of the issues raised, the issues of appropriation.”

Given that she has been involved with the process from the outset, Ferguson has never felt that the piece itself treads on toes in the same way the provocative title does. However as a creative team, they did stop and ask themselves certain telling questions.

“At the same time, the cast were discussing our right to tell the story. Only two of the collborators are Jewish and none of us are Indian, though Kate has spent a lot of time adopting her children there. We were dealing with very big issues. This discussion gradually emerges as the dominant factor of our piece. Who does have the right to re-tell a story from other cultures and other worlds? It is quite an interesting question if you look at the arts across the world. People are constantly re-appropriating elements of other cultures for their own use.”

Ganesh Vs The Third Reich is now showing at the Malthouse as part of the Melbourne Festival. For more information or to buy tickets, head to the Malthouse website.

Image Courtesy Jeff Busby Photography

This year we be going all cultural and stuff (that and the Editor totally didn’t get her shit together to organise any Fringe viewing. Sigh.)…

When the Laneway writers were asked to choose their festival shows – one of them came back with “It looks really arty. I’m scared.”

He probably won’t be going along this year.

In the lead up to the two-and-a-bit-weeks festival, here’s a handful of shows (out of the very huge program) we can’t wait to see…

Half-Real
September 28 – October 15
Malthouse Theatre

In this twisted murder mystery, the audience decides who killed Violet Vario.  Using real-time tracking, 3D video mapping and projected images, the audience participation will decide the outcome of the story. Huh? I know right? Crazy!

Assembly
October 06 – 08
Melbourne Recital Centre

Famed choreographer, Gideon Obarzanek, presents his final work for Australia’s foremost dance company, Chunky Moves. In this massive collaboration between Chunky Moves and The Victorian Opera, it will surely be one of the most  powerful and epic performances of the year.

Tom Tom Crew
October 4-23
Forum Theatre

Blending acrobatics, hip-hop and percussion, Tom Tom crew are sure to set the Forum on fire with their beatboxing, breakdancing, and “gravity-defying manoeuvres”. Its mashup of dance and music makes Tom Tom the mass appeal circus of the 21^st century, for lovers of dance, theatre and music alike.

Journeys of Love and More Love
October 11-16
Arts House Meatmarket

Described as being “an edible, three-course journey through a tale of migration, homecoming and cookery”, Journeys of Love and More Love is Ali Zaidi’s life tale, taking us from Bombay to London and beyond. Using intimate storytelling and video documentary, each of Zaidi’s tales are matched by dishes formulated from the time and setting of which each event took place.

Aviary
October 19-23
North Melbourne Town Hall

Between the twitchy agitation of British New Wave, recordings of birdsong and the paradise of the New Guinea jungle, this is a dance performance of uncommon adornment and flamboyance.

BalletLab’s acclaimed choreographer, Phillip Adams, brings us a Aviary, a soaring spectacle inspried by the competition and exhibitionism to be found in the avian world.

For more information on these shows and more (including free performances throughout the festival), hit up the Melbourne Festival website. We’ll be posting up a bunch of reviews and interviews with some of this year’s performers so watch this space or follow us in the Twitterverse @lanewaymagazine.

Happy Melbourne Festival!

“It is sort of like A-Ha’s Take On Me film clip. So I sort of jump in and out of videos, there is a three metre screen on stage. It is a show I did at the Adelaide Fringe in 2010 and the Melbourne Comedy Festival this year, so I kind of know the show.

But I have a director who helped me re-jig it a couple of times. It is similar, but everytime I do it, I have to film myself on the green screen and learn all the parts I play. Not all the changes may make it,” explains Chong.

While he may not be entirely certain what shape the final performance will take, he is clearly pleased at having been able to successfully stage a show that encompasses more than just his comedic abilities.

“I am a video editor and filmmaker, so I have always enjoyed that kind of stuff. I love special effects movies and stuff, so it was almost like a challenge. I just wanted to see if I could do it.”

With a low budget and no production team, Chong has had only a little bit of assistance from his lovely fiance and some close friends along the way. He clearly relished the prospect of mounting his show, he recalls the process was in itself not far removed from a comedic sketch.

“I did all the filming, I set up a big green screen in an abandoned church with a camera 20 metres away. I had to push record, run back, do the scene, run back and see if it was all good. It took about three months to film all the pieces and put it all together.”

While the filmic nature of the evening dictates to a degree the form of the show, Chong is aware that as the sole performer he is constantly on edge. While many a stand-up only have themselves to consider (and perhaps the odd heckler), Chong is working to a series of tight cues and timing control.

“Because there is filmed conversation on the screen I don’t have much room to move. But because people laugh at different points every night and sometimes there is a bit of a gap before things happen, you have got to be really thinking and change what you say. If they laugh to long, I have to condense the next line or I will stumble over. Every night, for me, feels very different but within a very rigid structure.

I have a friend in Adelaide who can impersonate any of the comedians by their hallmark, the thing that defines them. He always struggles with me.”

When asked if he feels the show helps define his identity as a comic, it is clear that although the format combines his two passions – filmmaking and comedy – the subject matter is more of an interest than throughline for his career.

“In the past, being half-Asian, I have done shows about being Asian and that kind of stuff, but I don’t think that is necessarily me, but I think technology is a little bit, and having fun with technology. For this show I have an Optimus Prime helmet that I have rigged up to some speakers and stuff like that. I like the multimedia side of things. But at the same time I don’t always do that sort of thing.”

Reel Life is now showing at Soft Belly for the Melbourne Fringe Festival. Get the details here.

All Images Copyright Jeremy Williams

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.