RealTime E-dition 25 May 2016

RealTime E-dition

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The appalling news of the defunding of Australia’s premiere national festival for emerging artists—alongside other crucially innovative organisations—did not prevent Next Wave Festival from excelling nor dimmed its spirits. It played to full houses, delighting audiences and triggering invaluable conversations about mutating artforms and key cultural issues. With five emerging arts writers and mentors Andrew Fuhrmann and Jana Perkovic in our DanceWrite workshop, we experienced the pleasures and provocations Next Wave engenders, all working day and night for each participant to produce a set of reviews. This involved intensive group discussions, shared reading and close editing. You can read two reviews by each writer in this E-dition and you’ll find more on our Features page. We thank our participants and mentors for their energy, commitment and company, and Hannah Matthews of Sharing Space for inviting RealTime and Next Wave to collaborate on this venture.

For more on the Next Wave Festival, Simon Eales reviews Geoffrey Watson’s CAMEL, Dylan Sheridan’s The Horse, Thomas ES Kelly’s [MIS]CONCEIVE and Maurial Spearim’s BlaaQ Catt. You can also read Jane Howard’s review of the festival’s opening weekend performances and next week we’ll report on several exhibitions in Next Wave’s visual arts program. If we lose Next Wave, we lose the future. Speak out now.

Virginia & Keith

DESERT BODY CREEP In Angela Goh’s conceptual choreography Maximilian perceives a shedding of cultural conditioning and an appreciation of pure, naked motion.

[MIS]CONCEIVE In his “clear and measured” challenge to cultural stereotyping, writes Alison Finn, Thomas ES Kelly “deploys humour and political optimism to counterpoint sequences of stormy movement.”

ADMISSION INTO THE EVERYDAY SUBLIME Although left with questions about the experience, Chloe Chignell lets herself go with Lilian Steiner’s offer of transcendence via dance, sound and a very large painting.

PASSING Maximilian witnesses intimate movement, powerful dance and expressive language as testifying to the strengths of Indigenous women addressing their relationship to each other and women of the past.

DESERT BODY CREEP Chloe Chignell applauds Angela Goh’s anti-illusionist performance for its embrace of the actual, creating “real affect” with “absurd images in real space and real time.”

MORE NEXT WAVE PERFORMANCES Simon Eales takes in a bizarrely humorous dance work, CAMEL, a witty, sensorial music performance-cum-installation, The Horse, and two passionate performances by Indigenous artists in [MIS]CONCEIVE and BlaaQ Catt.

ADMISSION INTO THE EVERYDAY SUBLIME
To reveal the work’s patterning, its sense of ritual and potential for transcendence, Alison Finn focuses on Lilian Steiner’s choreography which eventually gives way to a possibly sublime visual experience.

PASSING In a work that is both sensual and violent, Miriam Kelly sees Amrita Hepi and Jahra Wasasala as boldly owning but also challenging their heritage while dealing with cultural stereotyping.

DESERT BODY CREEP
Beyond vivid images of abduction, possession and reanimation, Elyssia Bugg experiences a “cool and unflinching emptiness” in Angela Goh’s “post post-everything” creation.

[MIS]CONCEIVE
A classroom motif is central to Thomas ES Kelly’s engaging dance theatre challenge to audiences to go back and unlearn preconceptions about Aboriginal people, writes Elyssia Bugg.

ADMISSION INTO THE EVERYDAY SUBLIME
Miriam Kelly relishes “the subtlety and power” given to abstraction by Lilian Steiner’s slowing of time with which she deepens her audience’s attentiveness.

GIVEAWAY: CAROL DVD
Just released by Transmission on DVD, this much lauded film from director Todd Haynes—adapted from the Patricia Highsmith novel about a lesbian relationship in 1950s New York—features fine performances from Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara.

RealTime E-dttions are published by Open City an Incorporated Association in New South Wales. Open City Inc is supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding body, and by the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy [VACS], an initiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments. RealTime’s Principal Technology Partner is the national communications carrier, Vertel.

Opinions published in RealTime are not necessarily those of the Editorial Team or the Publisher.

RealTime, Open City Inc
PO Box A2246
Sydney South 1235
Australia

Tel 61 2 9283 2723

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www.realtimearts.net

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