Some thoughts on MIAF (part the first)

Finally, with Brett Sheehy's first Melbourne International Arts Festival now officially over as of last night, I am at last finding the time to jot down some thoughts about some of the events I saw. Better late than never, I suppose!

The Abbey Theatre - Terminus

Ireland's national theatre company presented this powerful and surprising work by playwright Mark O'Rowe at The Malthouse, a gritty and grotesque piece of dark magic realism written and performed as a series of three interlinking monologues. An older woman working at a telephone counselling service and her alienated and unhappy adult daughter are caught up in the affairs of a vicious serial killer who goes on a murderous rampage after selling his soul to the Devil and getting cheated in process.

Written in lyrical verse evoking both the language of the street and gothic fantasy, this was an engaging albeit grim piece of entertainment, and featured an outstanding performance from Karl Shiels as the sweet-voiced killer. Earthy language, unpredictable meter and creative wordplay reminiscent of Irish writers such as Joyce and Jamie O’Neill resulted in an enthralling text, balanced out by intense performances and dramatic storytelling, with the sonorous score and simple but effective staging rounding out the work.


The Hofesh Shechter Company - Uprising/In Your Rooms

These two outstanding contemporary dance works were one of my absolute highlights for the festival.

The masculine physicality of Uprising, which was inspired by the 2006 Paris riots, was ably and beautifully conveyed by seven male dancers: slaps on the back turned into blows, bodies prowled ape-like across the stage, tender embraces became wrestling matches, both tender and competitive; their movements accompanied by a tribal, industrially percussive score that fitted perfectly with scenes where the performers were marshalled and drilled like soldiers or assembly-line workers.

In Your Rooms, featuring 11 male and female performers, evoked the risks and delights of relationships, alienation and compassion, with dancers plunging from light into shadow accompanied by a dynamic live soundtrack which, like the score for Uprising, was also composed by the Israeli-born Hofesh Shechter.

Shechter also contributes to In Your Rooms in voice-over, musing upon the macrocosm and microcosm and the connections, both personal and impersonal, between the two; while the score is played live by a band who are elevated above the dancers at the rear of the stage. A sample of the Sigur Ros track 'Takk...' was woven into the score, to great effect.

Viewed together, these were masterful, moving and beautiful dance works.

Transe Express - Mischievous Bells

This much-hyped work - part of the festival's free opening night celebrations - left me cold. Performers went up, they went around, they banged drums and rang bells, all the while suspended from a flower-like mechanical structure that gradually unfolded around them as it carried them on high. Repetitive and tedious once the initial 'awww' factor had worn off.

Rembrandt's J'Accuse

Peter Greenaway claims that Rembrandt's famous 1642 painting The Night Watch is "an indictment ... an accusation", and in this didactic and hectoring film the British filmmaker sets out to prove his point, while simultaneously asserting his argument that modern culture is visually illiterate. It's ironic then, that Greenaway has made such a talky, text-heavy film - in almost every frame the filmmaker is lecturing in voiceover or popping up as a talking head to ram his point home: that The Night Watch holds the clues to a murder.

You can read my detailed review of J'Accuse here, at Arts Hub. If you're not an Arts Hub member (why not?) I can summarise by saying that not only is Greenaway's film a somewhat dry and rather pompous lecture, it also selectively ignores established facts which don't fit with Greenaway's claims.

As leading Australian art critic Robert Nelson recently wrote in The Age:

‘Visual literacy consists not in inventing things that aren't there, but connecting the things that are. While reproaching the visually illiterate who only see what they want to see, Greenaway plunges into the very fallacy that he scorns.’

Science in the Dark: Elemental

I really, really wanted to like this work. Its creator, poet alicia sometimes, has been a friend of mine for many years, and I'm also good friends with the other three poets involved in the creation of the work, Sean M. Whelan, Emilie Zoey Baker and Paul Mitchell. Unfortunately, as much as I'd like to be able to rave about this show - an exploration of the mysteries of the universe through poetry, music and video projection, performed in the unique setting of Melbourne's Planetarium in Spotswood - it really didn't work for me, at least not as much as I'd hoped.

Musically and poetically it was great, especially Baker's, sometimes' and Whelan's work - I especially enjoyed Baker's science-meets-Buddhism take on the universe - but too many of the visual elements seemed simplistic and out of place, particularly during Baker's work. Had the performance utilised more of the star-scape projections of the planetarium proper, it would have been more effective, I think, and captured more of the coupling of art and science that the program promised. Too, I felt to much of the evening lacked the edge provided by live performance: pre-recorded, the poems sounded smooth but lacked the zest and variety that comes with live delivery.