Persuading the head of an arts festival to name the best event in the program is a bit like asking a mother to nominate her favourite child – even if she has one, she’s hardly going to admit it. But when the artistic director of the Perth International Arts Festival 2009, Shelagh Magadza, describes Nostalgia, the Japanese theatre spectacle opening in the Perth Convention Exhibition Centre on February 13, there’s an extra dollop of pride in her voice.
“Director Yukichi Matsumoto has created an avant-garde performance style called jan jan opera, with his own physical language of repetitive movements and mass chanting. He writes the story, creates all the sets and designs everything himself,” says Magadza.
Nostalgia is based on the little-known history of Japanese workers who migrated to Brazil early in the 20th century, as seen through the eyes of one family, but, Magadza adds: “It’s also a universal story for anyone who migrates.”
Given her own family history, it’s easy to see why she is so passionate about Nostalgia. Born in New Zealand to a teacher mother and a scientist father, Magadza migrated to a different country every couple of years. “I went from New Zealand to Zambia, to New Zealand, to Zimbabwe, to Sweden, to Zimbabwe, to New Zealand, to the UK, back to New Zealand, back to Zimbabwe, back to the UK, back to New Zealand, and then here to Perth” – where she is about to launch her second Perth International Arts Festival.
Perched on the westernmost edge of the continent, Perth has always had what Magadza calls a “special relationship with the Indian Ocean and Asia”. The festival’s opening night event – Laya Project Live! – will feature segments of an award-winning documentary about the Asian coastal communities recovering from the devastating 2004 tsunami. A film crew spent two years recording the folk traditions of villagers in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia, Maldives, Burma and India, and parts of the movie will be screened, accompanied by 25 traditional musicians and dancers performing in the Supreme Court Gardens.
Perth may not have a compact arts precinct like Adelaide or Melbourne, but it has the perfect climate for a summer festival – warm and dry – and Magadza has programmed plenty of outdoor events.
Kings Park will host jazz/rock fusion legends Chick Corea and John McLaughlin playing together for the first time since they were members of Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew band 40 years ago. The West Australian Ballet will perform in The Quarry – literally a reclaimed quarry, now a landscaped amphitheatre with a backdrop of native bushland. But those who prefer the scent of Christmas trees to gum trees will enjoy the Lotterywest Festival Films, screening under the towering Joondalup Pines at Edith Cowan University. Picknicking cinephiles can choose between Finnish thriller Black Ice, Russian coming-of-age tale Tulpan and French romantic comedy Shall We Kiss? among the international films on offer.
Perth’s riverside sprawl presents a challenge to festival directors trying to create a city-wide celebration of the arts, as Magadza acknowledges: “Perth doesn’t have a natural heart – it tends to look towards nature, to the beach and the river – so we create one down at The Esplanade by building Beck’s Music Box.” This temporary venue beside the majestic Swan River will host an eclectic mix of musicians, from half-French, half-Irish cabaret diva Camille O’Sullivan and South African party animals House of the Holy Afro, to New Zealand hip-hop crew Batucada Sound Machine and the surviving members of the 1980s Perth band The Triffids.
Magadza insists the festival is not just about fun and entertainment. “It’s a reminder that some artists are just better than everybody else – the equivalents of sporting champions – and they need to be respected and honoured.”
Among the champions in this year’s program are blind singer-songwriter Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, drawing big crowds in the wake of his two recent ARIA awards, and Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett performing in Sydney Theatre Company’s The War Of The Roses adaptation of Shakespeare’s eight-play history cycle.
But for the festival centrepiece, Magadza has again turned to the Indian Ocean. A Flowering Tree is a new opera based on a 2000-year-old fairytale from southern India, written by Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer John Adams, performed by the West Australian Symphony Orchestra and West Australian Opera.
Now in its 57th year, the Perth Festival is the Southern Hemisphere’s oldest international arts festival. Last year, more tickets were sold than in any previous year and Magadza has no doubt why: “We’re making sure the festival responds to a dynamic, growing city. We have a reputation for looking to the contemporary, doing things that haven’t been done here before. That can have a profound influence.”
The Perth International Arts Festival runs from February 13 to March 8. +61 8 6488 5555.
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Source: Qantas The Australian Way February 2009