tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/ozasia-31333/articlesOzAsia – The Conversation2023-11-21T02:16:55Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2181072023-11-21T02:16:55Z2023-11-21T02:16:55ZAt OzAsia 2023, Australia’s appreciation of multiculturalism and diversity is most evident in food<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/560309/original/file-20231120-27-n5ykc7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=38%2C0%2C8591%2C5744&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Xplorer Studio/Adelaide Festival Centre</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This year’s OzAsia festival took place from October 19 to November 5, at its annual festival venues on the Kaurna land of Adelaide. </p>
<p>In its early years, the Asia-focused festival, which started in 2007, often highlighted work from a different Asian country each year. </p>
<p>Under the leadership of previous artistic director <a href="https://www.artshub.com.au/news/features/exit-interview-joseph-mitchell-artistic-director-ozasia-festival-260068-2366825/">Joseph Mitchell</a>, it became an event showcasing the best contemporary art from across Asia. </p>
<p>Now in her third and final year after the cancellation of the 2020 festival and smaller-scale festivals in the past two years, artistic director Annette Shun Wah has overseen the festival in full swing with invited artists from 13 countries. </p>
<p>As I attended this year’s festival, I had a chance to reflect on how Australia’s appreciation of multiculturalism and diversity is most evident in food.</p>
<h2>Asians as others in Australian history</h2>
<p>Despite its physical location in the Asia Pacific, Asians are minorities in Australia. One in eight of us were born in Asia, and <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/classifications/australian-standard-classification-cultural-and-ethnic-groups-ascceg/latest-release">one in six</a> identify as Asian. </p>
<p>The first notable migration from Asia occurred in the mid-19th century during the gold rush, when Chinese miners came to Australia. By 1861, 3.3% of the Australian population was born in China – the highest percentage until the 1980s. </p>
<p>Working as a team, Chinese workers were more productive than Anglo and European miners, which led to conflict and <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/explore/features/harvest-of-endurance/scroll/chinese-gold-miners">anti-Chinese sentiments</a>.</p>
<p>There was little social foundation for Australians to enjoy or appreciate artistic performances from Asia in and around the 1870s when performing arts companies from Japan <a href="https://ninjin.co.uk/the-great-dragon-troupe/">came to Australia</a> with acrobatic and juggling performances. </p>
<p>This was part of an international trend around the appreciation of Japanese culture known as <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/j/japonisme">Japonisme</a>. How the Japanese performances were perceived and appreciated in Australia remains a mystery, as there was little review about these shows. </p>
<p>However, considering the monocultural nature of the colonial mindset, they probably did not contribute to Australia’s multiculturalism or diversity. Instead, they were likely seen as foreign performers delivering ethnic-based aesthetics.</p>
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<h2>Food as a vehicle to experience other cultures</h2>
<p>Although observing performances is an obvious way to experience and learn about other cultures, food has acted as the medium through which a larger number of Australians learn about others. </p>
<p>Food has been an entry point to Asia for many Australians. Many words drawn from Asian cuisine – such as masala, tom yum and wasabi – are no longer foreign in Australian English.</p>
<p>Given this history, it makes sense that a hawker-style food market – introduced alongside the 2015 festival – came to be the Lucky Dumpling Market in 2017. </p>
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<span class="caption">The Lucky Dumpling Market is a centrepiece of the OzAsia Festival.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Xplorer Studio/Adelaide Festival Centre</span></span>
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<p>The night market style stalls along the River Torrens now attract a wide range of people to enjoy Asian food, before or after for a night out, or just coming to eat.</p>
<p>At the OzAsia festival’s A Night with Poh Ling Yeow and Sarah Tiong, I listened to Ling Yeow emphasise the diversity of food in Australia. She spoke of how Australians’ love for travel was a major factor leading to Australia’s multicultural food landscape. </p>
<p>Similarly, Tiong observed how Asian chefs are respected in the Australian food industry as they can bring diversity into the kitchen. </p>
<p>The Lucky Dumpling Market was packed during the weekend with food lovers, who enjoyed a variety of dumplings beyond the Chinese styles that have become orthodox in Australia, notably Japanese gyoza and Nepali momo. </p>
<p>In this year’s festival, I also observed two solo performances related to food, Jacob Rajan’s Paradise or the Impermanence of Ice Cream, and Yumi Umiumare’s Buried TeaBowl — OKUNI.</p>
<h2>Ice cream and tea in solo performances</h2>
<p>Rajan’s Paradise or the Impermanence of Ice Cream is a poetic and metaphysical reflection on the border between life and death. Rajan features as all seven characters, including an ice cream parlour server and chai seller. </p>
<p>The New Zealand actor’s capacity to show us diverse characters is exceptional and inventive. Jumping from Indian to Antipodean accents and back, he is a talented actor able to connect to Asia and Australasia. </p>
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<span class="caption">Rajan shows us human sentiments are not limited by cultural boundaries.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Adelaide Festival Centre</span></span>
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<p>With illustrations of life, migration and death, the world he conjures is recognisable to many Asian-Australians. Humour – including joking about Harvey Norman, possibly inserted for the Australian audience – is warmly received by the South Australian audience. </p>
<p>Set in India, Rajan shows us human sentiments are not limited by cultural boundaries. </p>
<p>In Buried TeaBowl — OKUNI, Yumi Umiumare, a Melbourne-based artist born and trained in Japan, combines a traditional tea making ceremony and contemporary dance, around a framework referencing the origins of Japan’s noh theatre. </p>
<p>The show highlights Umiumare’s complex relationship with her heritage and culture. She shows the audience how peace can be found through a cup of tea, and how this precious moment can be destroyed by drinking premixed tea from a plastic bottle. </p>
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<span class="caption">Yumi Umiumare combines a traditional tea making ceremony and contemporary dance.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Vikk Shayen/Adelaide Festival Centre</span></span>
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<p>Unlike Rajan, who performs in English, Umiumare uses her native language without subtitles from time to time. The majority of the show is performed in English, but the unsubtitled Japanese reflects a complex journey of herself as a performer and a migrant. </p>
<p>Without understanding every single word, the audience can still appreciate her overall performance, a mixture of traditional sentiments and contemporary dynamic expressions.</p>
<p>Understanding artistic performances requires more skills and knowledge than appreciating tasty food. Down by the river, many locals are enjoying Asian food – but do as many enjoy Asian art? There is a task ahead of us to extend appreciation of Asian culture beyond food and beyond the festival period. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-arent-there-more-asian-faces-on-australian-screens-6117">Why aren't there more Asian faces on Australian screens?</a>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tets Kimura does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Although performances is an obvious way to experience other cultures, food has acted as the medium through which a larger number of Australians learn about Asia.Tets Kimura, Adjunct Lecturer, Creative Arts, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1263532019-11-12T02:31:23Z2019-11-12T02:31:23ZKitchen aromas and angels with water guns: Japanese visual storytelling comes alive at OzAsia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301030/original/file-20191111-194624-o1nm1y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C0%2C3673%2C2456&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Totes Adorbs ❤ Hurricane is 'a euphoric spectacle amid pop-culture icons and idols'.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">OzAsia</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: The Dark Master and Totes Adorbs ♥ Hurricane, OzAsia Festival, Adelaide, 22 October - 8 November</em></p>
<p>In theatre, the <a href="https://www.thestage.co.uk/opinion/2016/mark-shenton-we-must-not-overlook-the-importance-of-the-play-text/#_=_">play text tends to drive the storytelling</a>. The interpretation of this text, known as dramaturgy, determines the artists’ approaches to dialogue, characterisation, movement, set design, and other production elements. Dramaturgy’s purpose is to help the audience imagine a world on stage, and to understand how this world works.</p>
<p>In some performances, however, the visual production elements – not the text – take the lead in creating the world on stage. This visual dramaturgy enables artists to present alternative narratives by stimulating the spectators’ emotional and physical engagement and by creating immersive experiences.</p>
<p>Visual dramaturgy has been part of Japanese performance culture for centuries. Its reliance on spectacle is responsible for the popularity of kabuki dance-drama, which many believe <a href="https://castle.eiu.edu/studiesonasia/documents/seriesIII/Vol%204%20No%201/s3v4n1_OBrien.pdf">gave rise to fan culture</a> in Japan. The close spectator-performer relationships in kabuki became possible through innovations in theatre architecture, especially the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/hanamichi"><em>hanamichi</em></a>, a rampway extending into the auditorium.</p>
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<span class="caption">In this 1800s print, we see kabuki performers and the hanamichi on the left.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia commons</span></span>
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<p>More recently, we can see the importance of visual storytelling in Japanese culture in manga, where emotional intensity and supernatural encounters are presented as something quite palpable. While western comics and graphic novels tend to favour dialogue-driven action, in manga, visual representations of characters and their emotional and physical states take centre stage.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-deep-influence-of-the-a-bomb-on-anime-and-manga-45275">The deep influence of the A-bomb on anime and manga</a>
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<p>Visual dramaturgy remains central for contemporary artists in Japan, as was thrillingly demonstrated through two key works at this year’s OzAsia festival</p>
<h2>The Dark Master</h2>
<p>The Dark Master is Kuro Tanino’s stage adaptation of a <a href="http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/product/NEOBK-2219808">manga of the same title</a>. Presented by theatre group <a href="http://niwagekidan.org/english">Niwa Gekidan Penino</a>, it is set in Osaka at a small traditional eatery catering mostly to locals, who come to enjoy a delicious meal, read a newspaper or watch a baseball game over a beer. </p>
<p>The chef/owner (Susumu Ogata) is getting on in years. Though his desire to cook remains strong, his body is beginning to give up on him. At least, this is what he tells the 28-year-old Tokyo backpacker (Koichiro F.O. Pereira) who stumbles in one evening, hungry and in search of adventure.</p>
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<span class="caption">The Dark Master is a hyperreal, immersive experience.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Takashi Horikawa/OzAsia</span></span>
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<p>The chef seizes the opportunity to recruit his replacement. So does the eatery: the front door locks by itself, thwarting the young man’s attempts to leave. The backpacker becomes the eatery’s new owner. The chef withdraws to the second floor, never to be seen again. However, for the next 33 days, he will give his apprentice cooking lessons via a minute earpiece planted in his ear. The arrangement is exhilarating and unnerving.</p>
<p>The audiences’ sensory engagement deepens when appetising smells (the cooking on stage is real) mingle with live, multi-angle video projections showing the young man’s training. Through our own earpieces, we listen in on the chef’s covert cooking instructions, responding with gasps and laughter to comic blunder and culinary spectacle. Surtitles on separate screens provide translation. </p>
<p>Visual dramaturgy produces a hyperreal, immersive experience akin to becoming one with the young chef.</p>
<h2>Totes Adorbs ♥ Hurricane</h2>
<p>Delight in experiencing Totes Adorbs ♥ Hurricane, the latest work from <a href="https://www.performingarts.jp/E/art_interview/1504/1.html">Toko Nikaido</a>’s Miss Revolutionary Idol Berserker, comes partly from sheer astonishment: did that angel just shoot me with a water rifle? Are they flinging around tofu and … seaweed?!</p>
<p>The performers’ frenzied dance numbers give a tantalising nod to <a href="https://www.historyextra.com/period/viking/the-truth-about-viking-berserkers/">berserker warriors</a> in Scandinavian mythology who would shape-shift to non-human form in the frenzy of battle. </p>
<p>We are all transformed into pop-culture berserkers.</p>
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<span class="caption">Totes Adorbs ♥ Hurricane is a ‘deliberate overload of colour, lights, and glitter.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">OzAsia</span></span>
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<p>Performers and spectators alike are whirled into a shrine to partake in a euphoric spectacle amid pop-culture icons and idols: skeleton spectres in the woodblock prints of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utagawa_Kuniyoshi#/media/File:Takiyasha_the_Witch_and_the_Skeleton_Spectre.jpg">Kuniyoshi Utagawa</a> appear side by side with anime, video-game characters, and animoji. Digital projections flicker past continuously in a deliberate overload of colour, lights, and glitter.</p>
<p>What appears on the surface as unruly indulgence conceals the careful choreography of dance sequences, songs, and the swift on-stage transformations – <a href="https://www.kabuki21.com/glossaire_3.php"><em>hengemono</em></a> – associated with the best of visual dramaturgy in kabuki. Performers character-shift before our eyes, flinging discarded costumes into the audience. Also carefully choreographed is this audience: we are ingeniously drawn into the spectacle, transforming into the actors of our dreams.</p>
<h2>Meaning where logic fails</h2>
<p>The Dark Master and Totes Adorbs ♥ Hurricane reflect two disparate arms of contemporary Japanese performance: one of hyperreal theatre, and one of underground idol performance. Yet they both showcase the immense creative potential of visuals to create meaning on stage. </p>
<p>When visual dramaturgy leads, the spectators’ sensory and physical engagement cuts through performance conventions and helps us discover meaning in those in-between states and spaces, where experiences ring true even when language and logic fail.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126353/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maggie Ivanova does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A reliance on visual elements to create the world of performance in Japan traces back hundreds of years through kabuki dance-drama. Two new shows keep that tradition alive.Maggie Ivanova, Senior Lecturer, Drama, Creative and Performing Arts, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1264352019-11-12T01:41:27Z2019-11-12T01:41:27ZDesert, volcano, the fall of civilisation: this year’s OzAsia festival fused worlds in dance<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300786/original/file-20191107-10961-igz2tb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C50%2C6669%2C4416&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">British-Bangladeshi choreographer Akram Khan draws in the dance training of his cast to create a whole new genre of performance.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jean Louis Fernandez/OzAsia Festival</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: What the Day Owes to the Night, Vessel, and Outwitting the Devil, OzAsia Festival, Adelaide, 22 October - 8 November</em></p>
<p>The most exciting work at OzAsia cuts across genres, styles, and cultures to create something distinctive and new: a work of art that could not exist without equality in the exchange between Western and Asian cultures. Under artistic director Joseph Mitchell, this brief has extended to engagement with the Middle East.</p>
<p>Perhaps because dance exists without language it has long been the place where Asia and the West have met most successfully. But funding and time are required to make such deep engagement between cultures possible. No surprise, then, Europe has become the centre for the generation of such work and three of the most outstanding works in this year’s festival were by European-based choreographers. </p>
<p>Two are of South Asian or Middle Eastern heritage while the third has a long history of deep engagement with Asia. </p>
<h2>What the Day Owes to the Night</h2>
<p>French choreographer Hervé Koubi grew up without full knowledge of his Algerian roots. His thrilling What the Day Owes to the Night <a href="https://afphila.com/interview-herve-koubi">reflects his coming to terms with that knowledge</a>. </p>
<p>Working with non-professional dancers, hip-hop and breakdancing from the streets of North Africa link up with Afro-Brazilian capoeira, wrapped in the spectacle of Sufi-style, whirling dervish dance. </p>
<p>The superbly fit and athletic all-male cast are shirtless. Skirts billow out when they twirl: patterns of extraordinary beauty and complexity. Perpetual motion, they twirl for impossible periods of time upside down on their heads. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300787/original/file-20191107-10940-xjh2ub.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300787/original/file-20191107-10940-xjh2ub.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300787/original/file-20191107-10940-xjh2ub.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300787/original/file-20191107-10940-xjh2ub.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300787/original/file-20191107-10940-xjh2ub.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300787/original/file-20191107-10940-xjh2ub.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300787/original/file-20191107-10940-xjh2ub.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The dancers in What the Day Owes to the Night are ‘perpetual motion machines.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo Karim/OzAsia Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The work is explosive and powerful. Bodies are thrown into the air and across the stage. The dancers are superbly masculine, but also graceful and generous with one another. It was a work that overwhelmed the senses in its technical genius, exuberance, and joy.</p>
<h2>Vessel</h2>
<p>Belgian choreographer Damien Jalet’s Vessel extends from a collaboration with <a href="https://www.maia-arts.org/en/vessel/">Japanese sculptor Kohei Nawa</a>, exploring the ways dance and sculpture can come together.</p>
<p>The stage is a shallow pool of water surrounding a thin sculptural object, stark in its whiteness, resembling the top of a volcano. Dancers appear as non-human: heads tucked in front or behind, completely out of view. These headless forms attach to one another, fuse, and are expelled by some mysterious organic force. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300225/original/file-20191105-88387-qaoyt9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300225/original/file-20191105-88387-qaoyt9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300225/original/file-20191105-88387-qaoyt9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300225/original/file-20191105-88387-qaoyt9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300225/original/file-20191105-88387-qaoyt9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300225/original/file-20191105-88387-qaoyt9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300225/original/file-20191105-88387-qaoyt9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Vessel explores the way dance and sculpture can come together.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Yoshikazu Inoue/OzAsia Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is a hypnotic evocation of the power of Japan’s volcanic islands, reflecting Jalet’s <a href="https://www.anothermag.com/fashion-beauty/11135/damien-jalet-on-the-japanese-ritual-which-connects-man-to-nature">long-standing personal connection</a> with Japanese aesthetics, myth and religion. </p>
<p>Japanese cultural and religious systems reflect the natural world. In Vessel, organisms are perilously fragile. They are birthed, mutated, and expelled over moments in a larger cosmic time. We are in a state of altered consciousness. Anything is possible.</p>
<h2>Outwitting the Devil</h2>
<p>Akram Khan, born in the UK of Bangladeshi parents, has a long history of work that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/may/22/akram-khan-the-master-mover-who-redefined-dance-xenos-sadlers-wells">extends the choreographic language</a> of traditional dance forms. Building on the North Indian classical dance form of kathak, communicating stories <a href="https://www.culturalindia.net/indian-dance/classical/kathak.html">through gesture and movement</a>, he has generated a new kind of contemporary dance.</p>
<p>Outwitting the Devil draws on the <a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-the-epic-of-gilgamesh-73444">Epic of Gilgamesh</a> to offer a parable for our times. A tale of violence where a powerful, proud man unleashes terrible forces by taking on the natural world. Ultimately, all is lost. Nothing remains of civilisation except smouldering ruins.</p>
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<p>
<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-the-epic-of-gilgamesh-73444">Guide to the classics: the Epic of Gilgamesh</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<p>Khan offers a model for how dance can fuse cultures and movement vocabularies to create something new that defies categorisation. </p>
<p>Mythili Prakash uses the <a href="https://www.culturalindia.net/indian-dance/classical/bharatnatyam.html">angular vocabulary of Bharata Natyam</a>, descended from Hindu temple dancing; Jasper Narvaez’s fluid movement and effortless leaps reflect his training at the Ballet Philippines Dance School; Sam Asa Pratt’s commanding physical presence extends from his background in hip-hop; James Vu Anh Pham’s movement, seemingly outside the range of human possibility, draws from many years of working with contemporary dance company Chunky Move.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300788/original/file-20191107-10901-3yhmhq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300788/original/file-20191107-10901-3yhmhq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300788/original/file-20191107-10901-3yhmhq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300788/original/file-20191107-10901-3yhmhq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300788/original/file-20191107-10901-3yhmhq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300788/original/file-20191107-10901-3yhmhq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300788/original/file-20191107-10901-3yhmhq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Akram Khan fuses dance styles and cultures, including Bharata Natyam, descended from Hindu temple dancing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jean Louis Fernandez/OzAsia Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is intercultural work in which the dance cultures embedded in the bodies of performers is essential to the telling of the story.</p>
<h2>Visceral performance</h2>
<p>These works are intensely visceral. What the Day Owes to the Night produced a whirling, vibrating energy that remained in the body after the show. Jalet’s Vessel unfolded like an organism over geological time and Khan’s work ended with epic destruction and nearly unbearable sadness and heartbreak: both felt like they had permanently rearranged my DNA. </p>
<p>All show how works by master choreographers living outside of the Asia-Pacific region can successfully fuse Asian and Middle Eastern aesthetics and sensibilities and generate new stories and ways of moving. Koubi’s work a desert ritual, Jalet’s the forces of nature, and Khan’s the fall of civilisation. </p>
<p>When these elements are harnessed by thought, care, openness and generosity of spirit, and when the time needed to create such work is funded, what dance can do for the human spirit and soul is revealed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126435/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Peterson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The most exciting work at OzAsia cuts across genres, styles, and cultures to create something distinctive and new. This year, three new dance works did just that.William Peterson, Associate Professor, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1067692018-11-12T04:09:39Z2018-11-12T04:09:39ZWorlds and theatre collide in Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244980/original/file-20181112-36763-vcdy2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land was created over 30 years ago, but has only now received its Australian premiere. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">OzAsia Festival</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land, OzAsia Festival.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>I have often heard OzAsia Festival Artistic Director Joseph Mitchell suggest that he looks forward to the day when contemporary work from Asia is so woven into the country’s performing arts landscape that a specialised festival such as this one will be unnecessary.</p>
<p>The fact that Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land has finally received its Australian premiere – over 30 years after it was first staged – suggests that this day has not yet come. The play is directed by Stan Lai, one of Asia’s most esteemed theatre directors, and created by him and Taipei’s Performance Workshop.</p>
<p>The backdrop informing the play’s creation was the historical moment when travel restrictions were lifted and Taiwanese citizens, many of them having fled China in the 1940s and 1950s, could return to China for the first time. As Lai observed in a post-show Q-and-A, many of his parents’ generation went through life unable to be with the people they loved – those they left behind.</p>
<p>This play is in fact two plays woven together, one being a tragic love story. This is the “Secret Love” of the title, dramatized onstage with great emotional clarity and depth by Fan Kuang-yao and Chu Jr-ying. They play the two lovers, Jiang Bin Liu and Yun Zhi Fan respectively, who fall in love in Shanghai during the Japanese occupation and separate just after the second world war.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244981/original/file-20181112-116838-1acg08b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244981/original/file-20181112-116838-1acg08b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244981/original/file-20181112-116838-1acg08b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244981/original/file-20181112-116838-1acg08b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244981/original/file-20181112-116838-1acg08b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244981/original/file-20181112-116838-1acg08b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244981/original/file-20181112-116838-1acg08b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244981/original/file-20181112-116838-1acg08b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The backdrop to the play is the lifting of travel restrictions between Taiwan and China.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">OzAsia Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Later in the play, with the ailing Jiang on his deathbed in the Taipei hospital, we learn that he has placed an ad in the local newspaper seeking Yun, the pigtailed girl he left behind, on the chance that she, like himself and so many of their generation, ended up in Taiwan. While such a melodramatic plot, to say nothing of the passage of time might seem to make the play irrelevant, it oddly continues to resonate.</p>
<p>Lai estimates that the play has received over 5,000 productions in China, the majority on university campuses. This speaks to its continued relevance to young Chinese people on the other side of the Formosa Strait. And it is when “Secret Love” intersects with the second play, “Peach Blossom Land,” that we begin to understand why this play has endured in the repertory.</p>
<p>To Chinese people, observes Lai, “Peach Blossom Land” is Shangri-La, the mythical land of eternal bliss and peace, described in a well-known fifth century Chinese poem that has been variously adapted. Thus, the play’s title combines two stories that don’t belong together — clearly, there is no room for a secret love in a perfect world!</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244982/original/file-20181112-34102-1ej9fnw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244982/original/file-20181112-34102-1ej9fnw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244982/original/file-20181112-34102-1ej9fnw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244982/original/file-20181112-34102-1ej9fnw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244982/original/file-20181112-34102-1ej9fnw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244982/original/file-20181112-34102-1ej9fnw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244982/original/file-20181112-34102-1ej9fnw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244982/original/file-20181112-34102-1ej9fnw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">OzAsia Festival</span></span>
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<p>But cleverly, the collision between the two plays is not just in differences of tone, content, and style. It also extends from the “real” onstage conflict between actors and the production teams of the two plays as they find themselves booked to rehearse at the same time on the same stage. </p>
<p>In addition, the intrusion of the “Peach Blossom” company into the world of the “Secret Love” company also creates an opening for a contemporary clash between two distinct theatre cultures.</p>
<p>The “Peach Blossom” players burst onto the stage early in the play, interrupting the serious, heartfelt drama of Jiang and Yun saying their goodbyes in a devastated, post-war Shanghai. Unlike the high-brow dramatic company, led by a difficult director who is clearly too personally invested in the play’s content, the actors in “Peach Blossom Land” are pop-culture denizens, casual, daggy in appearance. Their acting style is broad, farcical, and underpinned by physical and situational humour.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244983/original/file-20181112-37973-1iwcrx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244983/original/file-20181112-37973-1iwcrx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244983/original/file-20181112-37973-1iwcrx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244983/original/file-20181112-37973-1iwcrx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244983/original/file-20181112-37973-1iwcrx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244983/original/file-20181112-37973-1iwcrx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244983/original/file-20181112-37973-1iwcrx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244983/original/file-20181112-37973-1iwcrx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">OzAsia Festival</span></span>
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<p>As the two plays alternate and the companies increasingly intrude into one another’s dramatic spaces, they begin to overlap emotionally as well. Ultimately, we see that the mythical Peach Blossom Land is not so much a happy place as a boring one, and that the price of happiness for those living in it is not knowing anything of the past. </p>
<p>The delightful antics of Tang Tsung-sheng, who plays the humble fisherman Lao Tao, guide us to this world and back again, while the conventions of this style of theatre, with its silly two-dimensional scenery and bits of comic business are sent up even as we see actors mastering the form.</p>
<p>Improbably, after shedding a tear when Jiang is reunited with Yun on his deathbed and the two plays and two casts collide across “real” and dramatic time one final time, we experience what Lai suggests is “the human experience of laughing and crying,” the feeling the company had, when initially creating this work, that “it should be different sides of the same coin.” </p>
<p>That Shangri-La is only possible without memory suggests that memory, even a traumatic one, is what makes us human.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land was staged as part of the OzAsia Fesival.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/106769/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Peterson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>This play is in fact two plays woven together, one being a tragic love story, the other a farce set in a mythical land.William Peterson, Senior Lecturer in Drama, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1063372018-11-05T04:52:30Z2018-11-05T04:52:30ZSutra brings a state of grace to the stage<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243831/original/file-20181105-83657-1m30r34.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The performers in Sutra, which saw its Australian premiere at the OzAsia Festival. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">OzAsia Festival</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Sutra, OzAsia Festival.</em></p>
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<p>Sixteen boxes, open on one side and lined up on stage, start flipping toward the audience – the heart-stopping, thunderous crashing of giant wooden boxes larger than a coffin. A dancer pulls a Shaolin monk from one of the boxes with a long pole, the delicate tension and release between them animating the monk. Suddenly, robe-clad monks fling themselves out from a sea of prone boxes, two at a time.</p>
<p>Children in the audience squeal with delight. We are witnessing magic.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.ozasiafestival.com.au/events/sutra/">Sutra</a>, presented in its Australian premiere as part of Adelaide’s OzAsia Festival, more than merits the critical acclaim heaped upon it. Touring in its tenth year, this spectacular work features 19 Shaolin monks flying, leaping and moving gracefully and purposefully across the stage along with giant boxes that become dramatic characters in the action.</p>
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<p>Belgian choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s fusion of the choreographic universe of contemporary dance with the kung fu techniques of the famed Shaolin monks is both masterful and unexpected. The 19 monks in Sutra are extraordinary acrobats, and we take great delight as they fly, spin, kick, leap, and somersault across the stage.</p>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">OzAsia Festival</span></span>
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<p>Many have seen the iconic, famous moves of these monks from China’s famed Shaolin Temple in action films. But here we see those moves — the rapid, virtuouso work with sticks, the fight between two monks with poles topped with shimmering blades, the high kicks and near misses of flying bodies in combat — in a new way.</p>
<p>The boxes are equally the stars of the show. Shifted about by the monks from inside and behind, the boxes walk, crawl, slide, fall, moving much like humans. They are repositioned in an endless number of variations, at times with the complexity of a gigantic Rubik’s Cube. Occasionally they border on the terrifying, as, for instance when they fall forward like dominoes, fanning out in two diagonal lines to the very lip of the stage.</p>
<p>Cherkaoui, with his fluid gestures and Gumby-like body, offers up a series of gentle, quirky choreographic intrusions into the sometimes frantic world of moving boxes and flying monks. Paired with him in a number of ingenious and occasionally lighthearted interventions was a boy monk, who possessed a cheekiness that clearly charmed the audience. While the boy skillfully imitated the movements of the older monks, he also played the part of a boy with his attention-seeking antics and sense of wonder. Indeed, Cherkaoui and the boy grounded what could have been a serious, technical performance in a world of play.</p>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">OzAsia Festival</span></span>
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<p>Symon Brzóska’s music, which accompanies much of the onstage action, also offers a different way of seeing. His spare and understated score, played by offstage musicians, at times supports a tension line between dancers with the single vibrating string of a violin or a cello. At other moments, the strings give way to a piano melody that ambles like Erik Satie’s so-called “furniture music,” in turn directing the action, responding delicately to movement.</p>
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<p>In one such moment Cherkaoui and the boy dance together in the box, clinging to the sides, repositioning themselves in an impossibly small space, the boy coming to rest hanging down from the top of the box, bat-like, as Cherokaoui assumes a mediation position below.</p>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">OzAsia Festival</span></span>
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<p>Sutra is work of movement, sound, and light, not colour, and both the walls of Antony Gormley’s set and the functional costumes are in shades of grey, the only contrast being the golden hue of the wooden boxes. Directing our attention is his masterful lighting. This was a work with hundreds of moments when tight illumination is required not just on the stage, but well above it. At one such moment we see the interior of sixteen boxes, each in stacks of four, lined up like coffins along the back of the stage. And in each box is a prone monk, clearly and seemingly miraculously illuminated.</p>
<p>In Buddhism, the religious tradition that anchors the spiritual and kinesthetic practices of the Shaolin Monks, sutras are generally short, sacred texts that focus on a particular teaching. They are the collective threads of sacred knowledge.</p>
<p>Thus, this work can be seen as a choreographed sequence of threads, a segmented but seamlessly unified work in which every gesture is completed. We are taken in not just by the skills of these monks, but ultimately also their gracefulness. One does not have to be a Buddhist to feel that this collection of choreographed sutras collectively brought us into something that felt like a state of grace.</p>
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<p><em><a href="https://www.ozasiafestival.com.au/events/sutra/">Sutra</a> was staged as part of the OzAsia Festival, Adelaide.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/106337/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Peterson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s fusion of the choreographic universe of contemporary dance with the kung fu techniques of the famed Shaolin monks is both masterful and unexpectedWilliam Peterson, Senior Lecturer in Drama, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1058392018-10-29T04:07:24Z2018-10-29T04:07:24ZDancing Grandmothers offers a moment of communion<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242654/original/file-20181029-7074-ne7awy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'The biggest disco on the planet since 1979': Dancing Grandmothers take the stage in Adelaide. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Josang Young Mo Choe</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Dancing Grandmothers, Adelaide</em></p>
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<p>“Age and grow fat; dance and grow fat.” This phrase, which appears on a screen midway through Dancing Grandmothers, suggests that we can have our cake and eat it too, that whatever is inevitable, dancing will always bring us great joy. If we come out of the womb dancing, as I’ve always liked to imagine, then we must grow old dancing.</p>
<p>Korean choreographer Eun-Me Ahn’s Dancing Grandmothers, an Australian premiere which provided a thrilling opening to Adelaide’s 12th OzAsia Festival, shows us how. Ahn has travelled up and down her native land, videotaping older women dancing. In a video sequence embedded in the show we see grannies dancing everywhere, in the most improbable of spaces and while engaging in activities seemingly unsuitable for dance. They dance in parks, fish farms, forests, fields, food stalls, and in impossibly small shops.</p>
<p>But where the grannies truly amaze and delight us is when they appear onstage, following an opening sequence featuring Ahn herself and an energetic troupe of highly-accomplished younger dancers. While the younger dancers thrill us with their energetic twists, twirls, and leaps across the stage in an infinite variety of colourful clothing, it is the amateur troupe of 11 senior women, the eldest being 83, who are the stars of the show.</p>
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<span class="caption">The amateur troupe of 11 senior women are the stars of the show.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Eunji Park</span></span>
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<p>When the grannies appear they are carefully and delicately danced onto the stage, each paired with a younger dancer. The women are then seated on the floor, facing upstage, clapping to a soul number as two shirtless young men fly across the stage in moves as gymnastic as they are dancerly.</p>
<p>The women are soon up on their feet, with three dancing energetically to a Korean pop song with a 1970s vibe. Their moves are somehow distinctively Korean, perhaps because traditional Korean folk dances involve extensive, graceful use of the arms, a focal point enhanced by costumes with long sleeves that are flicked up and extend the space and expressive range of the body.</p>
<p>But here the women dance in clothes worn by women over 60 on the Seoul subway or while going shopping. These grannies are not afraid of colour or busy floral patterns, polka dots, or bold stripes. And whether wearing blouses and dresses or jackets and pants, the stage is always awash with brightly coloured clothing that demands attention.</p>
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<span class="caption">The grandmothers are complemented by younger dancers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Josang Young Mo Choe</span></span>
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<p>Among the standout sequences were the following:</p>
<p>An elegant silver-haired woman in a bright, knit full-length kaftan-style dress, moving slowly with grace and poise to a ballad filled with longing, her expressive arm gestures swirling outward and over her head, dancing in a world of slowly falling snow.</p>
<p>Then dancing to a tango beat, another elegant woman, this one with the ubiquitous highly-permed hair-do of Korean women over 60, in a frilled white blouse and pink dress, is joined by a sexy, dapper young man in a top hat. The couple mirrors one another’s moves and in a moment of infinite connection, the young man picks up the grannie in his arms, dances, then sets her down. She seems embarrassed. Or seems to be so, which only adds to the charm of the moment.</p>
<p>Another solo, this time with another silver-haired woman, resplendent in a deep blue dress, moving with impeccable grace and fluidity while the screen behind her shows images of fish and sea creatures seemingly mirroring her movements in the water. Here the live and the virtual become one in an oddly karaoke-inflected musical and visual world. If karaoke could dance, at this moment it does so.</p>
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<span class="caption">Young and old dance together.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Josang Young Mo Choe</span></span>
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<p>The final group dance has the grannies enter the stage holding beach-ball sized glitter balls. As smaller versions of these balls fall from above the stage, theirs are linked to hooks and raised aloft, creating a shared space between audience and stage that felt like the biggest disco on the planet since 1979. A bouncy pop song animates the group and disco inferno ensures. Suddenly, the music stops and the lights dim and we hear only the sound of bodies breathing while dancing as we all collectively sink into darkness.</p>
<p>It is a thrilling communal moment to be sure.</p>
<p>But not to end there, those of us sitting on or near the ends of aisles are compelled to join the full company of dancers onstage. I find myself dancing with one of the most graceful of the women and unconsciously I pick up her moves, feeling like we’re sharing some part of our bodies and our souls. Whether we actually dance onstage or not, surely an impossible moment of communion is the gift of the dancing grannies.</p>
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<p><em>Dancing Grandmothers was staged as part of the OzAsia Festival, Adelaide.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105839/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Peterson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Korean choreographer Eun-Me Ah tnravelled up and down her native land, videotaping older women dancing.William Peterson, Senior Lecturer in Drama, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/853922017-10-10T01:03:01Z2017-10-10T01:03:01ZClassical Indian dance meets contemporary in Rising<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189332/original/file-20171009-6956-8n94zc.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Aakash Odredra in Rising</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chris Nash</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>British dancer Aakash Odedra’s debut solo evening of work, collectively presented under the title Rising, was a fitting and provocative bookend to this year’s OzAsia Festival. It harked back to the festival’s thrilling opening production of Until the Lions by the Akram Khan Company.</p>
<p>Like Khan, Odedra is of South Asian heritage — though Indian rather than Bangladeshi — and relies on training in the classical dance form of Kathak and the neoclassical form of Bharatanatyam to underpin the movement of his contemporary work. But, unlike Khan, Aakash as a solo artist possesses a uniquely graceful elegance, in marked contrast with the powerful movements of the stockier and generally quite grounded Khan.</p>
<p>Odedra is capable of shifting from rapid-fire footwork so fast he appears to be levitating, to a series of whirling dervish-type spirals that propel him across the stage, to gorgeous, fluid articulations of his arms and hands, then moving into steps so elegant one might imagine he is conjuring the spirit of Fred Astaire, gliding, not just dancing across the floor. Dressed in loose-fitting white clothing derived from the traditional dhoti with trousers, his moves are confident, precise, fluid and frequently unexpected.</p>
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<p>The program consisted of four works by different choreographers. The first was the dancer’s own piece, Nritta, clearly derived from the Kathak dance form. </p>
<p>As the only work that followed the 16-beat time cycle found in classical Indian music, it served as a fitting point of entry to the evening. It moved from the austerely devotional to spectacular, virtuosic displays of flight across the stage. Odedra’s eloquent hand and arm gestures, as rapid as liquid, were held only when dramatic necessity seemed to call for it, offering us a kind of uniquely deconstructed Kathak style.</p>
<p>The second dance, In the Shadow of Man, choreographed by <a href="http://www.akramkhancompany.net/">Akram Khan</a>, had much of the power and drama associated with his work. Odedra’s unique capacities were remarkably and superbly utilised. </p>
<p>In Michael Hulls’ brilliant chiaroscuro lighting, Odedra materialised before us, not in human form, but as a kind of disembodied torso, initially with what appeared to be tiny hands crawling across his back. His slender form and extraordinarily expressive shoulder blades drew out movements that seem to be those of a new, non-human species, placing the audience in a nearly hallucinatory state.</p>
<p>In both this work as well as the following piece, Cut, choreographed by <a href="http://www.russellmaliphant.com/">Russell Maliphant</a>, Odedra’s sensuous arm extensions and expressive hands were key choreographic elements. </p>
<p>Hulls’ superb lighting in Cut enabled Odedra to dance with his hands only at times. Laser-focused white light illuminated his hands, creating the illusion that they were glowing. A kind of visible, dark force field of shadows extended from them to the floor below, creating a kind of uncanniness.</p>
<p>In terms of sheer ingenuity, the final work, Constellation, choreographed by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and lit by Willy Cessa, was an absolute standout. It brought the evening to an appropriate, gentle close. </p>
<p>Odedra performed with a series of light globes hanging down from above the stage, activating them as he went. The lights moved sideways in darkness, then up and down. At times they appeared to make a pattern, though one wondered if the pattern was being created by the mind’s eye.</p>
<p>As the work drew to a final coda Odedra carried a single globe, lit brighter than the others and causing them to be extinguished. The spare, emotional music by Olga Wojciechowska briefly stopped and, while focused on Odedra’s eloquent moving arms and hands, we were plunged into stillness and silence, with the sound of our collective breathing connecting us to one another.</p>
<p>The work ended as Odedra dissolved into a sea of blinking lights, resetting our emotional clocks and bringing us back to the source of something deeper than ourselves.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Rising was staged as part of the OzAsia Festival.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85392/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Peterson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>British dancer Aakash Odedra performed four solo works, drawing on classical Indian dance, in a fitting close to the OzAsia festival.William Peterson, Senior Lecturer in Drama, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/853262017-10-06T04:32:59Z2017-10-06T04:32:59ZAncestry, storytelling, and fighting racism with rap<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189106/original/file-20171006-25779-luz4x9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Joelistics (left) and James Mangohig in In Between Two. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">WilliamYang</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“We are our ancestors’ unfinished sentences, we are their wildest dreams and their most elaborate re-mixes,” says Asian-Australian rapper Joelistics’ (Joel Ma) at the end of a breathtaking 70 minutes of beats, raps, and storytelling in <a href="http://www.ozasiafestival.com.au/events/in-between-two/">In Between Two</a>. It is a verbal tribute to his ancestors that opens up a kind of cosmic dance for all of us, for elders past and present, and for those of us born here, who came here, and those whose identity is complex and multiple.</p>
<p>In Between Two brings together wordsmith-performers Joelistics and James Mangohig, both Australians with Asian-born fathers. When the two men met some years ago in Darwin, they forged an immediate bond built on their shared devotion to hip-hop, Regurgitator (a Brisbane band with an Asian-Australian rocker on lead vocals), and the fact that both had white mothers who married Asian men.</p>
<p>Ma grew up in Sydney when racist rhetoric and bullying spiked following Pauline Hanson’s famous warning that, “We are in danger of being swamped by Asians”. He recalls of the time that “suddenly, where you came from was important”. He raps back to Hanson, serving up doses of the ugly rhetoric of that time such as the observation that “mixed race” kids such as himself had eyes that formed a “slight incline, as in not a full slope”. At one point Ma observes wittily, “That cultural cringe, I own the shit out of it.”</p>
<p>Fundamentally, this is an evening of Australian family stories, ones that cross continents, countries, and cultures. Each man presents distillations of parents, grandparents, and siblings, as the other performer underscores the tale with beats and notes on the guitar, bass, beat machine, and keyboards.</p>
<p>Produced by <a href="http://www.caap.org.au/">Contemporary Asian Australian Performance</a>, In Between Two is a continuation of a series of Asian-American storytelling using a form developed by photographer and master storyteller William Yang. Earlier this year this resulted in <a href="https://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/2017/AF17-Festival-Hospitality-The-Backstories.pdf">Backstories</a> at the Adelaide International Festival. Dramaturged by Yang and Annette Shun Wah, and sensitively directed by Suzanne Chaundy, the new iteration, like the earlier ones, involves the careful curation of family photos shown on large screens at the back of the stage as the performer speaks directly to the audience.</p>
<p>The pairing of Ma and Mangohig is particularly well-suited, as both have extraordinarily different tales to tell. That both are charismatic, even charming, as entertainers and human beings, adds a further dimension and sense of ease for the audience. The two men are, quite simply, very much at home on stage.</p>
<p>Ma’s family story is the stuff of novels. His grandmother Edith, an Australian-born Chinese beauty, was matched with a handsome young man from Hong Kong who, in 1933, selected her to be his bride from a series of photos. The couple settled in Sydney and eventually ran Chequers, one of the world’s great nightclubs during its heyday in the 1960s. His parents, “hippies” who travelled the world together, broke up by the time he was two years old.</p>
<p>Mangohig, by contrast, grew up in a church-centred evangelical environment with a preacher father who hailed from a small town in the south of the Philippines. His mother, the daughter of conservative Dutch migrants, overcame parental objections to the marriage, and the couple settled in Darwin, where Mangohig’s musical interests were developed in church. Frequent family trips to the Philippines made him at home in both cultures.</p>
<p>Both men experienced crises in young adulthood, finding redemption through music. For Mangohig, this meant leaving Darwin, a short, unsuitable marriage, and accepting the condemnation from his church that he was “no longer using his talent for God”. Ma, who spent his teen years “living up to the negative” expectations of others, came to see that it wasn’t simply that he “wasn’t Australian enough [or] Chinese enough,” but that he was often simply “too stoned.”</p>
<p>“The art of sampling,” Ma recalls, meant “finding those little nuggets of gold” and making something new out of them. This is where the life paths of both men connect today. Indeed, in the crafting of their stories composed of these little nuggets of gold, Ma and Mangohig show that they are their ancestors’ most elaborate re-mixes.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><a href="http://www.ozasiafestival.com.au/events/in-between-two/">In Between Two</a> is showing as part of the OzAsia Festival. It will be staged as part of the Melbourne Festival from October 11-15.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85326/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Peterson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Australian rapper Joelistics and producer James Mangohig bring their family histories to the stage through a breathtaking display of beats, raps and storytelling.William Peterson, Senior Lecturer in Drama, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/851812017-10-05T00:27:15Z2017-10-05T00:27:15ZTwo puppeteers walk into a Japanese bathhouse in The Dark Inn<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188715/original/file-20171004-6742-1vkvlt7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The four rooms of a Japanese ryokan revealed in The Dark Inn. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shinsuke Sugino</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The darkness of the human condition, where people are enslaved by their own desires in a kind of Buddhist hell, may not seem like a pleasant subject for an evening of theatre. But in The Dark Inn, Japan’s brilliant playwright-director Kuro Tanino and his company, Niwa Gekidan Penino, give these themes a captivating and at times mesmerising contemporary updating. </p>
<p>The inability to let go of desire is one of the oldest themes in Japanese drama. Tanino’s play draws on the ancient Japanese form of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noh"><em>Nō</em> drama</a>. Tanino’s story begins with two puppeteers from Tokyo coming to a traditional Japanese mountain inn, known as a <em>ryokan</em>, where people come to take in the healing properties of heated, mineral-laden waters bubbling up from volcanic formations below. It is late autumn, and the men believe they have been invited to perform at the inn. But the inn is deserted. </p>
<p>We discover that the older man, a dwarf (played by veteran actor Mame Yamada), is the father of the other man, who, as we come to see, anticipates and attends to his father’s every need. The size difference between the two heightens one’s sense of the son’s subservience to his father and of his permanent state of arrested social development. Both smoke, heavily, and rarely has smoking ever appeared so necessary and even seductive on stage.</p>
<p>After settling in to the empty room, the men are met by an old lady. She tells the pair that there is no proprietor and that the inn is inhabited by “guests” who seem to simply need to be there. </p>
<p>The story of the guests they encounter is subsequently revealed on a superb revolving stage by Tanino and designer Michiko Inada. It features four astonishingly realistic spaces found in such a <em>ryokan</em>: the entry room; a two-level sleeping area; the wash room where guests prepare to enter the bath; and the <em>onsen</em>, or spa, where the guests soak in the mountain-heated waters.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188718/original/file-20171004-6742-v2x9x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188718/original/file-20171004-6742-v2x9x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188718/original/file-20171004-6742-v2x9x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188718/original/file-20171004-6742-v2x9x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188718/original/file-20171004-6742-v2x9x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188718/original/file-20171004-6742-v2x9x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188718/original/file-20171004-6742-v2x9x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188718/original/file-20171004-6742-v2x9x8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The onsen in the ryokan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shinsuke Sugino</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We are introduced to a blind man who believes the heated waters help his vision and who is consumed by this desire to see. Two geishas are both trapped by desire; the younger of the two is given over to lust. The mute bath attendant serves others but his fascination with the new guests goes beyond mere voyeurism. Finally, the old lady, who is devoted to the two geishas but was unable to be one herself because she “wasn’t pretty enough”.</p>
<p>The play’s visual field is so rich and detailed, while the characters are so clearly defined, that at times the viewer’s attention hovers equally between the set, the nuanced and sometimes surprisingly bizarre behaviour of the guests and the translation of the Japanese spoken text appearing on either side of the stage. </p>
<p>Adding another layer to the experience is a rich but subtle sound design by Koji Sato and Yoshihiro Nakamura. It beautifully captures and draws out the sounds of a ticking clock, the pouring of liquid from a thermos, the running of natural spring water, and the ominous sounds of someone clumping slowly down a set of stairs.</p>
<p>The play’s action peaks as the puppeteers finally perform at the insistence of the geishas, both noisily drunk on sake. We see revealed, for the first time, the puppet, a grotesque homunculus, whose enslavement to his physical needs is mirrored by the exaggerated size of his head, hands and facial features. The “show”, a grotesque and carnal ritual between the father and puppet, leads to the play’s final scene, set ten months later in summer, which suggests that these guests, like all humans, are unable to recognise the desires that trap them.</p>
<p>We hear the speeding sound of the bullet train, which passes by the once-remote <em>ryokan</em>. Far from suggesting that modernity will change the human condition, the voice-over assures us that the <em>ryokan</em> is now “waiting for your visit”. The sound of a bell rings, and we in the audience are invited into that world ourselves.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>The Dark Inn was staged as part of the <a href="http://www.ozasiafestival.com.au/">OzAsia Festival</a>, running until October 8.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85181/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Peterson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Kuro Tanino’s Dark Inn is a contemporary take on traditional Japanese theatre, contemplating the darkness of desire.William Peterson, Senior Lecturer in Drama, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/663852016-10-03T19:13:28Z2016-10-03T19:13:28ZFrom Shakespeare in Hindi to tackling human trafficking: the best of OzAsia festival<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140071/original/image-20161003-9918-gq72b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">One of the best offerings from this year's OzAsia festival was Vertigo 20.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Vertigo Dance Troupe/Gadi Dagon</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Sometimes the weather simply won’t cooperate. Between a state-wide blackout, monsoonal rain, and the worst winds ever, Adelaide’s OzAsia Festival, which finished on Sunday, faced a bumpy ride in its tenth anniversary year.</p>
<p>For some, this meant missing out on Japanese choreographer Hiroaki Umeda’s pixelated video storm in <a href="http://www.ozasiafestival.com.au/events/split-flow-and-holistic-strata/">Split Flow and Holistic Strata</a>, cancelled amid actual howling gales and pelting rain.</p>
<p>Yet despite the meteorological conditions, the festival was a convincing celebration of the vitality of an Asia of which Australia is increasingly a part. </p>
<p>For us, six performance works stood out for their bold placement of the body centre-stage: <a href="http://www.ozasiafestival.com.au/events/softmachine-rianto/">Softmachine Rianto</a>, an Indonesian-Singaporean dance and video collaboration; <a href="http://www.ozasiafestival.com.au/events/skin/">Skin</a>, a challenging work from Malaysia on human trafficking; Cambodia’s <a href="http://www.ozasiafestival.com.au/events/phare-circus/">Phare Circus</a>, in which performers perform the seemingly impossible; <a href="http://www.ozasiafestival.com.au/events/as-if-to-nothing/">As If To Nothing</a>, a Hong Kong dance piece on the mutability of memory; <a href="http://example.com/">Twelfth Night</a>, a Hindi version of Shakespeare’s beguiling gender comedy; and <a href="http://www.ozasiafestival.com.au/events/vertigo-20/">Vertigo 20</a>, an astounding blend of previous work by Israeli choreographer, Noa Werthheim.</p>
<hr>
<h2>Softmachine Rianto</h2>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140061/original/image-20161003-23434-uw4qwx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140061/original/image-20161003-23434-uw4qwx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140061/original/image-20161003-23434-uw4qwx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=350&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140061/original/image-20161003-23434-uw4qwx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=350&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140061/original/image-20161003-23434-uw4qwx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=350&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140061/original/image-20161003-23434-uw4qwx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140061/original/image-20161003-23434-uw4qwx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140061/original/image-20161003-23434-uw4qwx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Softmachine Rianto.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Law Kian Yan</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="http://www.ozasiafestival.com.au/events/softmachine-rianto/">Softmachine Rianto</a>, directed by Singaporean Choi Fa Kai, features the kinesthetically brilliant and versatile Indonesian dancer Rianto. Each of Rianto’s dance sequences was followed by a self-revelation, conveyed through direct address to the audience and snippets from Choi’s documentary on the dancer.</p>
<p>Rianto entered the stage wearing the refined female facemask used in Javanese topeng, enacting the dance of a princess pining for her lover. At first the point seemed to be just seeing a strongly gendered female role danced by a man with such precision. Yet successive segments asked us to question how gender is presented both onstage and in real life. </p>
<p>We saw Rianto, variously, as a sexy woman in a popular Javanese dance form, a brilliant contemporary dancer, and a male dancing sensually for an audience of men. Along the way, we learnt that he works in Japan, is married to a Japanese woman, and lives a life as complex and fluid as his dancing suggests.</p>
<hr>
<h2>Skin</h2>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140063/original/image-20161003-9475-1ksacum.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140063/original/image-20161003-9475-1ksacum.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140063/original/image-20161003-9475-1ksacum.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140063/original/image-20161003-9475-1ksacum.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140063/original/image-20161003-9475-1ksacum.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140063/original/image-20161003-9475-1ksacum.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140063/original/image-20161003-9475-1ksacum.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140063/original/image-20161003-9475-1ksacum.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Skin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Darshen Chelliah</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Skin, by the Malaysian collective Terryandthecruz, placed the audience in the stage work itself. Malaysia, currently home to more than 90,000 refugees, is a significant destination and transit point for human trafficking in the region. Rather than showing us “the plight of the refugees” and seeking a “sympathetic” response, the show put us in the skins of those being processed at the hands of strangers.</p>
<p>Patrons assembled at a pre-arranged point and filled out forms that ominously released the producers from any liability, and asked participants, now in the role of refugees, to assess their looks, intelligence, tax contributions, and willingness to learn the Malaysian language. </p>
<p>All personal effects were surrendered before we reassembled in another building to be interrogated individually, then arbitrarily placed into two groups and prohibited from speaking. One group was singled out for harsher punishment and provided with yellow blindfolds. A single individual was escorted from the building wearing a red blindfold.</p>
<p>Both the yellow and favoured “green” groups were led into a shipping container, and faced a large opening. The wall of an adjacent container then opened, revealing a stark, white tiled room. Three dancers presented abstract, yet emotionally resonant images of bodies experiencing privation, abuse, and pain. The container filled with bodies, sometimes swallowing up the solo dancers, pulling them back into the undertow, appearing to devour them.</p>
<p>Further details are best not revealed here, as Skin is likely to tour round Australia next year. Though it exposed us to the experience of human trafficking in ways some might find confronting, the audience debriefed in a safe space before returning to the “real world.”</p>
<hr>
<h2>Phare Circus</h2>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140068/original/image-20161003-9918-1q7uobw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140068/original/image-20161003-9918-1q7uobw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140068/original/image-20161003-9918-1q7uobw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140068/original/image-20161003-9918-1q7uobw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140068/original/image-20161003-9918-1q7uobw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140068/original/image-20161003-9918-1q7uobw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140068/original/image-20161003-9918-1q7uobw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140068/original/image-20161003-9918-1q7uobw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Phare Circus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Camille Malafosse</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The exuberant and gravity-defying antics of Cambodia’s Phare Circus, presented in the Festival’s pop-up Ukiyo Tent, provided a welcome counterpoint to Skin’s provocations. Drawn from graduates of Cambodia’s Phare Ponleu Selpak Circus School, the company are among the first generation of circus performers to emerge following the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime and the near-total extermination of the country’s artists. Phare is a success story, with a permanent home in Seam Reap and road companies touring internationally.</p>
<p>This tight, conceptually integrated, spare production featured eight performers, two musicians, and a visual artist who created three works on canvas while surrounded by a riot of rhythm and movement. </p>
<p>The performance is heavy on human pyramids, tumbling, and death-defying balancing acts held together by a percussive musical score, playful interaction with the audience, and clowning. It was a reminder that the trained human body is an amazing machine, capable of communicating across cultures by the simple act of moving.</p>
<hr>
<h2>As If To Nothing</h2>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">As If To Nothing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Isamu Murai</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Similarly dynamic was City Contemporary Dance Company’s As If To Nothing, by choreographer Sang Jijia. Searching for the right phrase to describe this production – because what’s art without a label? – we settled on “neo-Modernist”. </p>
<p>It still isn’t right, but it conveys something of the moral seriousness and skill of this contemporary dance masterpiece, which banished superficial cleverness and self-reference to the rubbish bin. A large, white fabric cube in which a cross-section of interior white wall and a corner window were wheeled around from position to position, provided the only set design. </p>
<p>The company of a dozen dancers were relentlessly energetic and precise. Rarely has visual projection, which hogs the eye in live performance, been used so well. In part it was because the images repeated the dancers’ movements, working as visual amplification but always returning us to the true locus of attention – the bodies of the men and women wrapping and warping around the space.</p>
<p>The floor was a smooth white, and the actors wore socks. This choreography was a glissando, and the control required for a high-energy show was considerable. </p>
<p>Yet, as with Softmachine Rianto, bravura display was not the point. Instead, in true Modernist spirit, what came across is a sincere exploration of emotional depth: attraction, relation, sex, anxiety, need, the madness that lurks beneath the surface of everyday life. The show had the courage to end on a downbeat note, confirming the integrity of vision that ran throughout.</p>
<hr>
<h2>Twelfth Night</h2>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Twelfth Night.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Twelfth Night by the Theatre Company Mumbai, in the loosest but truest of Shakespearean adaptations, was an anarchic ride into inter-cultural mayhem. We saw it at a schools’ matinee, and the match between the Bollywood energy of the cast and the expressive bent of the audience (to be polite) was perfect. </p>
<p>In a blend of Hindi and English – there are subtitles but one barely needs to glance at them – the show rollicked through the classic oh-my-God-I-thought-you-were-a-bloke-yet-I-found-myself-strangely-attracted-to-you-anyway fable using a mixture of slapstick, song and dance, infectious audience interaction and lots and lots of colour.</p>
<p>Most of Twelfth Night’s plot was paraphrased, transposed, or satirised by actors who stayed on stage throughout, sitting at the back and regularly erupting like a rowdy family. Each one has unique skills: this one a dancer, that one a singer, that one a comedian. Yet all of them were all of these things too, which made the production even better. </p>
<p>The show had its moments of calm and emotional stillness, and they were beautifully effective. The last song of “eternal spiritual search” was one example, which off-set the high-fives energy to communicate the deep humanity of Shakespeare’s original.</p>
<hr>
<h2>Vertigo 20</h2>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Vertigo 20.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gadi Dagon</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="http://www.ozasiafestival.com.au/events/vertigo-20/">Vertigo 20</a> by Vertigo Dance Company is described in its program blurb as a “weav[ing] together [of] twenty years of Vertigo Dance Company’s creations”, which under-states the brilliance of a piece that not so much defied expectations as inhabited a liminal zone permanently outside them. This is only partly a metaphor. </p>
<p>A company of 11 dancers moved in a low-walled grey-shadowed rectangular space with ledges jutting out at waist and shoulder height. The choreography had the assured precision of a dream whose meaning lies just beyond conscious grasp. Patterns constantly asserted themselves yet, just as they appeared to solidify, transformed into other patterns. A group of men became, suddenly, a group of women (how?) A group became a pair; a pair became a line; a line became a cluster.</p>
<p>The basis of the work was the fractal, and the dance overall was a sort of human Mandelbrot set, waves of movements cresting and transforming in the blink of an eye into other movements. There were no beginnings or ends, just a single stream of physical adjustment – falling, leaping, swaying – in sequences that were an uncategorisable blend of the mechanical and the organic. </p>
<p>This show was definitely not a “best of” from past works. This was Noa Wertheim and her dancers actively engaging the act of memory. The piece had the cognitive immediacy of a firing synapse. At the end, we wanted to see it all over again.</p>
<hr>
<p>The festival sported a wide variety of satellite activities. Anchoring them was the Good Fortune Market, a groovy mini-precinct created on the banks of the River Torrens. On offer were everything from the hipster fusion sounds of Hong Kong band SIU2 and the retro-psychedelic funk of the Cambodian Space Project, to Japanese okonomiyaki (pan fried batter and cabbage), possibly the world’s most comforting comfort food.</p>
<p>As the OzAsia Festival enters its second decade, both the Asian region and Australia’s relationship with it have changed. No longer can the festival be seen by anyone as a showcase for ethnic exotica and performance heritage. </p>
<p>In creativity, accessibility, skill and daring, the productions on offer embodied an energy and imagination comparable to, and at times exceeding, anything prestigious European-focused international festivals might present. This is to be welcomed. Far from losing itself in a sea of globalised mediocrity, the best of live performance from Asia retains an indefeasible identity while responding to cultural influences from all over the world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/66385/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In creativity, skill and daring, the productions on offer embodied an energy and imagination comparable to, and at times exceeding, anything prestigious European-focused international festivals might present.Julian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, Flinders UniversityWilliam Peterson, Senior Lecturer in Drama, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/656422016-09-19T19:58:00Z2016-09-19T19:58:00ZThe OzAsia Festival is young and confident – here are the shows to watch<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138229/original/image-20160919-11123-submhm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The OzAsia Festival will showcase innovative and youthful performance art from across Asia.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hiroaki Umeda's split flow and Holistic Strata. Credit Ryuichi Marui Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The formal launch of the OzAsia Festival’s visual arts program at the Adelaide Festival Centre earlier this month involved an encounter with the unexpected.</p>
<p>In the adjoining gallery, instead of the usual well-heeled patrons and donors clinking wine glasses and devouring finger food, I saw men, women, and even children tossing off their shoes and jumping into Japanese choreographer Hiroaki Umeda’s immersive, pixelating video environment. </p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hiroaki Umeda’s shows split flow and Holistic Strata pair dancers and digital projections.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ryuichi Maruo/ Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As projections of patterns swirled above, below and around them, two boys squealed with delight while seeming to bounce off the walls. A well-dressed woman improvised <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/isadora-duncan-9281125">Isadora Duncan</a>-inflected interpretive dance moves, their collective choreographies captured on mobile phones by friends and family members. </p>
<p>It was clear then that this Adelaide festival, now in its tenth year, was going to push the accepted boundaries of expression – not just for artists, but for audience members as well. </p>
<p>Australia’s only integrated annual arts festival focusing on Asian work runs this year from 17 September to 2 October, with its centrepiece, the performing arts programming, commencing on 21 September. </p>
<p>The second year of Festival Director Joseph Mitchell’s tenure offers nothing for the armchair traveller expecting the kind of generic Balinese dance one might encounter poolside at a resort. Instead, Adelaide will host a youthful and wide-ranging collection of contemporary visual arts and performance events from Asia and around the world.</p>
<p>The starting point seems to be that there is no line between “us” and “them,” and that contemporary Asian and Asian-influenced performance has its own confident sense of what it means to be modern that is both different from and enmeshed with the West. </p>
<p>Indeed, this festival reflects how in an interconnected world, the so-called “glo-cal,” which fuses the global with the local, is in fact the natural order behind virtually all artistic creation. </p>
<p>The result is likely to be a dynamic and joyful conversation about Australia’s location in Asia. This festival celebrates both our region, and the many people and cultures who have found a home in Australia.</p>
<h2>Bringing in the young</h2>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Korean six-piece band SIU2 mixes sanxian, zheng, piano, bass guitar and drums.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This year’s festival seeks to further the event’s footprint by offering an expanded range of free events underwritten by a federal Catalyst grant. </p>
<p>Hong Kong’s super cool six piece fusion band <a href="http://www.ozasiafestival.com.au/events/outdoor-siu2/">SIU2</a>, Korea’s wildly energetic and virtuosic psychedelic folk rock <a href="http://www.ozasiafestival.com.au/events/outdoor-danpyunsun-and-the-sailors/">Danpyunsun and the Sailors</a>, and the retro-hip Cambodia <a href="http://www.ozasiafestival.com.au/events/outdoor-cosmic-cambodia/">Space Project</a> will be among the many must-see acts performing along the riverfront behind the Adelaide Festival Centre between 21 September and 1 October.</p>
<p>More importantly, it seems clear that this ambitious and expensive side-program is being pitched to the same youthful audience that underpins the vast Adelaide Fringe Festival. Like the Fringe, cool stuff will be happening in one place over a set period of time, with Asian street food available from the <a href="http://playandgo.com.au/index.php/good-fortune-market-elder-park-ozasia-festival-oct-2016/">Good Fortune Market</a>, an enterprise put together by the team that came up with the Fringe Festival’s wildly popular <a href="https://royalcroquetclub.com.au/adelaide/">Croquet Club</a>.</p>
<p>Though film and visual arts programs contribute meaningfully to the festival, it’s the performance program that draws in the largest number of audience members. </p>
<p>The big, family friendly opening night Moon Lantern Festival has in past years been troubled by the notoriously fickle mid September Adelaide weather, where arctic-like conditions have occasionally disrupted the festive mood. Not so this year as skies cleared for the lantern parade, and a long, steady stream of giant colourful, hand crafted paper lanterns gently lit up the night sky.</p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Moon Lantern Festival.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Simone Romaniuk</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Ones to watch</h2>
<p>Festival highlights this year are likely to include Hong Kong’s City Contemporary Dance Company’s <a href="http://www.ozasiafestival.com.au/events/as-if-to-nothing/">As If to Nothing</a>, and Japanese choreographer Hiroaki Umeda’s <a href="http://www.ozasiafestival.com.au/events/split-flow-and-holistic-strata/">Split Flow and Holistic Strata</a>, a high-octane, occasionally frantic interplay between the human form and an environment of moving projections, punctuated by electronic beats and low bass frequencies.</p>
<p>Cambodia’s low-tech, ingenious and transformative <a href="http://www.ozasiafestival.com.au/events/phare-circus/">Phare Circus</a> will perform in a tent outside the Festival Centre, while Malaysia’s Terryandthecuz will literally take audience members hostage. </p>
<p>Their work <a href="http://www.ozasiafestival.com.au/events/skin/">Skᴉn</a> recreates the experience of refugees trapped in shipping containers, in highly differentiated, unpredictable journeys toward unknown destinations. The promotional materials for Skᴉn, ominously, advise audience members to dress warmly and carry valid identification. </p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The low-tech and high-energy Phare Circus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The signature Gumby-like movement style developed by Japan’s Toshiki Okada and the Chelfitsch Theatre Company will be paired with a dramatic text interrogating Japan’s love of what is arguably America’s most significant cultural import, baseball, in <a href="http://www.ozasiafestival.com.au/events/god-bless-baseball/">God Bless Baseball</a>. Meanwhile, the Theatre Company Mumbai will talk back to Shakespeare’s text in their energetic, highly physical staging of <a href="http://www.ozasiafestival.com.au/events/twelfth-night/">Twelfth Night</a>.</p>
<p>In the weeks just prior to the festival, Mitchell came to speak to my students at Flinders University. He made it clear that he was courting their demographic, suggesting that many of the elements that drew them to the Fringe every year would be present at OzAsia. </p>
<p>The expanded use of social media and special events aimed at building a youth audience, coupled with a free Asian indie music festival, good eats, and a performance program that places contemporary Asian work centre stage, may well do the trick.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65642/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Peterson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>From a dancer moving against a wash of static, to a show that takes the audience hostage, Adelaide’s OzAsia Festival celebrates both high art and high energy performances.William Peterson, Senior Lecturer in Drama, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.