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IMPERFECT CIRCUS
just met, the cast of Beautifully Imperfect includes performers from the Nanjing Acrobatic Troupe of China, who arrived a month into the show’s development. “I didn’t want to have something like, ‘Oh, here’s the incredibly technical Chinese part of the show and here’s the quirky NICA part of the show’,” Tannion continues. “The Chinese performers are very integrated in the
show. It’s about working collectively without losing individuality. We’re looking at beauty and ugliness. Perfection and fallibility – very, very broad things – I didn’t want to make a show that was a happy-clappy circus.” Tannion employs his choreographic skills across a variety of genres, from circus, dance/theatre, films and commercials to site-specific shows, outdoor events and large scale musicals. “I’m creating a show across genres,” he says of Beautifully Imperfect. “Some people in NICA weren’t sure what they were going to get!” Timetabling is another thing Tannion’s been confronted by with this project. “I’m accustomed to having a six-day week in Europe and I only have them [the cast] for three hours in the afternoon here. I thought, ‘My God, how am I going to create a show like this? My days are normally really busy.” One nice surprise for the choreographer is how well organised the NICA project is. “In Spain it’s chaotic!” The themes of Beautifully Imperfect were inspired by a video Tannion’s dad showed him. “My dad, who is a marriage celebrant, told me about a YouTube video: an Indian woman is talking to the congregation at her husband’s funeral. She is talking about the farting, groaning noises he used to make when he was around, the little things that let her know he was alive, and she says, “I hope you children find someone as beautifully imperfect as he was.” WHAT: Beautifully Imperfect WHERE & WHEN: NICA National Circus Centre until Wednesday 20 April
THE HAND THAT MOCKS…
puppets arriving. And then they didn’t know who had they had been and had to find out who they were going to be from now on.”
WHAT IS BEAUTIFUL? WE’RE ALL BEAUTIFULLY IMPERFECT, ACCORDING TO FREELANCE CIRCUS DANCE THEATRE COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR AND CHOREOGRAPHER ROB TANNION, WHO HAS CREATED NICA’S NEW SHOW. HE TALKS CIRCUS TRICKS WITH LIZA DEZFOULI.
HOW YOU LIKE BRASS? BLOWING HIS OWN TRUMPET! LIZA DEZFOULI TALKS BRASS AND HORNS WITH DAVID ELTON OF THE AUSTRALIAN BRASS QUINTET. “We’re passionate about performing. We’re all teachers but we love to perform.” David Elton (AKA Principal Trumpet, West Australian Symphony Orchestra) is about to share the love with students of brass from around the country. The Australian Brass Quintet are the country’s foremost brass chamber group and they are conducting workshops and intensives whilst in residency this month at the Australian National Academy of Music in Melbourne. “There isn’t a brass course as such,” Elton explains. “The leading institution for music in Australia doesn’t offer a fulltime brass instrument course (you can do French Horn at WA) but this is a great opportunity for the top students of brass. We have a great repertoire.” What was it about the trumpet that attracted him? He answers as a man deeply in love. “It sounds so brilliant! It can be loud or soft; it’s beautiful, strong, and soft. One of the instruments that just has everything. Think of jazz expression...” Brass instrumentalists seem to be mostly men, why is that? “That’s not actually the case,” Elton explains. “With our students coming to the residency, the vast majority are female. In my orchestra in Perth, half the horn section is women. Alison Balsom is one of Australia’s leading trumpeters. There are definitely females throughout the brass world.” That’s one misconception cleared up. How innovative can a brass quintet be? “Innovation is one of the great things about these instruments,” enthuses Elton. “The French Horn, the tuba, the trombone are well known for classics but you think of jazz and all the amazing 20th Century techniques... There is the immediate possibility of all sorts of things. We’re playing a brand new piece by Iain Grandage – an unbelievable piece called Soap Box, with a loop station – a modern day megaphone. Ben [Jacks] plays along
with himself accompanied by other horn sounds, sounds of air and water, blowing through special effects.” The Australian Brass Quintet plays two shows at the South Melbourne Town Hall, to the delight of brass aficionados, and this musician in particular. “The South Melbourne Town Hall is a wonderful place for brass with its beautiful acoustics,” Elton continues. “It has a great intimate sound; I’ve played there a lot. The Tuesday night concert will show some of the more interesting things we do. We use space a lot: the Grandage piece will be performed in the South Melbourne Town hall with antiphonal effects – performing from different places in the hall. Gabrieli premiered this technique in the 1600s; musicians performed from different balconies in San Marco in Venice.” The members of the Australian Brass Quintet are each individually active as teachers and performers but Elton emphasises how well they get along as a group. It’s a good life he’s got. “I’ve played in some interesting places,” he says. “The Fremantle Arts Centre is an outdoor space surrounded by walls with natural acoustics. There’s always a receptive audience and new things go down well. On tour we played in a castle in Dubrovnik [in Croatia], above the city with the sun going down – you just can’t believe you’re playing with a wonderful symphony in a place like that!” A simpler spot can be just as enjoyable. “Whenever we go away for a holiday, like a weekend on the Margaret River, I definitely go and find a nice corner and play. It’s something all musicians do, play outdoors.” WHAT: Australian Brass Quintet: Brass ’11 WHERE & WHEN: Australian National Academy of Music Tuesday 19 April and Wednesday 20
TRIPOD TAKE OVER THE TOFF Geeky musical comedy geniuses Tripod are taking up residency at the Toff In Town in June, performing every Sunday evening. It’ll be a chance to preview new material as well as classics and who knows what else? Tickets through Moshtix, further into at 3pod.com.au.
“What do we think is beautiful?” Rob Tannion – guest choreographer with NICA – is asking some tough questions in NICA’s new show, Beautifully Imperfect. “When we live in a society where everything is commercialized, it’s, ‘You’re beautiful, now let’s change you’ Women are so pressured to look like something else; how do I get these ideas across to students in their 20s in a world where it’s all about the body?” Traditionally, circus doesn’t involve itself with challenging contemporary culture. “I don’t come from a physical background in circus per se,” says Tannion, an Australian based in London who works much of the time with Spain’s leading circus troupe, Carampa. “My work does have a strong social comment and narrative thread,” he says. Tannion was asked to remove a segment from the organisers of his last show in Madrid. “Spain has a big problem with domestic violence. By September last year 50 women had died as a result of domestic violence. I was asked to remove a scene. I offered to soften it but I stood my ground and didn’t take it out.” The freelance choreographer, who is also co-director of the Stan Won’t
Dance company in London, was invited to choreograph NICA’s 10th anniversary project. The biggest challenge, he says, has been working with people he didn’t cast himself. “Usually, when I do a show, when I’m going through and short listing, I’m already building a bit of a show. This is a bit like Russian roulette; it’s unnerving.” In addition to working with NICA graduates who he’s only
FROM HATING PUPPETS TO VISITING THEIR GRAVES, VENTRILOQUIST AND COMEDIAN NINA CONTI TALKS TO DAVE DRAYTON. style is something she credits to esteemed British actor and director Ken Campbell, who bought her a teach-yourself-ventriloquism kit when Conti was a “normal actress” at the Royal Shakespeare Company. “It was a mischievous gift. He was a real maverick and he just thought of spied that I’d be good at that and bought me that, which is so weird because I didn’t even like ventriloquism and didn’t even know what it was really.
When Nina Conti first answers the phone in her Melbourne hotel room she sounds slightly older than one would expect and soft-spoken; perhaps doing the voice of Nana, one of the puppets she takes on stage with her. That is, of course, before I am informed that this is in fact Conti’s mother on the phone, Nana to the six-year-old and new-born son Conti has brought on tour. “I’m frightened on flying on my own now that I have children,” Conti says later,
now awake and assuring me that it was in fact her mum, before outlining her humorously selfish plans for a crash, “I think if we all go down together then that’s okay. It’s just if one of us does – that’s not good.” Along with her kids and mother, Conti has also brought the veritable family of puppets that she brings to life in her show over from her native UK. A few years ago, Conti never would have dreamed of being in this situation, her unique comedy
“So I fooled around with it and filmed myself trying it out and when I watched this little film that I’d made it looked like there were two people in the room. I mean my lips were moving then – I wasn’t adept – but the beginnings were there, it didn’t look like I expected to. It was the way I was talking to this thing – as if it had an intelligence and could reply – that amused me.” Her love of ventriloquism grew from there, nurtured by Campbell, who left much of his collection to Conti when he passed away. “Two of the puppets that are in the show are inherited from my teacher when he died,” she says. “That’s weird, getting bereaved
Despite her early trepidation, Conti is now so committed to her craft that she recently found herself travelling to America with the orphaned puppets left to her in the will. Conti documented the trip, making a film about taking the puppets to a puppet mausoleum in Kentucky, USA, called Vent Haven. “It’s a very surreal and poignant place, slightly frightening. They just sit and looked skyward, silent forever more. They’ve got pictures of their masters on their laps, so you know who they came from. “Some of them survived a shipwreck in the 1700s, because they bobbed to the top, they were more buoyant than the guys,” she adds with a laugh. What to expect then, if the next plane this world-traversing comedic ventriloquist boards goes down as she so morbidly suggested in a jetlagged haze before? There’ll be a “softly-spoken, passive aggressive owl”, a psychic Nanny, and a pottymouthed monkey bobbing on the surface, for once not interrupting Conti. WHAT: Nina Conti: Talk To The Hand WHERE & WHEN: RMIT Capitol Theatre tonight until Saturday 16 April
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