Maria Roberts Arts Editor – Portfolio

Maria Roberts: Samples of work for Festival Republic ©International Arts Manager – A Global Business Magazine for Arts and Culture

Where Next?

PHOTO: © JEN ONEILL

18 Events guide

Sadler’s Wells perform at Latitude Festival in 2015

Fields of dreams For a long time the idea of mixing science with the arts seemed akin to dropping oil in water, but at a festival in Suffolk, UK, the two distinct entities have formed a cosy alliance. Maria Roberts speaks to Latitude’s artistic director Tania Harrison about her potent plans for varied programming

PHOTO: COURTESY OF LATITUDE

I

f you are unfamiliar with Latitude, and have no idea what it is like, then imagine cultural London lifted out of its usual city stomping ground and dropped into a field with an insitu audience enjoying a massive weekend camping trip. I like Latitude. It’s more like a family- friendly arts holiday than a festival. Imagine a pop-up Center Parcs complete with ballet, theatre, literature, debate and music, minus the cycling (the bikes on hire had limited routes), go-kart racing, and swimming (the lake was out of bounds for swimmers). Latitude provides everything the arts lover could possibly want: from debates with literature heavyweights, to trial and error sets by new comedians. Having said that, Latitude has to be careful not to take itself too seriously. Soon you may well need a Masters in cultural studies to ‘get it’ – which isn’t what a mixed arts festival should be.

This year the full four-day Latitude programme was stuffed with pretty much anything and everything that goes on in the arts in Britain, making Latitude a rather highbrow outdoor experience for middleclass film buffs and the literati. At this year’s festival, even the food matched with the vibe of the festival!

Tania Harrison Aspirational supermarket, Waitrose, ran a café

“I think there are many ways for us to make festival programming insightful and valuable. It’s about learning from all sides so that you can instinctively know what questions people want to ask, and figure out what it is they don’t yet know that they might want to know” INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

selling quinoa burgers, there was a wine bar further down the hill, and a rather cute Schweppes’ gin bar in the forest. At the Blixen x Latitude brasserie, the trendy menu supplied a stack of waffles with blueberry and mascarpone; grilled sirloin steak with Café de Paris butter and fries; and haddock and wild garlic fishcake with sauce gribiche and courgettes. Not quite your average festival fare.

At most summer camping festivals music and bands reign supreme, but Latitude is unique in its offering. Yes, chartlovers can catch the big names like Mumford and Sons, Goldfrapp and Mavis Staples on the Obelisk Arena stage, and then rave until the early hours with DJs at the Late Night Sunrise Arena, but you can also check your DNA in a shed beneath a tree, or debate the pain of patriachy with a bunch of actors.

Each year the programme sits under a curatorial umbrella and this edition was no different. “For 2017 the theme was Come the Revolution,” artistic director Tania Harrison tells me over the phone. “Which takes into account cutting-edge research and how science can revolutionise our world and transform lives. The idea is that you come away from the sessions at Latitude with knowledge to share with friends.”

One strand that came to the fore this year was the Wellcome Trust arena. Here, experts shared revolutionary ideas on health and healthcare. Professor Simon Baron-Cohen discussed Autism and Neurodiversity with Adam Feinstein. Dr Tony Goldstone and Dr Samantha Scholtz considered Gut Hormones in Addiction with comedian, actor and satirist Marcus Brigstocke. Professor Daniel M Davis took part in a panel conversation with Dr Natalie Riddell, for which they delved into the subject of Immunity and the Health Revolution.

Other offerings matched arts with science and IT. Such as the talks on Technology vs. the Human Revolution, with professor Steve Fuller and professor Arthur I Miller who debated the future of Artificial Intelligence, chaired by Dr Daniel Glaser of London’s Science Gallery.

Dr Tamar Makin, Dr Aldo Faisal and Dr Isabel Van De Keere examined Revolutions in Rehabilitation: body representation, brain organisation and virtual reality. Meanwhile, The Odditorium presented Diary of a Cell Farmer with Abi Aspen Glenncross, a session on growing meat in a laboratory using stem-cell technology. And that’s not all, society and medicine combined at Sick of the Fringe, highlights of which were talks exploring the relationship between the body and the brain.

Debates, Q&As and discussions appeared to steal the show at this year’s Latitude, the music less so. Did Harrison deliberately shift the programme away from being music centric?

“We’ve always had more arts stages than music,” says Harrison.

“I think for festivals per se, the big selling points have traditionally been for music, but Latitude is different. We have audiences that come to the festival for completely different reasons. And we programme with the idea that people don’t come for one thing or another. Over the years, we’ve become more specific about the programme, making it relevant to progressions that are happening culturally, scientifically and politically.”

How do festivalgoers rate the selection on offer at Latitude? “We collect a lot of customer feedback,” says Harrison. “The Latitude audience is incredibly engaged, they come from a really broad demographic, which makes for good research. One of the things we’ve learned from

19 Events guide

PHOTO: © CARYS LAVIN

“One of the things we’ve learned from our customer data is that a lot of younger audiences are captivated by the intersection of arts and science”

Latitude Festival

the day. Harrison has been a regular visitor to exhibitions at London’s Wellcome Trust for years, and so the partnership with the charitable science institution was something of a no-brainer.

“I think there are many ways for us to make festival programming insightful and valuable. It’s about learning from all sides so that you can instinctively know what questions people want to ask, and figure out what it is they don’t yet know that they might want to know. For example, I’m fascinated by the developments around what we eat, how that affects us personally, and making strides to find different ways of engaging people with that discussion feels pertinent.”

At this year’s festival, science and welfare combined in the performance The Nature of Forgetting by Theatre Re. “It is a beautiful piece,” says Harrison. “It combines physical theatre with a live musical score, about what is left when memory is gone. All of us relate to that: Alzheimer’s may be in your own family, your grandparents, your own parents.”

The production, which is part of the British Council Edinburgh Showcase 2017, enjoyed a sell-out run at the 2017 London International Mime Festival.

Organising Latitude, which attracted 40,000 people this year, is surely a massive undertaking. How far in advance does Harrison begin programming and what are the financial arrangements for a festival of this size? “I start programming at least a year in advance: some people are hard to get as they are working with a lot of companies and works can be a year or more in development. I tend to work a lot in partnership with Forest Fringe and Salon London. A large part of my job is meeting with people and asking what is available. Generally, I come up with an idea I want to talk about, then the next level is to find the right experts and artists that are compatible with another one.”

latitudefestival.com

Latitude Festival

PHOTOS: COURTESY OF LATITUDE

our customer data is that a lot of younger audiences are captivated by the intersection of arts and science, especially 16-25 year olds. The trick is to give the programming a hook and to make it relatable.”

What’s to be gained by throwing VR and science into a mix that places the Royal Court’s Manwatching, a play on female masturbation, on par with soprano Katherine Jenkins and danceworks by Sadler’s Wells? Says Harrison: “We carried out particularly focussed research to assess the level of engagement and what came to light was that for the science events that had theatrical presentations, a lot of the audience members didn’t even view them as science.”

She’s referring here to the production Ada. Ada.Ada in 2016 that told the story of Ada Lovelace, a feminist and female scientist that wrote the world’s first complex algorithm in 1843, but was then written out of history. In Ada.Ada.Ada, Lovelace tells her story using an LED dress, which she operates live on stage with a wearable tech satin glove. The show was a particular hit with young adults.

Does Harrison think there is more potential for arts companies to mix science with culture? “I think there’s a huge scope for science and arts to connect: everything pertains to it; from how we live our lives to how we integrate technology or VR. At this year’s Latitude we have a number of sessions on VR and how that can help in many areas of health and wellbeing.”

She adds that organisations frequently contact her for advice on how to engage younger audiences with science. Her wisdom is simply to be creative with your ideas. For Harrison, the festival fits her own personal fascination with neuroscience: she’s fascinated by how the brain works, the psychology of an audience and current thoughts of

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

Showtime 21

Born identity

PHOTO: © RICHARD HAUGHTON

PHOTO: © MAX BARNETT

Akram Khan is leading one of Britain’s most exciting contemporary dance companies. Maria Roberts talks to the choreographer about his career, Bangladeshi influences, creative practice and his perspective on race, equality and diversity

Chotto Desh dancer Dennier Alamanos

I

n recent years London-born Akram Khan, founder of Akram Khan Company (AKC), has become the epitome of contemporary dance cool.

The choreographer’s stock has been rising since his Olivier Awardwinning DESH (2011), and he’s been adding a dash of street cred to festival lineups for years. Now his name is consistently mentioned in the same breath as Wayne McGregor, Crystal Pite, Hofesh Shechter, Pina Bausch and William Forsythe. He’s collaborated with the likes of Juliette Binoche, Sylvie Guillem, Anish Kapoor, Antony Gormley, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Nitin Sawhney.

From Hong Kong to Montréal, there’s a tangible fizz in the air when someone excitedly drops into conversation that Khan has either performed, or will be performing soon. Is he aware of the buzz around him?

He says he is, but that it’s not what drives him to create.

“The most important thing for me is movement – and by that I mean the movement of dialogue, information and exchange of ideas. The fundamental basis of collaboration is that there is an ebb and flow between two, three and four people, my intention is to keep that movement alive.”

His works are metanarratives that draw inspiration from his life, arts, politics, life and blended cultures. Khan’s own heritage is infused with British and Bangladeshi influences. How does he come up with the premises for these tightly-packed big human stories?

“When I create work I don’t ‘plant’ the seed of an idea but place it on the table – a show might come from an image or an idea. Then we create movement in response. We do conceptual mapping over the course of a year. Once we are in the studio, the physical and psychological mapping take three months; it is all part of a long process of bringing collaborators together.”

Have things got easier for him lately? Does he feel like he has arrived and is here to stay? “I don’t know exactly when it changed, perhaps after a decade of the company’s work. The shift came not just in relation to dance: I love to branch out into films, documentaries, books. I’m more aware of my thoughts and my opinions [now], the success of the company has transformed the way I present those things, but the questions I ask in my work have always been the same, though the way I form my answers has changed.”

Khan speaks warmly about the influence his mother has had on his career. Born in Wimbledon in 1974, he came from a household filled with a love of performing. He danced in the garden as a child and was encouraged by his mother to take his interests more seriously. “I discovered Indian dance age six or seven with my teacher, my guru, he gave me access to high-level classical music and dance. Though I had very bad access to Indian classical music too – my aunties would come and sing every weekend, completely out of tune and off rhythm! Western classical music, opera and dance came much later, after university I would say, although Western popular culture had a huge influence on me.”

Khan has never been one to hide behind his ideas and his works are contextualised by his own dual heritage experiences: DESH (2011), adapted to Chotto Desh (2015) for children aged 7+, Until The Lions (2016), and English National Ballet’s Giselle (2016) all carry his unique hallmark. Khan’s most recent solo work, XENOS, is his strongest example of putting this voice on stage. XENOS premiered at Onassis Cultural Centre in Athens in February 2018 and will tour until 2020, stopping off for dates in Shanghai, Köln, Montréal and Berkeley, to name a few. His final performance of Until The Lions will be at London’s Roundhouse in January 2019.

Unusually for an artist, Khan is comfortable expressing his personal opinions and tells me he’s feeling more politicised now than ever before, XENOS is a portrait of his growing concerns. “There was a huge shift for me when I did XENOS. I suddenly felt that the work was not just about art anymore. I began to feel that I have to do this [create dance] for humanity in my own way. It’s my way of saying we are fucked up and the world is fucked up. XENOS is there to say, ‘look at the mess we’ve made – if we don’t look at it now we are fucked’.

“Essentially, this work is a refection of how I feel about our world INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

PHOTO: © JEAN-LOUIS FERNANDEZ

PHOTO: © JJEAN-LOUIS FERNANDEZ

22 Showtime

“As a company we experienced a meteoric rise until we hit the glass ceiling”

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

Clockwise from top left: Until The Lions; Akram Khan in XENOS; Nicolas Ricchini performs Chotto Desh; Farooq Chaudhry

PHOTO: © MAYA ALMEIDA ARAUJO

today. It is about our loss of humanity and how, through past and present wars, we are yet again confronted by the burning question of what it is to be human. How can humans have such ability to create extraordinary and beautiful things from our imagination, and yet have an immense ability to create and commit violence and horrors beyond our imagination?

“I’m not quite sure why but I’ve always been fascinated by extremes – from an earthquake to the butterfly effect, these philosophical and metaphorical concepts have always fascinated me.”

Brexit, the increased influence of right wing parties in Europe and the Americas, and how problems past and present seep into daily life, trouble him. “Every being of us is political right now: it’s like electricity running through human civilisation and inside the earth. Brexit has given light to the symptoms of xenophobia that we saw before WWI and WWII. In XENOS we are asking is xenophobia about to be repeated for a third time? So yes, as a choreographer and dancer I am political.”

Does it run deeper than dance? Has Brexit got under his skin? Is he concerned about how politics affect him and his own family right now?

“Yes,” he says strongly – the weight of the word obvious in his tone.

He recalls how, as a breakthrough artist, he was treated differently because of his ethnicity. “When we started off Farooq Chaudhry [who co-founded the company] and I were unknown Brown men living and making work in Britain in the midst of a political shift – and Islam and Muslims were the target [Chaudhry is from Pakistan]. There were these

horrific terrorist atrocities and Brown men, like us, were at the end of that.

“As a company we experienced a meteoric rise until we hit the glass ceiling – and then for a while we had to struggle to break through.

Ethnicity does play a part: you are supported to reach a certain point – and everyone is excited for you – but then, that’s it. That’s as far as you can go, you are not White. I think there is definitely racist elements there [the stunted progression of artists] – it is sometimes obvious or not obvious.

“I felt it. It’s like you really have to work harder to prove yourself, much harder than your White colleagues. We need a more diverse world now, but the reality is that world is seen predominantly through the eyes of the White man: they won most of the wars, history is written by the White man, the way we’ve viewed women is through the eyes of the White man, and the way we see nature too. In different parts of Asia and the East this is not the case, but only in those places that have not been colonised.

“Diversity – by that I mean seeing different perspectives culturally and through the prism of gender, and in all walks of life – is really important but we also need to ask real questions about tokenism; be sure you are not being taken on because you are Brown or Black, but because you are brilliant. I think there should be a real sense of quality control. I don’t want to be accepted because I am Brown, I want to be accepted because somewhere down the line my work touches that person.

Tokenism is not beneficial.”

Khan’s brilliance is widely acknowledged, the company’s website lists 33 awards with 2018’s accolades alone being the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding Production in Dance Division, Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts, Luminato (Until The Lions) and The Critics’ Circle National Dance Awards 2017, Best Classical Choreography for English National Ballet’s Giselle.

As an artist and individual, Khan strikes me as courageous: his works, like his politics, play with scale and individualism, in interviews he is forthright and honest, yet he has also revealed that he experiences “fear”. How do the two polar opposites, fear and courage, combine to make an impactful company like AKC? And what is his fascination with scale and volume?

“Scale reminds me of how important and how unimportant we are,

PHOTO: © RICHARD HAUGHTON

Showtime 23

how insignificant we are when we think we are so significant. I think fear and courage are interconnected. Courage is about being gracefully fearful. My mother has always given me courage, as has Farooq Chaudhry – without his love and support and courage I wouldn’t be here today. He founded the company, he is entrepreneurial, he had a lot of courage and he gave me a lot of courage.

“You know what that courage is? It is saying – ‘I believe in you’. My mother was always like that with me, I can’t say I alone have courage because I have never been alone, I have always existed in collaboration with others.”

And from here he expresses his feelings around #MeToo and the status of women in the arts, media and business. “In my experience, courage is in the DNA of women. The female gender. Birth is literally the moment of life and death – it is the most fragile moment for a woman.”

He continues that feminism is a response to inequitable gains. He cites John Berger as an inspiring force on how he relates to themes of identity. “In his book, Ways of Seeing, Berger talks about how through

the centuries women have portrayed themselves through the eyes of a man and perceived notions of what a man would want. In Greek mythology, Christianity, Islam and Judaism, the enemy is always the woman. The myths are written by men anyway, they have constructed stories to control people and society and to give them a purpose. The advantage is that it oppresses women so that men will be above women. That power balance also has to change and the #MeToo movement is just the beginning. The work done by #MeToo can’t disappear in a year – for most of civilisation men have dominated and for that to end it will need input from not just women but men too.”

Khan is very much the man of the moment in the dance world. Now aged 44, and a father, he has said XENOS will be his last solo show. He and Chaudhry have spent 20 years creating something magical, no doubt it will be hard to let that go. “People are asking for more, but I think I will say no, my last performance of XENOS will be in December 2020, I think. I want to dance in other smaller things.”

What does this mean for AKC repertoire like XENOS, DESH and Until The Lions – will the company continue with other dancers? The children’s version of DESH, Chotto Desh, is performed by two young cast members and the adaptation has been well received.

“I’m thinking of adapting XENOS for a huge male cast and reimagining it for a ballet company, then it can tour with three people of different ages a child, a dancer in his 20s, and one in his 60s.

“The works are very connected to me, I would love for it all to continue but also everything has its time. I can only pray that my work still touches people 10 years down the line – like those of Pina Bausch and DV8 Physical Theatre, whose classics continue to surprise.” akramkhancompany.net

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM KMP 2018 - IAM - January 2019 - Dancing Wheels v2.indd 1

18/11/2018 4:40:16 PM

24 Showtime

The wide awake club W

hen Felix Barrett founded Punchdrunk in 2000 he had no notion that his love of creating interactive, site-specific and unusual shows would become so successful. As a University of Exeter graduate, he was the usual cliché: a 20-something, working in a coffee shop, waiting to get on. Except behind the scenes Barrett had ambitious plans: he and a group of friends were soundly self-funding immersive theatre shows. Barrett didn’t want to climb the arts admin ladder, he wanted to build his own theatre company.

“Sleep No More started life as a two-week run in London in 2003 playing to about 100 people,” recalls Barrett. “That first step, which was really rough and ready, had an audience of 100 people but it paved the way and taught us how to scale the show up.”

His dream came true: 18 years on and Punchdrunk is a game-changer in the industry. Its large-scale, design-led, building-based theatrical experiences house audiences that roam freely across epic and sensory theatrical worlds, kind of like a walk-in ‘reality-TV style’ video game. And the audience figures are something to behold: over 1.2 million people have visited the venue for Sleep No More, New York. And almost two years since its launch, 196,180 people have experienced Sleep No More in Shanghai: a collaboration with Shanghai Media Group, it is the city’s fastest-selling theatrical production.

Other Punchdrunk productions include The Firebird Ball; Faust; The Masque of The Red Death; It Felt Like a Kiss (a collaboration with documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis and musician Damon Albarn for Manchester International Festival); The Duchess of Malfi (with English National Opera); The Crash of the Elysium (Manchester International Festival and 2012 Cultural Olympiad); The Borough (with Aldeburgh Music); The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable; and Kabeiroi, a walking show for two people that premièred in London last year.

Recalls Barrett: “The first turning point was getting a Prince’s Trust loan [a scheme for young people backed by the HRH The Prince of Wales] of GBP2,500 (€2,800) which took me two years to pay back and was a phenomenally large amount of money at the time. The money INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

PHOTO: © COURTESY OF PUNCHDRUNK

Punchdrunk’s most famous hit show Sleep No More has captured the imaginations of audiences in London, New York and Shanghai. Maria Roberts speaks with founder Felix Barrett and finds out there’s much more to the company than meets the eye

was critical for the company as we were able to ramp up the production budget – though we still weren’t able to pay anyone.

Our objective was to get Arts Council England (ACE) officers to see our work. Three years after graduation we got an ACE grant.”

Paul Hamlyn Foundation breakthrough funding followed, as well as important recognition as an ACE National Portfolio Organisation (NPO).

“Our appetite for trying new things has taken us in directions we wouldn’t have considered,” adds Barrett. “I think we are quite ambitious in terms of ideas and where we would like to go, but we are not always that proactive in seeking out partners as you need mutual desire for something to work. The best situations are when collaborators seek us out.

“We are opportunists; the nature of making work in found spaces means we will always respond to someone’s provocation. When the partner in Shanghai came to us, we leapt at the chance.”

Has success in the US and China created the additional challenge of maintaining the company ethos? Has the kernel of what made Punchdrunk special – inside and out – been lost at all?

“What we are not doing is franchising out work like Sleep No More.

The core Punchdrunk team travel to work on a production. The partners understand our core values and I drop in at the shows to keep supporting it. Every single beat and action in Sleep No More is choreographed – we have an amazing team with incredible rigour who keep that consistency going.”

It seems obvious that Sleep No More could be installed in more major cities – is that the plan? Barrett says not: “Our driving force is not to pack the audiences in for financial gain, it is the exploration of creating new work that gets me out of bed in the morning.

“As a company we want to take risks as theatremakers and discover what happens in hybrid spaces. We’d rather prioritise the ideas than rush at presenting something at scale and not getting anywhere.

Because we have shows on around the world, we are able to invest in new ideas like Kabeiroi. The worst case scenario for us would be to grow stagnant.”

There is little risk of stagnation: Punchdrunk recently established a research and development laboratory in the form of a secret village called Fallow Cross in Tottenham, London. Here they experiment with new theatrical and digital ideas with the locals, as well as hold workshops for professionals. Emphasis is also placed on contact with young people, communities and other participants via Punchdrunk Enrichment, Felix Barrett

PHOTO: © YUAN STUDIO

Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More, Shanghai – Xu Xinwen

Showtime 25

world from waking them up from the dream of the show. However, there are different forms of tech that could aid the descent into that universe we create. What we are doing at Fallow Cross is exploring the ways technology can aid immersion into that theatrical world.” punchdrunk.org.uk | @PunchdrunkUK To celebrate the company’s 18th birthday, Routledge will publish the Punchdrunk Encyclopaedia (14 December). Written by Josephine Machon, the book draws on the collective memory and archives of the core creative team past and present. Contributors include Adam Curtis, Lyn Gardner and Nicholas Hytner alongside Felix Barrett and creators Stephen Dobbie, Maxine Doyle, Peter Higgin, Beatrice Minns, Colin Nightingale and Livi Vaughan.

AUERBACH.GLASOW

Per forming Ar t s/Media Facilities Planning and Design

Architectural Lighting Design and Consulting

Boston University Joan & Edgar Booth Theatre and College of Fine Arts Production Center

A U E R B A C H . P O L L O C K. F R I E D L A N D E R

S A N F R A N C I S CO

N E W YO R K

w w w. aue r b ac hcon sul t a nt s .com

IAM Ad with Boston U Resized.indd 1

Designed by Elkus Manfredi Architects // © Robert Benson Photography

led by director of enrichment Peter Higgin.

One such project is The Oracles, a crossplatform experience for Haringey primary school children in collaboration with Google’s Creative Lab. Explains Higgin: “Our practice allows us to create shows for society that are a powerful tool for community engagement. I use my expertise to look at how to take our work into Punchdrunk’s The Oracles project in communication and education settings in London ways that bring joy and wonder – making people feel ‘punchdrunk’ by what they see, with the added bonus of increased engagement and attendance at school.

“So, for example, with The Oracles, we created a closed platform story-telling project that we held in our Punchdrunk village: there was a village on an iPad and a replica village in the four walls of our warehouse. With the kids involved, we discovered how tech and live experience complement one another. Tech can’t substitute a real-life experience, but it can enhance what’s on offer.”

Previous digital innovations also included Silverpoint; an awardwinning mobile gaming app which rewarded players with fragments of a story as they passed though levels of a game, culminating in a live experience in locations across London. Previous collaborators include Sony PlayStation, Xbox, Virgin Media, Louis Vuitton and Media Molecule.

Adds Barrett: “We would never use tech for tech’s sake and in Shanghai we are taking people’s phones from them to avoid the real

PHOTO: © PAUL J COCHRANE

“Our appetite for trying new things has taken us in directions we wouldn’t have considered”

MINNEAPOLIS

info @ aue r b ac hcon sul t a nt s .com

11/20/2018 3:50:33 PM

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

28 Norway

Q&A Dark Ecology

Margrethe Pettersen’s Living Land – Below as Above

Joris Strijbos’ IsoScope

D

Part of the Dark Ecology team (Hilde Methi, second left)

‘The new art works come together via strands that respond to ecological issues from the starting point of the Norwegian-Russian border area, located just above the Arctic Circle’ INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

IAM: Why was Dark Ecology set up and how does it operate logistically between the partners?

Hilde Methi: Dark Ecology evolved through research, the creation of new artworks, and a public programme presented across Norwegian and Russian geographical borders. Since its launch in 2014, it has included lectures, presentations of newly commissioned artworks, curated walks, a programme of talks, concerts, and performances.

The new art works come together via strands that respond to ecological issues from the starting point of the Norwegian-Russian border area, located just above the Arctic Circle.

Several events coincided and served as a motivating impulse for Dark Ecology. Firstly, I have long wanted to link Nikel (on the Russian side) with the neighbouring town of Kirkenes (on the Norwegian side) where I live.

Then in 2012, I was introduced to Sonic Acts in Amsterdam (where Annette is the producer), which had undertaken a long-term investigation on ‘darkness’. That very same year a new agreement of a border citizen zone between Norway and Russia was signed. This unique 50km zone seemed the perfect setting for the Dark Ecology project.

To some extent, the nature of the zone resembles Iceland. The difference is that here in the zone the darkness is not geological, but a result of man-made mountains, holes and black beaches.

PHOTOS © MICHAEL MILLER

ark Ecology is a three-year art, research and commissioning project initiated by the curatorial team of Dutch organisation Sonic Acts and Kirkenes-based curator Hilde Methi, in collaboration with Norwegian, Russian and other European partners. Curator Hilde Methi and producer Annette Wolfsberger explain what is behind the concept. Interview by Maria Roberts

IAM: What are the most prominent new works to have come out of the project?

Annette Wolfsberger: One of the most exciting commissioned pieces of 2015 was IsoScope by Joris Strijbos, a kinetic sound-andlight installation. It consists of multiple robotic wind objects that interact with each other and with the landscape to perform a generative composition manifesting itself through emergent behaviour.

Strijbos wanted to create an outdoor man-made phenomenon; an abstract entity, which, like most natural phenomena, can only be experienced under specific weather conditions. The work can be seen as a proposition for a new kind of mechanical and artificial life.

Though Strijbos spent a lot of time on the technical and functional development of the work, IsoScope is foremost a sensorial experience in which the audience can wander through the rotating lights amid a constantly changing sonic cloud.

The work was recently shown at the Sonic Acts Academy in Amsterdam and will tour internationally in the coming months.

Hilary Jeffery’s Murmansk Spaceport was representative of an environment designed for exploring unknown territories. During November 2015, carefully preselected musicians from Murmansk (Russia) and Bodø in the Barents Region (Norway) worked together with Hilary Jeffery in a new formation of LYSN to perform Murmansk Spaceport in Roxy, an independent venue located just outside the centre of Murmansk.

Reflecting on the ideas of a port as a place of departure and arrival, of temporary transactions and unstable conditions, Murmansk Spaceport encouraged the musicians to travel imaginatively into

bove

Norway 29

Annette Wolfsberger

areas unknown, where they could explore dark territories of which they had little or no experience. The performances of LYSN in November 2015 were fully packed, and the international audience and a big local audience made their journey to Jupiter.

Living Land – Below as Above is a soundwalk developed by Margrethe Iren Pettersen for Dark Ecology. The idea of the soundwalk began with Pettersen’s interest in ice as a metaphor, and as the primary archival medium of the Arctic. In the dark wintertime, life in the Arctic is at rest, hidden, and what is visual and audible is scaled down, inviting a deeper attention of our senses to nuances.

Margrethe was inspired by the 1979 documentary The Secret Life of Plants. She imagined the communication between species beneath the silent snow carpet, capturing a cosmology of the plants in which they are scientifically proven to be sentient beings with a nervous system, despite their lack of a brain.

What commissions are yet to premiere?

AW: For Vilgiskoddeoayvinyarvi: Wolf Lake on the Mountains, Justin Bennett will take participants on a fictional soundwalk from the perspective of a former scientist, exploring the area around the Kola Superdeep Borehole. Espen Sommer Eide and Signe Lidén will take participants on Altitude and History, a three-hour evening trek in the mountains above Nikel, where they will investigate acoustic phenomena in relation to the topography of the area, which is based on sound memories of elderly inhabitants of Nikel. ::vtol:: (aka Dmitry Morozov) will undertake a residency in April 2017 in the Pasvik Valley to create an audiovisual installation, and Dutch artist Nickel van Duijvenboden will give a performative reading.

Cecilia Jonsson has been doing intensive research in the Kirkenes area to explore suitable drilling sites and is preparing an installation created by drilling deep into the Earth’s crust. Prospecting: A Geological Survey of Greys is an interdisciplinary, site-specific art project that appropriates the scientific geological methods of extracting, analysing and categorising mineral specimens. Mikro is a series of improvised collaborative performances between HC Gilje (video) and Justin Bennett (sound) that draws its raw material from the immediate surroundings. They will perform the latest version of Mikro using material gathered over the course of the journey.

To what extent is Dark Ecology an environmental endeavour?

HM: As Arie Altena explains in the publication, we borrowed the term ‘dark ecology’ from Timothy Morton. What we find interesting about this concept is that it is so outspoken; it states that we need to think of ecology without the ideal notion of ‘Nature’, with a capital ‘N’.

Ecology is about connections: it’s a mesh, and a mess. It isn’t about going back to some originally pure natural state. It does not conceive of the world as an environment that human beings are ‘in’. Dark Ecology takes this interconnectedness seriously, and thinks it through. In the modern view, nature is a background on which the history of human culture unfolds.

In a non-modern view (to use the Latourian term) these strict divides do not exist. Also, Dark Ecology takes as its point of departure that the ‘apocalypse’ (namely the devastation of our planet, and our human civilization through human-induced climate change) has already happened. If we accept this, it means we can grieve, and go on. That’s an interesting proposal for art. It’s about finding new ways to connect. Art can provide a perspective of ‘the other’, it tunes our senses to the world, and encourages our imagination.

How is this explored in the commissions?

AW: As explained by Lucas van der Velden, the the scientification and financialisation of everything, the geopolitical and ecological crises,

and the impact human activity has on the entire planet, throws very big questions at us as individual agents and in many ways leaves us completely in the ‘dark’.

Through Dark Ecology we want to make these huge abstractions more tangible, physical and experience-based. In many ways the Barents Region is a place where the complexity of the ‘now’ is very real and can be experienced directly, as it is part of this complex multilayered system of geopolitics, resource extraction, Arctic nature, industry and indigenous European and Russian cultures. For us, Dark Ecology is very much about the ‘now’ and how we can present experimental art and forward-thinking theory in a contemporary context within a fresh approach.

With regards to the longer-lasting legacy, many of the commissioned works are not only presented during the Dark Ecology Journeys but are distributed by Sonic Acts and Hilde Methi, and are touring internationally. An overview of the commissioned works can be found on the website (darkecology.net/commissions); all lectures and presentations have been video recorded and can be found in the online archive (darkecology.net/field-notes).

How did you choose the artists?

HM: For the three journeys (2014, 2015 and now in 2016) we carefully handpicked a group of about 50 people. Roughly two thirds we invited ourselves, alongside artists who are presenting a new work, keynote speakers, the Sonic Acts team, the production crew, a documentation crew, and so on.

The remaining one third have been selected from a list of applicants who responded to our open call out.

Some are curators, some are artists, some are academics, some are scientists, some are activists, and some are organisers.

These people are the only ones who experience the entire journey. Most of the events we programme along the way are open to the local public, and some of the installations are available for a longer period. Local audiences come from a broad mix of people from Kirkenes, Nikel, Zapolyarny and Murmansk.

More information on this year’s programme can be found at darkecology. net/journey-2016.

Upcoming publication Living Earth – Field Notes from the Dark Ecology Project 2014-2016 will be available via the Sonic Acts online shop from 8 June. darkecology.net

The next Dark Ecology journey takes place from 8-12 June in the Pasvik Valley, Nikel, Zapolyarny and Kirkenes 9 June: Svanvik: Expanded Lecture by Heather Davis, Лесофон / Lesophon by ::vtol:: aka Dmitry Morozov.

10 June: Svanvik & Nikel: Dark Ecology reading

by Timothy Morton, Altitude & History by Espen Sommer Eide & Signe Liden.

11 June: Nikel & Zapolyarny: Vilgiskoddeoayvinyarvi: Wolf Lake on the Mountains by Justin Bennett.

12 June: Kirkenes: Prospecting: A Geological Survey of Greys by Cecilia Jonsson /

Echolocation, part two (working title) by Nickel van Duivenboden / MIKRO by Justin Bennett & HC Gilje.

15 June Dark Ecology and Arctic Encounters Forum: How does the Arctic come to matter through art and science? Includes many of the Norwegian artists, the curatorial team, and scientists from Arctic Encounters to share and discuss the process and results of the project at Verdensteatret and at Kurant in Tromsø.

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

16 Shakespeare special

All the world’s a stage After visiting 187 countries and travelling more than 300,000km Shakespeare’s Globe’s two-year world tour of Hamlet is almost over. Andrew Anderson speaks to producer Tom Bird to find out how they pulled it off

C

ast your mind back four years to 2012: the Arab Spring was fresh in the memory, Simon Rattle was still in Berlin and Donald Trump was just a man with a funny hairstyle rather than a US Presidential candidate. It was also the year of the London Olympics. As well as the games themselves, which proved to be an enormous success, a Cultural Olympiad took place across the UK. Highlights included London 2012 Festival, the opera Cycle Song (that told the story of Olympic cycling hero Lal White who was a steelworker by day and trained by night), and the World Shakespeare Festival. For the latter, the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) collaborated with leading UK and international arts organisations, and with Globe to Globe, a major international programme produced by Shakespeare’s Globe. It was the biggest celebration of Shakespeare ever staged.

World Shakespeare Festival brought 37 international companies to London to perform Shakespeare – in their native language – at Shakespeare’s Globe. For producer Tom Bird it was a massive achievement. But once it was over, Bird kept hearing the same feedback from the companies involved: ‘You should come and play at our theatre.’

And that got Bird and his colleagues thinking. ‘It felt like we could really tour to these 37 countries,’ says Bird. ‘But then we thought: if we’re going to Argentina and Brazil we might as well go to Chile. And suddenly it became a world tour where we would try and visit every country. All the ingredients were there; we just sat down one night early in 2013 and decided to do it.’

It sounds quite simple when Bird puts it like that, but a world tour to every single country on earth? That means booking trains, planes, boats and buses. It means finding actors, producers and administrators willing to spend two years on the road. It means getting a visa for every single person for every single country – and as many of us in the performing arts know, getting even one visa for one country can be a never-ending nightmare. It seemed like an impossible project.

And yet they did it. Hamlet Globe to Globe is almost at the end of its two-year tour, with only a handful of dates in Slovenia, Denmark and the UK still to go. They’ve visited 187 countries including Cambodia, Sudan, France, Australia, Iceland, Belize and Brunei, and travelled over 300,000km. They’ve played on airstrips, at refugee camps and in the main debating chamber of the United Nations in New York.

‘It works because it’s a great team,’ says Bird. ‘It is one single company of actors and stage managers – 16 people. They travel around the world and do between one and three shows in each country.

‘There are 12 actors, but you can do it with eight actors,’ he continues.

‘Sometimes you are playing Hamlet, sometimes you’re playing Marcellus.

They set out to learn at least two big roles each, but on the road for two years they have learned other roles which is great fun, develops it and keeps it fresh.’

This all sounds very positive, but what I really want to know about are the problems: what were the biggest difficulties that Bird and his team had to overcome?

He laughs at the question, but a weary note in his voice tells me that some serious time has been spent on resolving issues. ‘There have been a few massive complications. One is safety and security. That has been difficult. The team have just been to Afghanistan, the other week I was in Iraq with them, and you have to be very careful.’

The team take advice from the Foreign Office, British Council and other security and diplomacy experts before committing to a show.

‘We’ve got our own internal rules about what we will and won’t do,’ adds the producer. ‘For example, we were in Pakistan only four or five days after the recent terror attacks in Lahore but we were satisfied that security measures were in place. Whereas we had to cancel a show in Burkina Faso because we weren’t confident, which was a massive shame.’

‘People will watch Shakespeare almost anywhere’

B4Youth Theatre perform with Globe to Globe in Monrovia, Liberia

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

Shakespeare special 17

shakespearesglobe.com

Creatives Directed by

Designed by

Composed by

Keith Bartlett Claudius/Polonius

Naeem Hayat Hamlet

Rawiri Paratene Polonius/Claudius

John Dougall Claudius/Polonius

Beruce Khan Horatio/Rosencrantz /Laertes/Guildenstern

Matthew Romain Horatio/Rosencrantz /Laertes/Guildenstern

Tom Lawrence Horatio/Rosencrantz /Laertes/Guildenstern

Amanda Wilkin Ophelia/Gertrude/Horatio /Rosencrantz/Guildenstern

Dominic Dromgoole and Bill Buckhurst

Jonathan Fensom

Bill Barclay (Original music

by Laura Forrest-Hay)

Cast

Ladi Emeruwa Hamlet Phoebe Fildes Ophelia/Gertrude/Horatio /Rosencrantz/Guildenstern Miranda Foster Gertrude/ 2nd Gravedigger

Jennifer Leong Ophelia/Horatio /Rosencrantz/Guildenstern

Performance in the Jungle refugee camp, Calais

‘Picking the actors felt like choosing an astronaut’

Performance in a refugee camp, Yemen

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

PHOTOS © SHAKESPEARE’S GLOBE / @AMANDAWILKIN

Some countries have proved just too dangerous to visit, such as Syria and Libya. But whenever that has happened Globe to Globe has found a solution in keeping with the spirit of the tour by making a trip to refugee camps. ‘We’ve played for refugees in Jordan, Yemen and Djibouti and it feels like a good solution for people we can’t reach in their own country. Someone told me that you cannot underestimate how much boredom exists in these camps, so it felt good to go in and entertain people.’

A second problem is the logistics and, in particular, those tricky visas that we already touched on. ‘It is a massive headache,’ he admits. ‘We’ve had two experts here in the office working on that problem. Getting a visa for every country in the world – you can’t underestimate just how difficult an operation that is.’

Wherever possible Globe to Globe avoided planes. This was partly for the romance of land travel and partly because of the one thing all travellers dread: lost luggage. ‘It is hard because sometimes you don’t get your bags back for four days – well, we have already moved on by then,’ explains Bird. ‘In Kenya we lost the bags en route to Cameroon so the guys had to do the show without any props, costume or set. That happened a number of times.

‘But as a result they’ve become the most resourceful company of actors in the world – the show must go on. We always put a show on no matter what. We costume them and prop the show in some way.’

Of course with two years of touring there are simply hundreds of stories Bird could share with me, but a couple in particular stand out.

The most recent was a trip to Iraq just a week prior to our chat.

‘When we played in Iraq last Tuesday it was really phenomenal – there were 1,200 people to see us in Erbil. There are no shows there at all, so it was a really worthwhile thing to do…and it was odd, because it feels like a city looking forward, yet Islamic State forces are just 30km away.’

Another was notable for its remoteness. ‘We played in Tuvalu [an island in the Pacific Ocean] and the theatre was on the runway where the airplane landed – we got out of the plane and just walked right into it. Almost everyone from the island came to the show, because as you can imagine not many performing arts companies ever visit.’

I envisaged a third problem – getting actors to commit to such a huge undertaking – but Bird says that it wasn’t a challenge at all. ‘We thought we were going to have to persuade people to do it but in the end it was the other way around – we had people knocking on our door.

‘They’re an unbelievable group of people. First and foremost, they are great actors – you have to have that; it is a Globe show and people expect a certain standard. But also they had to be willing and free to do this as a job. Dominic [Dromgoole, the director of the show and former artistic director of The Globe] said picking the actors felt like choosing an astronaut.’

As well as the actors’ time Globe to Globe also counted on funding support from a variety of channels. ‘Sometimes by British Council on a country by country basis if they have a sponsor in a local area, like when we performed at the British Council office in Kazakhstan,’ says Bird. ‘Or when we play at festivals with a budget they pay us. The rough model is the rich countries pay for the poorer countries – you bring in a higher fee in Australia than you do in Niger. There are a lot of places where we were not paid at all, which was part of the plan.

‘In terms of planning, in China they want to know the details a year or more in advance. But in parts of sub-Saharan Africa we were booking shows four days before. It is completely different from country to country, which we expected, but it is sometimes a bit of a minefield.’

The power of the Globe’s name, backed by UNESCO patronage, meant there was only one country who refused them: North Korea.

Since Hamlet deals with power dynamics and murder among a ruling family – a North Korean speciality – that seems like a shame. But joking aside, it leads Bird to a larger point – that every nation has taken something different from Hamlet.

‘Hamlet has such a richness and can mean so many different things to so many different people – that’s why we picked it in the first place. In Rwanda everyone reacted to the themes of revenge, because that is a massive issue in that country. In other places it became about a broken family, or women’s rights, or what it is like to grow up as a young man. The play has all that in it and more.

‘The one thing that has really knocked us over the head is that people really like Shakespeare all over the world. You don’t just have to do the normal touring circuit; you don’t have to do just New York or Hong Kong. People will watch Shakespeare almost anywhere.’

24 Australia

PHOTOS: © JEFF BUSBY & PIPPA SAMAYA

Chunky Move INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

B

ased in Melbourne, Chunky Move is one of Australia’s most forward-thinking dance companies. Creatively led by Dutch artistic director Anouk van Dijk, its work considers modern society via intertextual approaches. Its productions bring spoken word artists, playwrights, dancers, actors and even sculptors together to create multidisciplinary work for the stage.

‘We like to pop up in a few of those different arts tribes,’ says executive director Vanessa Pigrum. ‘Last year we briefly collaborated on a chilled dance sequence with an electric trance duo – the audience came to see them, not us – but our dancers were blown away by the hip crowd that turned up.’

Pigrum adds that it has not been too difficult to find dancers willing to embrace a multidisciplinary environment. Even when a new member comes to the company without dramatic experience beyond dance, the team make use of training techniques to inspire them to be confident speakers on stage.

Dancers are also encouraged to contribute personal stories to draw out the authenticity of a work, meanwhile a dramaturg is on hand during rehearsals to work alongside the choreographer.

Chunky Move’s next new piece, Soliloquy, should be ready in June.

‘It’s very much about living in a world in which you can take hundreds of selfies – and then edit them and only project the good ones to your networks,’ says the executive director.

‘It examines this constant sense of self-promotion and how you can gradually lose your sense of self when caught up in it all: Soliloquy asks, ‘who is the authentic individual?’ and poses the question ‘do we ever see a truly unguarded moment in terms of what is being reported?’.

‘Anouk van Dijk’s work is concerned with individual needs and those

Australia 25

of society at large,’ adds Pigrum. ‘She explores the tension between maintaining a sense of self in relation to other people and a sense of self in relation to technology.’

The majority of the work at Chunky Move considers ideas and the need to connect with people. Complexity of Belonging, for example (for which Dijk collaborated with a German playwright), is drawn from personal experience, like much of Chunky Move’s repertoire.

Pigrum says that the company sees itself as having two key purposes: on the one hand there’s the high production value touring scale of its work, and on the other hand its responsibility in Australia to provide professional development opportunities for dancers.

‘We like to think we provide something for every stage in a dancer’s career, so if you are a young graduate coming out of tertiary training there are professional classes held three times a week and intensive workshops throughout the year, as well as secondments. We also offer placements for choreographers, who can sit in with Anouk during the making of a work.’

‘We’ve run these kind of opportunities for 10 years and following these engagement projects we often commission an emerging choreographer to make their first full-length work with the full support of the company.’

For this a budget is allocated and the ‘trainee’ is assigned a production team to help them through the transition from working independently to working in a company structure. New commissions are developed over a nine-month period that then become part of Chunky Move’s touring repertoire. The company then uses its in-house team to promote it and secure further work for that artist.

‘We felt that there was a real gap for mid-career artists,’ says Pigrum.

‘There’s quite a lot of opportunities for emerging artists and fresh young artists straight out of college but not for mid-career artists – especially dancers who are about 10-years into their careers.

‘This tends to apply to professionals aged 28 into their 40s. By their late 30s dancers may start to want to move into a career as a choreographers. Likewise, choreographers may want to develop careers as artistic directors.’

There’s no formal training to aid this transition but a placement at Chunky Move can help dancers take the leap from onstage to offstage.

‘If you are lucky enough to get a management role, then there’s an enormously steep learning curve to navigate. Suddenly your life is not just about making new work, and not just about being in the studio.

When you are in senior role, it’s suddenly about being in a team. Very quickly you have to get to grips with all of the mechanisms around funding because it is your job to keep the work happening and so on.’

Chunky Move bridges the divide by providing a six-month salaried position. Once an artist is selected, a customised programme is devised that includes studio space for them to research and develop their own work. The candidate then becomes part of the team and is given specific projects to work on: for example running the public talks and forums.

Pigrum hopes this arm of Chunky Move’s work will be sustainable, adding that much of 2016’s philanthropic fundraising will go towards supporting its career development strand. (MARIA ROBERTS)

Opposite page (top to bottom): An Act of Now; Complexity of Belonging Above (top to bottom): Depth of Field; 247 Days

chunkymove.com.au INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

30

Taiwan

New horizons

Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan is an ambassador for Taiwan’s contemporary dance scene. Now after 45 years – during which the company literally rose from the ashes – its founder and artistic director Lin Hwai-min is preparing for retirement. Interview by Maria Roberts

A

Clockwise from above: Lin Hwai-min; Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan perform RICE; new home Cloud Gate Theater; FORMOSA

fter 45 years at the helm, founder and artistic director Lin Hwai-min will retire from Taiwan’s most famous contemporary dance company later next year. It’s been an incredible journey for the director and choreographer who only learned to dance aged 23. When Lin set up Cloud Gate Dance Theater of Taiwan in 1973 (aged 26), it quickly became Taiwan’s first and most successful contemporary dance company.

It was not an easy path for the artistic director: in 2008, just as the company was taking off, the rented building where Lin and his team created their works burned to the ground. Thankfully, the disaster was not the end of the company but the start of something incredible. Media coverage spurred 4,155 donors to contribute to a recovery fund. The result was staggering and Lin was able to find a plot for a new home just 25km from Taipei, by the Tamsui River, renowned for its beautiful sunsets. The land is on lease from the government for 40 years.

This story signifies just how special Cloud Gate has become to an island of dance lovers, as does the fact that its free outdoor performances attract an average of 30,000 people for each show – remarkable given its detached location.

Has Cloud Gate’s success been something of a surprise? “Inspired by the student movements in the 60s, I wished to create a dance company to perform for grassroots audiences in communities and for students on campuses in Taiwan. When I founded Cloud Gate in 1973, I was unaware that this humble dream would take a lifetime to carry out,” recalls Lin Hwai-min.

“After the rented studio was destroyed by a fire in 2008, we were blessed to receive generous support from the society of Taiwan and friends in other countries to build the Cloud Gate complex, which includes a 400-seat theatre, a small gallery, a bookstore/café and a huge outdoor space open to the public. The public support represents love, trust and also places high expectations on us – so we have to work harder to serve society.

“Every step forward is a surprise. I didn’t dream that Cloud Gate would tour around the world for more than 100 days each year; and would survive for 45 years. Like most contemporary companies, we struggle for survival. Cloud Gate started receiving government funding in 1992. In 2017, just 16% of its annual income was subsidised by government, the rest is earned from performances and fundraising.”

When Lin founded Cloud Gate he was driven by ambitions to understand the principles of dance, to achieve his aims he became a consummate observer. “I learned about bodies from watching dancers move and from watching masters of Beijing opera and martial arts teachers. I taught myself how to choreograph and to manage the company. I made efforts to communicate what modern dance is about.”

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

p30-33_Cloudgate_Vol14_Iss9vF.indd 26

21/08/2018 16:17

Taiwan 31

PHOTOS: COURTESY OF CLOUD GATE DANCE THEATRE OF TAIWAN

“We believe that artistic identity should be the driver of excellence”

Sourcing the right talent was a challenge. “As professional theatres in Taiwan arrived as late as the 1980s we had to set up Cloud Gate Theatre Workshop to train technical personnel for our productions. Getting the company up and running was hard work, but it was also very gratifying.

Now the company fulfils its mission to visit communities and to present annual free outdoor performances in different cities of Taiwan, with relative ease.”

Lin’s departure comes just as the company has reached relative security.

Cloud Gate Theatre's public venue and creative space opened in 2015. The site overlooks the Tamsui River and is populated by hundreds of trees, many of which have been with Lin since his humble warehouse beginnings; he uprooted and transplanted the trees to Tamsui following the fire.

Now in his 70s, Lin is stepping down to make way for new blood. With a brand so closely tied to his name and individual story, how has he prepared for succession? “There is a curse with contemporary dance companies that assumes they will fold after their founders pass away.

Recent instances are the companies of Merce Cunningham and Trisha Brown. For more than 40 years Cloud Gate has been the only full-time professional dance company in Taiwan, I hope it will continue to vibrate without me.

“Last year the board of the Cloud Gate Foundation accepted my proposal to have Cheng Tsung-lung, the present artistic director of Cloud Gate 2, to succeed me in January 2020 (see next feature). This allows two years for the whole organisation to restructure for the transition.”

The company leans towards ideas of growth and propagation in everything it does: from the establishment of parklands to an incubation scheme to cultivate dancers, choreographers and staff. "Every dancer, every species of tree, has a unique personality of its own. I listen to those ‘voices’ and try to fulfil their potentials," says Lin. "In doing so I learn from them and draw inspiration to create. As a citizen I care about the changes in society. I don’t think dance can express topics as eloquently as

newspaper editorials, but some of my works reflect the changes in Taiwanese society intuitively.”

How has his choreography changed during this time? Has the company embraced technology into its settings, stage design and costume choices? And how does modern society’s evolving fascination with technology merge with Cloud Gate’s holistic and environmental ethos?

“During the past 40 years, Taiwan has undergone drastic changes,” says Lin. “A 38-year martial law was abolished in 1987, hidden materials were unearthed, and we were able to learn about, rather than review, our history. The first presidential direct election in Taiwan took place in 1996 and then 20 years later the first female president was elected. The progression continues: same-sex marriage will be legalised in 2019. Such changes affect my perspective and sensibility and have influenced the content and style of my choreographies over the years.

“Visual elements of my work have been influenced by realistic situations. Since the 1990s most of my creations have been full-length works, for a very simple reason: one costume can last through the whole production.

As the economic situation has worsened, theatres around the world have often asked companies to do a one-day set up; my response has been to utilise projection, which saves time for the staff, cast and crew. Nevertheless, as a computer-illiterate person, high-tech is not my cup of tea.”

How does the company balance topics relating to nature with political and human commentary? “Life is complicated enough, I pursue simplicity and beauty. I need them. But I have also created works that touch reality.

DUST (2014), set to Shostakovich’s string quartet, laments the suffering of refugees. My latest work, FORMOSA, is a love letter to the land and history of Taiwan, in which excerpts of poems about the island are read as part of the soundscape.” He adds that aside from this particular piece, he rarely works with writers in the development process.

For Lin, whose career has been full of moments to cherish, the forthcoming season will be no exception. Cloud Gate will continue to tour FORMOSA and the double bill DUST and WHITE WATER. “A retrospective programme featuring excerpts from my past works will be presented in the autumn season in Taiwan as a token of farewell to my audience”, says Lin, adding that the production will be presented at Hong Kong Arts Festival in February 2019.

Lin is yet to have some free time to make plans for his retirement, but nature and travel will as ever play an important role in his life. One memory in particular has made him aware of how worthwhile his journey at Cloud Gate has been. “A few years ago I participated in a hiking pilgrimage. While taking a break in the darkness of night in a small village, a peasant woman came up to me and said, ‘Mr Lin, thank you very much for your beautiful art.’ It is the best review I have ever received.” cloudgate.org.tw

“We believe that artistic identity should be the driver of excellence ” INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

p30-33_Cloudgate_Vol14_Iss9vF.indd 27

21/08/2018 16:18

Taiwan

Cloud Gate 2

Q&A

PHOTOS: © LEE CHIA-YEH

32

Cheng Tsung-lung is artistic director for Cloud Gate 2, a sister company of Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan. He talks to Maria Roberts about their forthcoming productions IAM: How do Cloud Gate 2 and Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan (CGDTT) relate to and differ from one another?

Cheng Tsung-lung: Although a sister company to Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan (CGDTT), Cloud Gate 2 does not prepare dancers for Cloud Gate; it has its own independent artistic identity and its own group of dancers.

Our company’s main focus is to showcase talented young choreographers and dancers from Taiwan. In addition, Cloud Gate 2 also reaches out to tens of thousands of people by holding free outdoor performances as well as residency programmes on student campuses and at grassroots level in communities. Inspired by the theatre’s surroundings, I develop new works with designers and dancers around my emotions and responses. We spend a few months together creating, exploring, modifying and rehearsing, and then we present our collaborative creations to our audiences.

Above: Cheng Tsung-lung Right: 13 Tongues

IAM: How did you build the story, choreography and set for new work 13 Tongues?

CT-l: I was born in Bangka, the oldest district of Taipei City. Ever since I was a child, I have always been fascinated by my mother’s stories about “Thirteen Tongues,” a street artist in the 1960s. A legendary storyteller, he was said to be able to portray multiple roles of all walks of life in Bangka, which is a district rich with temples, religious rites and festive parades.

I decided to create a dance work to transform my childhood memory of the Taoist rites and bustling street life of Bangka into a fantasy world.

For this production I commissioned composer Lim Gion (a Soundtrack Award winner at 2015 Cannes Film Festival); projection designer Ethan Wang (a winner of 2014 Knight of Illumination Awards, UK); costume designer Lin Bing-hao, who designed costumes for Tadashi Suzuki’s La Dame aux Camélias; and visual artist He Jia-sing, a frequently seen designer at international art and design exhibitions. Accomplished artists in each of their their respective fields, they collaborated with me to create 13 Tongues.

Part real, part dreamscape, my hope for 13 Tongues is that it will take the audience on a journey as mesmerising as the stories told by the original “Thirteen Tongues,” in which distinctions between deities, spirits and human beings converged.

While 13 Tongues is rich with folk elements relating to movement, colour, costumes, Taoist mantra, and unique Taiwanese culture, its spirit is contemporary. I believe this fusion will fascinate audiences in any country.

The dance movements in 13 Tongues, the musical styles, and the visual

“In general, many people here take dance very seriously, which to me is what is so special and unique about contemporary dance in Taiwan”

effects are all familiar and relatable to audiences in Taiwan. The soundscape fuses Taiwanese folk songs, Japanese nakashi tunes and electronic music; the projection images are reminiscent of the colours of the temples; the chanting of mysterious mantras by dancers, and their stomping, staggering and trembling movements are all just like enchanted shamans. These cultural references form the vocabulary between the choreography and the audience.

IAM: Do you have any new works in development?

CT-l: I am currently working on 22° Lunar Halo, a co-commission by the three National Performing Arts Centres in Taiwan, to be premiered in April 2019.

The inspiration for 22° Lunar Halo came from an ancient saying in China: “A halo around the moon indicates the rising of wind, the damp on a plinth is a sign of approaching rain.” Nowadays our world is fast-paced and constantly changing, rich with wars and disasters.

We are conditioned to live with ominous apprehension. The beauty of life, like the dreamlike lunar halo, sometimes seems illusory and unattainable. The ethereal soundscape music to 22° Lunar Halo is by renowned Icelandic avant-rock band, Sigur Rós. It illustrates the tantalising anxiety and that sense of beauty and danger connected to the theme.

22° Lunar Halo will be premiered by Cloud Gate 2 in April 2019 at National Theatre in Taipei, National Taichung Theatre, and National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Weiwuying), while CGDTT will tour with Lin Hwai-min’s repertoire to Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, China and Russia.

In 2020, the first year under my direction, CGDTT will start the new era with a two-month European tour of 13 Tongues in the spring, and a US tour in the fall, in addition to premiering another new work of mine at the end of the year.

IAM: How do you replenish and retain dancers at both Cloud Gate dance companies?

CT-l: The dancers of CGDTT and Cloud Gate 2 work under the same roof, receiving the same daily training disciplines, which includes modern dance, ballet, meditation, internal martial arts, and tai chi dao yin – an ancient breathing exercise. Cloud Gate holds auditions annually, attracting dancers from Taiwan and many Asian countries. The contents of our audition are normally based on Cloud Gate’s training disciplines.

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

p30-33_Cloudgate_Vol14_Iss9vF.indd 28

21/08/2018 16:22

As dancers’ careers are very short, Cloud Gate dancers must have incredible passion and willpower for dance in order to sustain and enjoy our all-year-round touring and performance schedule, including international and Taiwan tours, as well as outreach programmes to school campuses and remote villages.

IAM: What is special and unique about contemporary dance coming out of Taiwan?

CT-l: For an island populated with only 23 million people, not only do we have a very high-density of semi-professional dance troupes, some of which tour internationally, but we also have many educational institutions, from elementary schools to colleges, which provide professional dance curriculums. In general, many people here take dance very seriously, which to me is what is so special and unique about contemporary dance in Taiwan.

IAM: In 2020 you will take over from Lin Hwai-min, who after 45 years is retiring – it must be both incredibly exciting and an honour. Is your plan to continue the legacy or to change direction?

CT-l: It has always been Cloud Gate’s mission to create great danceworks and share them with as many people as possible, especially those who have little opportunity to visit grand theatres. We shall continue to focus and do better on these two most important beliefs we have. cloudgate.org.tw/en/cloud-gate-2.html INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

p30-33_Cloudgate_Vol14_Iss9vF.indd 29

21/08/2018 16:22

16 Industry insight

‘I wanted to be able to finish off the vision of the works’

Dance cell An Australian company is blurring the boundaries between science, genetics, psychiatry and the performing arts. Maria Roberts speaks to dancer and auteur Shaun Parker

S

haun Parker readily admits he’s got a naughty sense of humour.

When we catch up on Skype the Australian choreographer and dancer is perched on the sofa at his family home in Mildura, cracking jokes.

This cheekiness is threaded through the works he creates at Shaun Parker & Company. Happy as Larry, Blue Love, Trolleys, and AM I are just some of the shows in his repertoire that tackle intense issues with his trademark light touch.

Parker doesn’t take himself too seriously, but that’s not to say he has a flippant approach to his work. In fact, it is quite the opposite: he graduated from Monash University with a Bachelor of Science before going on to study for another degree at the Faculty of the Victorian College of the Arts, part of the University of Melbourne.

He rediscovered his love of dance and then for 17 years toured with companies such as Meryl Tankard’s Australian Dance Theatre, Force Majeure, Sydney Theatre Company, Chunky Move, The Song Company, Opera Australia, State Theatre Company of South Australia, ALIAS, Meredith Monk, and Sasha Waltz.

Until, like a bolt from the blue, he was compelled to launch his own brand of dance. ‘I was about 36 and I thought: I have to do my own thing, I’ve got to direct and set up my own company. So I made the sacrifice not to dance with other companies again. It was a really hard ceremonial sacrifice. I thought I’d never go on stage again and I had virtually no willpower to continue what I’d been doing either.’

And so he began the hard task of doing everything: ‘I was quite happy setting up the company, choreographing and being the author and director of the works. It was quite stimulating for my neurons,’ he says.

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

Blue Love

‘As a dancer you train your mind. However, when you set up a company there is something awesome about really being able to exercise other parts of your brain as you figure out how to make something happen.’

So in the beginning he self-produced, wrote the scripts and funding bids, directed and performed, and now he has a supportive team to keep the wagon going.

‘I wanted to be able to finish off the vision of the works and the dramaturgy [which you can’t do when you’re a dancer in someone else’s work]. When someone turns up from their busy lives to spend an hour and a half watching a show, or whatever, I want them to be transformed by the end of it.’

Now Parker is to make a comeback to the stage after a 10-year hiatus with a revival of Blue Love, which premiered as his first piece at Sydney Opera House (SOH) back in 2005. The show will undertake a 10-city tour of Australia, and Parker says he is looking forward to touring it globally.

‘I think it is so vital for me to return to the stage. For a long time I thought I wouldn’t need to dance again, but now the moment has arrived. I need to feel that connection with the audience and remind myself what it feels like to be a ‘theatrical pawn’ on stage. I hope this will make me a better director.

‘Blue Love is quite a cheeky piece. I’ve always welcomed gratuitous nudity,’ laughs Parker, ‘it helps get bums on seats – pun intended.’

Blue Love toured after its first opera house season, but then my other works kept coming through so it got let go. I’m really glad we are going back to it.’

A fusion of physical theatre, film and dance, Blue Love uses references from pop culture and art to explore romantic love as gurus Glenn and Rhonda Flune go on a comic exploration of what makes the perfect relationship.

Interestingly, whilst Blue Love seeks to entertain and enlighten, the piece was developed when Parker was making some serious transitions in his own life. He’d become a father, his marriage was coming to an end, and he was taking new risks in his career. Making it all the more

Industry insight 17

PHOTOS © SHAUN PARKER & COMPANY

‘Humour is part of us and I feel drawn to it’

Clockwise from top left: This Show is About People; Blue Love; Happy as Larry

remarkable that he opted to use comedy as a ruse to tell the story, rather than head down the ‘dance angst’ route. Why is humour so important to him?

‘Humour is part of us and I feel drawn to it: what I love about Blue Love and Happy as Larry [his follow-up work] is that the characters remain positive, but sure, there are dark moments. I wanted to present the ridiculousness of us human beings thrusting about on this earth, in quite an intense and incredibly complicated way, as we search for love.

‘Experiences can tarnish you somehow: loved ones pass away, relationships break down and there are constant challenges. We have to keep ourselves healthy because we take some knocks as we get older, whilst at the same time having to learn to deal with more responsibility.

‘Self-awareness can be a beautiful thing,’ adds Parker, ‘but it can also open a few complex corridors and doorways and it can take a while to find your way through. One of the things I love most about life is the ability to learn.’

‘For Blue Love we started to research all the famous representations of love in music and arts. From the images of people sitting on the grass in Renaissance paintings, to kitsch 80s ‘I will love you forever’ pop songs.

I remembered what it was like when your heart is broken.

‘When your heart i totally being ripped apart what is more potent: the high art or the pop culture representations of love? Blue Love came out of my own confusion with romantic love and what it can do to you.’

And it’s these very delicate nuances of personality, love and experience that Parker explores in all of his dance narratives. Happy as Larry had its genesis in a book on personality and ego structure titled Character and Neurosis by the Chilean psychiatrist Claudio Naranjo, which explores the protection of self through the development of the ego.

Years after reading it, Parker got nine dancers in a room and they began to devise a piece around the nine core ego structures anchored in Naranjo’s Enneagram. Using the context of his own life experiences, they began to imagine how different ego structures could respond to happiness and find happiness and belonging.

For Parker this intersection of where life meets science and art

remains important. To create the 2014 work AM I, Parker worked with professor of cosmology Dr Heather Johnson to investigate questions like ‘Am I my tribe? Am I my genetic blueprint? Am I a random cosmological consequence?’

What did he gain from bringing professionals from outside the arts into the studio: ‘My science degree gave me an awesome natural insight, but Heather could be really specific. She’d spend a whole afternoon talking to me on the theory of the Big Bang, or quantum physics, spirituality and perception.

‘We worked like this, going back and forward with the dancers and the professor. It was an awesome experience for the dancers, a lot of whom have a background in street dance, popping and tutting, and their movement skills were so sophisticated they were able to transform these energetic concepts into dance – their bodies became this amazing canvas.’

Parker is certainly in it for the long haul: four years and countless grants later, AM I was ready to be performed. It opened at SOH as part of the Sydney Festival, and went on to tour the Melbourne and Adelaide Festivals, Movimentos in Germany, Dansens Hus in Luxmebourg, Grand Theatre in Luxmebourg and Georgetown Festival in Malaysia.

Shaun Parker & Company’s next big new work, XY, has been in development for five years. Fitting with his oeuvre, it takes a complex ideology, deconstructs its social, scientific and human elements and pieces it back together through dance.

This time the Y-chromosome is under the microscope – not what it is ‘to be a man’ as seen through the social gaze, but rather what it means to be a man on a genetic level, prior to socialistion. It’s a big idea, and taps into the zeitgeist. For XY Parker says he has ‘assembled an outstanding ensemble of nine male dancers from across Australia,’ and that ‘their physicality and unique visceral power promise to be a treat’.

This month, however, his focus is on CINARS where Blue Love will be showcased. ‘We are now at the stage with the company to connect with the American market and the international market once more. Six years on, we are able to have a number of shows on tour simultaneously.

AM I toured Australia, Europe and Malaysia, so it is a tried and tested production. After taking some time to create new work, we are ready to get Shaun Parker & Company out on the road in 2017.’ shaunparkercompany.com INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

artsmanager INTERNATIONAL

Volume 14 Issue 4 April 2018 £10 (UK) €17 (EU) / $25 (US)

www.internationalartsmanager.com

We speak to creator and founder Floriana Frassetto about the weird and wonderful world of

Mummenschanz Find this issue at

ArtsFestivals Summit 2018 Ljubljana Slovenia

11-14 APRIL

Hosted by Ljubljana Festival

Country focus

News

Ballett Zürich, Compagnia IAMA conference, Finzi Pasca, Camerata Rambert, Opera North, Zürich, Argovia Phil Arts & Philanthropy

Festival special

Diary

Festivals for children, European Festivals Association, listings

Zvonimir Dobrović prepares for Croatia’s Queer Zagreb Season

18 Switzerland

SHAPE SHIFTERS Mummenschanz occupies a quirky arts landscape unto itself. Maria Roberts speaks to the team about their new show You & Me

PHOTOS: © MUMMENSCHANZ

I

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

f you’ve ever been lucky enough to see Mummenschanz in action, you’ll have been mesmerised by their performances. Described as les musiciens du silence, Mummenschanz productions are quirky, humourous, bafflingly enchanting and kind of cute. Even more remarkable is that the shows are delivered without words: the clever use of body language creates tiny interconnected stories, easily understood by audiences of all ages and nationalities. A concept that is astonishing given how modern society is inundated with language and noise.

Founded by Andres Bossard, Floriana Frassetto and Bernie Schürch, Mummenschanz has been shape-shifting on stage for 47 years. For new show You & Me, Frassetto collaborated for seven months with Tina Kronis and Richard Alger.

Over the telephone from California, Frassetto explains the method behind Mummenschanz’s trademark style: “It’s not the case that anybody can become a performer with Mummenschanz, it is not something you can grasp immediately. It takes time and a special feeling of interaction with the audience. It is really a different sort of performance because you must become one with your costume, your mask and your body. Mummenschanz is all about body language.

“A lot of the humour comes out accidentally in the improvisations. When we are in front of the audience, another dimension of the work comes out.

We are always working on a show, it is never finished.

“In terms of making a show, I have four wonderful colleagues. I create the shapes and do the artisanal work of constructing the costumes, once that is done there are hours and hours of improvisation that follow. I have a basic theme that I marry with the personality of the person who is improvising, along with the character that we want to perform. The result is not dissimilar to commedia dell’arte.”

She adds that the work requires a special kind of performer: “Acting is involved in the embodiment of the personality of the object, animal or character you see on stage. What I look for in a performer is an immediate gut feeling. If you perform for Mummenschanz, even If you are sad, the moment you are on stage you need to create a bewildered state between the actor and the audience. It is like we interact on another planet to activate emotions.”

Multitalented Frassetto even performs in the show, her costars are Kevin Blaser, Christa Lee-Anne Barrett, Sara Francesca Hermann and Oliver Pfulg, aided by lighting and technical director Eric Sauge.

The company also has an innate ability to laugh at itself. Director Markus Simmen was frank in his summary of Mummenschanz at the ISPA showcase in New York last January. Speaking to a packed room from the stage, he described You & Me as, “a little weird”. He’s right, it is a little weird – but in a way that makes you sit up and take notice.

Explains Frassetto: “You & Me is a series of abstract sketches and stories to

Switzerland 19

“The older generation in Switzerland know us very well, people who came as children are now returning with their kids”

be interpreted by the audience as they wish. In one scene there’s a love sequence between a viola and a violin who have a misunderstanding: the violin talks too much (in pizzicato), the viola listens but when it all becomes too much for him he gets upset – then the metronome comes in to give them the right rhythm.

“The emotional shift towards peace is shown by the violin and viola being turned upside down, so now they look like a mask. It was a difficult scene for the performers to interpret, but the audience loves it. Another sketch features a cymbal and a triangle: the cymbal is being a nuisance and drumming itself with a brush, until the triangle comes in to give him a note that shifts the mood.”

How does Frassetto come up with ideas for Mummenschanz? “Ideas come from a culmination of influences, sometimes through the objects themselves and sometimes through dreams. I came up with the idea for You & Me a few years ago. Within seven months, and with help from Tina and Richard, we gave emotional shape to the show.”

The company has been touring its distinctive work for 47-years, though director Simmen says that hardly makes for an easy ride. “The younger generation of promoters don’t really know us, so it is continuous work to keep up our profile.” The same, he says, applies to established and new audiences. “Until you see Mummenschanz, the concept is tricky to understand, that’s why PR is really important. If we are performing in a country outside Switzerland, the most important thing is for us to get a slot on TV.

If we are on TV, this really helps sell tickets.”

Simmen has been with the company for more than seven years, looking after the finances, budgets and finding additional money via fundraising and sponsorship deals. He’s also responsible for figuring out key markets, which airlines to use, organising the contracts of the performers, and planning marketing for the shows. It’s fair to say, he’s got his hands full.

Luckily the home market for Mummenschanz is strong: last year they presented 140 shows to 100,000 people in Switzerland. “The older generation in Switzerland know us very well, people who came as children are now returning with their kids and grandkids,” he tells me.

And while the company attracts Swiss sponsors with ease, it receives little funding from the government – although for tours abroad there is the option to apply to the cultural institute for assistance with flights and freight costs.

Seeing Mummenschanz in Switzerland doesn’t come cheap. “The average ticket price is USD70 (€56). Some pay more, some pay less, and a child’s ticket is half price. The top ticket price is around USD95, so it costs around USD210 for a family of four to see us on a Saturday night,” says Simmen.

“This pricing structure changes depending on the country: in Spain, for example, the price for whole family is only USD60. This big difference in price range is because we know that people in Switzerland enjoy higher incomes. In Switzerland, if you want to see a show with the family you pay these sorts of prices. It’s very normal. As a point of comparison, if you went to see Cirque du Soleil, you would pay around USD210 for one ticket.

“In that respect, we are moderate regarding ticket prices. We are always want to have kids and students in the audience so we give big discounts to families, young people and group bookings.”

After 47 years, what drives Frassetto to keep creating her weird and wonderful silent shows? “It’s lovely to bring this intimate world of imagination to all countries and see that the child in us is similar; it makes me realise there is hope in the world.” mummenschanz.com

Opposite: Characters from You & Me Above: Worm from You & Me

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

18 Switzerland

Time for you Compagnia Finzi Pasca’s latest work is enjoying a successful world tour. For the creative team and audience, Per te is a gentle and cathartic experience. Maria Roberts speaks to Maria Bonzanigo, the company’s principal composer and choreographer, about breathing life into old memories

E

mbracing ‘Theatre of the Caress’ Compagnia Finzi Pasca’s (CFP) stories have a unique stylised quality to them: rather than following the expected structure of ‘beginning, middle and end’, CFP creates fragmented narratives that weave together to create a story. The result is a performance experience that reflects a dreamlike imagined state. In 2016 I was fortunate to see Bianco su Bianco in Romania, and was enchanted by the tenderness and magical storybook quality of the production.

When I catch up with Maria Bonzanigo, Per te is on a world tour and preparing for a run at Bogotá’s Festival Iberoamericano di Teatro (16-26 March). Since its premiere at Lugano’s Theatre LAC in 2016, Per te has already played in three languages, including seven sold-out

performances of a Spanish version at Teatro José Peón Contreras in Merida, Mexico (American Capital of Culture 2017). It made its debut in Budapest at Müpa: Palace of Arts Budapest, performed in English, and opened Brisbane Festival 2017.

Written and directed by Daniele Finzi Pasca, Per te is a co-production with CFP, LAC (Lugano Arte e Cultura), RSI (Radiotelevisione svizzera), Guadalajara UDC, Teatro Donizetti and Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana.

The production follows in the footsteps of works in the company repertoire, but differs slightly as it plays more with musical and visual elements than, say, Bianco su Bianco, which used text to tell a story.

It begins in an imaginary garden with a brave young woman sitting on a bench. Around her gather a group of friends in suits of armour – artists, acrobats, musicians – who face a battle ahead. The story is set three months before the premiere of their show, and the interpreters weave in and out through the images carried by words, colours, music and the wind … that turn into leaves, butterflies and flying objects. Per te. Dedicated to you, dear Julie is described by CFP as a ‘hymn to life’.

“Per te places weight on images and music,” explains Bonzanigo. “It is a production that pays homage to Julie Hamelin Finzi, who founded Compagnia Finzi Pasca along with Daniele Finzi Pasca, Antonio Vergamini, Hugo Gargiulo and myself. After Julie died we decided to make the piece as an homage to her.

“For the audience, Per te is a tribute to the ever-strong posthumous presence of a person. It portrays how loss can brings out their presence in everyday little details and relays how you can enjoy the close memories of a person who passed away. “ Grief must have been a difficult context in which to create a new show? “Julie was a very important part of the company. In the last year of her life, she was very sick,” says Bonzanigo. “We worked during this time and adapted her work and this gave the company strength to continue. For Daniele it was very painful – but an artist expresses himself through his experiences.”

“…an artist expresses himself through his experiences”

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

Per te comprises a team of 14: four technical members (who also find themselves on stage) and 11 cast members. “We have worked with some of them for more than 10 years,” says the composer and choreographer.

“Finzi Pasca is really a company of artists that grow artistically together.”

Last month Bianco su Bianco returned home to Lugano, four years after its 2014 debut in Bellinzona. During this time, the small show has visited 38 cities in 12 countries, and played to over 30,000 people.

After a five-year run (playing more than 400 shows to an audience of 325,000) in 2017 La Verità was staged in Russia for the very first time, where it enjoyed 10 sold-out performances (eight in English and two in Italian) reaching an audience of 7,000 at Tovstonogov Bolshoi Drama Theater in Saint Petersburg.

Alongside its own creations, CFP works in collaboration with organisations to create large outdoor spectacles. 2017’s impressive large-scale Montréal Avudo played for four months on Montreal’s port. The huge multimedia show combined video mapping, lights and water fountains and reached 249,000 people. Their next extravaganza will be for the Fête des Vignerons (Winegrowers Festival) in 2019, an event that takes place every 25 years in Vevey (Switzerland) and will attract 400,000 visitors.

With five shows on tour what is the company’s strategy going forward?

“We will continue to make new productions but one of our plans for the future is to give new life to our old classics in our repertoire,” says Bonzanigo. “Like the revival of Donka, which we created in 2010 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Chekhov’s birth. We have a long story behind us and we want to take our classics into the future.”

PHOTOS: ALL © VIVIANA CANGIALOSI

Switzerland 25

Top: Finzi Pasca performing Per te Left: Moments from La Verità Opposite page: Per te

finzipasca.com

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

24

Belgium

Culture crowd Gilles Ledure, general manager of Flagey, on why his visitors keep coming back. Interview by Maria Roberts

“If our place is a place of wellbeing, then music is a kind of spa for the ear” Science, health, wellbeing and spirituality are also threaded through the Flagey ethos – what is the thinking behind this?

Explains Ledure: “Once one of our programmers asked, What is our statement towards society? What is our engagement? Do we have a political view on society? What is the polity? Theatres have a big tradition of showing plays that make a statement about society, but music doesn’t necessarily make an obvious statement, therefore, our engagement with people is to use musical listening as a tool to make your mind better.

“We see music as an instrument for the mind and heart; it refreshes and cleans up whatever we are carrying with us in our lives. The music hall is a place where you can reflect. The power of music is that it brings greater insight into things you never expected – without the need for words.

“You also have to feel music, not only write philosophical essays about it,” he continues. “If our place is a place of wellbeing, then music is a kind of spa for the ear. Flagey’s acoustics are so good that it’s an incredible place to experience silence; it’s among the best silent spaces in the country.”

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

PHOTOS © JOHAN JACOBS

O

ne of the coolest culture destinations in Brussels, Flagey is an art house venue that appeals to all ages. Located on the site formerly occupied by Belgian radio, Flagey’s emphasis is on music and film. Embracing the intersection of artistic disciplines, it presents jazz, world, classical and contemporary music, film events and video projects, with no weight given to one particular form or another.

General manager, Gilles Ledure, has been at Flagey since 2011: “Our main goal is very simple, we present accessible excellence and listen to what the walls of this house can do,” he tells me over the phone from Brussels. “Flagey is famous for its acoustics: we have five halls of different sizes that can hold 70 to 900 people. In 1938, radio at that time was bringing the ancient world of musicmaking and the modern world of communicating together, something we still bear in mind today.”

Flagey’s strong point, adds Ledure, is that it is reassuringly down-toearth and attracts a casual crowd. “We don’t want to be a palace, yet it is a place where you can find the best in creativity. Nowadays our capacity reaches, on average, around 93% attendance. I think this demonstrates that Brussels needed a relaxed place where people can participate in non-music activities and musicmaking, a place where they can hear all kinds of repertoire.”

As though to clarify, he adds: “By accessible, we don’t mean that it needs to be easy. Yes, we present a lot of new music, but we try to do it in such a way that it makes sense for the people. They don’t always have to understand the musicality and the technical baggage, but we put the repertoire in a context so that they understand that music goes much deeper.”

Flagey

Ledure goes on to add that the average age of visitors is 44 across the board, be that for classical, jazz, world or contemporary music. However, the demographic of regular visitors spans all ages; there is plenty of provision for children and one weekly visitor is 96.

“Flagey is very popular with young people who come here to meet friends whether they are going to a concert or not. It is the place to go because it is multicultural and – although everything here is drenched in knowledge – there is none of the stiff upper-lip you might expect elsewhere. This house has a common conscience: it is Belgian and it is owned by everybody.”

He explains the mixed architectural style of the venue works to its favour, the Art Deco theme doesn’t run throughout and it’s “no Bauhaus” either. Adds Ledure: “If Flagey were dogmatic modernist then maybe it would feel more edgy. Having said that, if the building were sharp and edgy there would be the danger that it would be less human. As it is, people who want to participate in interesting cultural activities come here because our eclectic programming echoes the building.”

The Flagey budget and day-to-day business is a mix of curation, commissioning, private hire and receiving house. It also collaborates with Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel where it works working with

Belgium 25 ECHO’s Rising Stars 2018-19

Gilles Ledure

professors and their artistic board to nuture new talent (Ledure will chair the jury of the Queen Elisabeth Competition at this year’s violin edition).

He adds that the programme is bound by friendships forged in the city. “When we make a programme our main rule is that our guests should feel at home. We do things with people we like and that gives us such a great feeling when making projects together. The most important thing is for the audience to enjoy what is presented.”

To this end, rather than present varied programmes as a ‘series’, Flagey holds concentrated small festivals over weekends. “It’s an intense and energetic way of working,” says Ledure. “We hold maybe 15-20 concerts over the course of three days, they are in depth tasters – like wine tasting – and it works incredibly well, people like that approach.”

Already home to Flagey Piano Days, Brussels Jazz Festival and the permanent residence of Brussels Philharmonic under the direction of Stéphane Denève, Flagey has just announced a new partnership for 2019-20 with Collegium Vocale Gent (CVG), directed by Philippe Herreweghe, who will become Flagey’s first Cantor – a kind of vocal poet laureate for the city. CVG will record at Flagey Studios during their residency, to be released on the Outhere label next year.

The long-term collaboration with CVG is financially supported by Sven Gatz, the Flemish Minister for Culture, Youth, Media and Brussels.

CVG’s residency will involve connecting with young people and neighbouring residents through masterclasses and performances. Via three productions per season, the ensemble will present concerts spanning 500 years of music.

First up is a June concert of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Hohe Messe, while later in the year they give an interpretation of Arvo Pärt’s Kanon Pokajanen under the baton of Kaspars Putnins, as part of the Arvo Pärt Days in October 2019 (23-27). Then in December CVG will perform the Bach Weihnachtsoratorium under the direction of Christoph Prégardien. At the 2020 Klarafestival, CVG celebrates its 50th anniversary with two concerts conducted by Philippe Herreweghe. flagey.be

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

circus special 21

The circus of life When Cirkus Cirkör was established some 21 years ago, it was always going to be about more than simply getting shows into the big top. Maria Roberts reports

‘O Above: Limits, Cirkus Cirkör’s newest international touring show, begins its travels in March 2016

Below: Knitting Peace, 2014

ur vision is to change the world through contemporary circus,’ says director of international relations Lars Wassrin. Formerly head of production, he’s been at the company for a decade, and it’s obvious from his enthusiasm that he’s dedicated to the Cirkus Cirkör cause – as well as the company’s pioneering vision, led by founder and artistic director Tilde Björfors.

It’s a grand statement: what artist doesn’t want to change the world through their work? But in the case of Cirkus Cirkör, Björfors backed up her words with actions – she instigated a range of operational offers that would make a real difference to the Swedish circus community and beyond.

If charity starts at home, then Björfors is an example of just what can be achieved. As a 20-something actress influenced by the Cirque Nouveau movement that started in France in the 1970s, she decided to embed a modern philosophy in her own artistic practice. After being inspired by a chance meeting with some circus performers that trained and performed in Paris, the actress made the switch from theatre to circus, and never looked back.

It was to be a life-changing encounter that set into motion Björfors’ momentous decision to introduce contemporary circus to Sweden, where

there had previously been no established tradition of the art form, via her own new company Cirkus Cirkör.

Her commitment is unwavering: in 1995, Björfors launched Cirkus Cirkör as a non-profit organisation, then a few years later in 1998 she founded a private corporation strand owned by the non-profit arm. Now Cirkör’s secondary school, continuing education and pedagogical programmes (for both schooling and leisure purposes) are all run by its non-profit organisation; while corporation Cirkör AB (‘AB’ signifying a limited company in Sweden) produces contemporary circus acts and performances for public stages and corporate events.

The real journey began in 1997, when Cirkus Cirkör took possession of a space in central Stockholm and launched a post-high school education programme called Cirkuspiloterna, as well as leisure circus training sessions for kids. This eventually led to the building of a permanent base in Alby, located in the Botkyrka Municipality in the south of Stockholm.

Botkyrka, says Cirkör CEO Anders Frennberg, is home to people from all over the world and part of a poorer area of Stockholm. ‘There were a lot of issues here that the Cirkus Cirkör team felt inspired by,’ he explains.

‘Now, through the training schemes, a young person can start in circus aged five, advance to secondary level training and further circus education, before applying for university-level circus training in Paris, Montréal or Stockholm. So there is now an established stairway up to professional level training for Swedish circus artists.’

In 2005 Cirkus Cirkör was granted the full status of a regional artistic institution, and now receives fixed grants from the Swedish Arts Council, the City of Stockholm, Stockholm County Council and Botkyrka Municipality in order to support its engagement work.

‘From the very beginning, Cirkus Cirkör did not work like an an ordinary performing arts company,’ says Wassrin. ‘It spearheaded a lot of projects and attached itself to a number of social goals. Now it operates more like an institution, working for the progress and the development of contemporary circus in Sweden and around the globe.’

Two decades on and Cirkus Cirkör publishes books, has formalised university-level circus training at Stockholm’s University of Dance and Circus, and Björfors has made history as the first professor of circus studies in the world. Not bad for an accidental tourist.

The company also led the establishment of CARE (Circus Art and Research Exchange) to encourage research into the artform. Challenges and issues are shared with other circus companies, including discussions around how to create work in a difficult financial climate or how to focus creative practice on innovation rather than repetition. CARE is made up of seven partner companies from six European countries: Cirk La Putyka (Czech Republic); Circo Aereo (Finland); Cahin-Caha and Un Loup pour l’homme (France); Nordic House (Iceland); Cirkus Xanti (Norway); and, of course Sweden’s Cirkus Cirkör.

To date, two million people have seen a Cirkus Cirkör show, and some INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

22 circus special

400,000 children, young people and adults have participated in circus training with the company. In 2014 it began expanding its reach still further, travelling to South America, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Brazil, with a view to taking its shows Knitting Peace and Underart on full tours – an ambition that was realised in 2015.

Also that year, Cirkus Cirkör was selected from hundreds of applicants to travel to Seoul at the invitation of the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture (SFAC), in order to carry out The Seoul Aesthetic Engagement Workshop (SAEW). Here the team led a week of intense workshops, during which 70 participants tried their hand at circus skills, examined their own roles as educators, developed new exercises in a group setting, and tried out physical training techniques aimed at supporting science subjects (for example ‘Plugga matte med Cirkör’, roughly translated as ‘circus maths’).

I

Below and opposite page: Knitting Peace (2014)

t’s not all about pedagogy: at the heart of Cirkus Cirkör’s work is a strong commitment to narrative, theatricality, and the ongoing exploration of ‘real life experience’ through circus art. Explains Wassrin: ‘Our work differs from, for example, the big circus shows coming out of Australia which, in some respects, are a lot more about acrobatics and less focussed on theatrical elements.’

One thing that is unlikely to change is the identity that defines Cirkus Cirkör. As Frennberg notes: ’A strong human message will always form part of the narrative, as will collaborative working with other companies across the performing arts spectrum. The company has worked with the Royal Dramatic theatre in Stockholm and the city theatres of Malmö and Stockholm, and will continue to do so in future.’

Current works in the Cirkus Cirkör repertoire include Underart – ode to a Crash Landing, directed by Olle Strandberg, which premiered at Stora Teatern Gothenburg in September 2014. Underart is based on Olle’s own story about an accident that could have brought about an abrupt end to his acrobatic career, but instead became something of a new beginning – in December 2005, he broke his neck performing a triple somersault, and was paralysed from the neck down.

‘The story about my crash is not completely unique, but it is my most important story – it has shaped me, and it has been like tinnitus to me when I have attempted to create anything else,’ Strandberg said in a press

statement at the show’s launch. ‘To build a show around it is like throwing oneself straight into a cliché of self-disclosure, at a time where there are so many other important things to talk about. Then again, it is not about personal fulfilment but rather the open sharing of that which is not perfect, and the exposure of a part of me that has needed help.’

By stark contrast, for the 2014 hit show Knitting Peace, Cirkus Cirkör put out a call across the world for knitting submissions, and asked willing participants three questions: ‘Why do you knit?’, ‘What do you strive for?’, and ‘Can you knit for peace?’. The appeal attracted a number of local knitting enthusiasts, as well as dedicated knitting artists and many people interested in arts and crafts more generally. As a result, the company now holds more than 1,000 knitted pieces that have been collated to form an interactive installation at the Army Museum in Stockholm. Some of the samples sent to the base were used in the show’s final set design, but the majority were included in an accompanying exhibition that followed the tour, and has since been displayed at Dansens Hus and Artipelag.

Last year, the company premiered Borders, a show inspired by the debate around migration. This time it was Björfors’ own experience that influenced the storyline: ‘When I was a child and I took the boat between Limhamn and Dragör, I used to try to feel where the border between Sweden and Denmark lay,’ she recalls. ‘I could not understand how there could be a border in something which is as continually moving and flowing as water. In the Western world, we are very busy challenging one another to step outside of our comfort zones…but at the same time, we guard our European borders more strictly than ever.’

In Borders, the company explores the transcendence of boundaries via metaphors: for example, a circus performer crosses some literal personal boundaries such as risk, pain, and bodily limitations; they also cross more figurative ones through playful exploration of new possibilities.

Limits, Cirkus Cirkör’s next large-scale international touring show, will hit the road from March 2016, and is currently scheduled to continue through to at least 2018. With so many additional strands to manage, how does the company move from conception to finally getting a production on its feet and out onto the stage?

‘We make the most of long lead-in times to develop work,’ says Wassrin.

‘First Tilde draws up a dream-team crew, and headhunts the artists she wants to really commit to the themes of the subject matter she plans to explore. She’s particularly interested in working with people who are attracted to this style of long-lead, devised development. Artists have to be really committed to the subject matter, because they are very much involved with the devising process – Tilde has the ideas, but she wants artists and creators to commit to the process and really develop where it’s possible to take them in the workshops. Everyone who becomes part of that process must trust in each other, commit, and be very open-minded.’

It can take two years for a new performance to be ready for the public, which may then be performed for up to four years. Artists engaged by the company must therefore commit to stay with the same creation for as long as five or six years – surely people must drop off, either through other projects, family commitments, injury or age?

‘It’s true, sometimes after 12 months people feel ready to move on,’ agrees Frennberg. ‘But when they begin to work for us, it will initially just be for workshops as the piece comes together. We only enter a full-time rehearsal period around 12-14 weeks before the opening.’

Both Wassrin and Frennberg hail from theatre and opera backgrounds: what do they think is so different about joining the circus?

‘Circus is like a family and everybody knows each other, so as an industry it is very much about sharing rather than competing,’ says Wassrin. ‘If a member of a circus somewhere gets hurt, for example, you can make some calls and fly people over from Montréal or France.

Likewise, sometimes we have artists that go to Montréal to help out – because circus is such a close network there’s a very friendly atmosphere in the industry.

‘Even when we run into one of our “competitors”, so to speak, we always wish them good luck. The contemporary circus circuit is still small, and yet the market is big, and so there are enough opportunities for everyone.’

Adds Frennberg: ‘In a way, there is still room for many more contemporary circus groups to enter the market, and overall it is better for the whole of the contemporary circus industry if it continues to grow and welcome newcomers. For us supporting the contemporary circus industry is a much bigger consideration than simply asking ‘What is best for Cirkus Cirkör?’ in every decision we make.’

cirkor.se

circus special 23

‘Artists have to be really committed to the subject matter, because they are very much involved with the devising process’

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

24 circus special

‘Our acrobats are highly-trained artists and athletes and they don’t have a choice to make this work – they do this because it’s vital to them.’

Clockwise from top left: images taken from The Return/Il Ritorno at The Barbican in January 2016 PHOTOS © TRISTRAM KENTON

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

circus special 25

Circa is Australia’s single largest performing arts exporter, says general manager Charlie Cush, and they’ve got plans to become even bigger

W

Bus eaqui non explabo.

Eruptatur, ipsamus eum ditaestius et ut odio que

hen you look at the stats Circa is a very impressive company.

They have 11 shows currently in repertoire, with around five new productions added each year. They tour these all over the world, with more international dates than any other Australian company – in fact, they alone account for a third of all Australian overseas shows.

Its work has been seen in 34 countries and on six continents.

And that’s not all: Circa is now much more than just a performing arts company. Its training centre provides athletic and acrobatic tuition to people of all ages, from three year olds to retirees, while its subsidiary company arTour offers advice and support to artists and venues, facilitating performing art touring across Australia. So, if the stunning acrobatics of its performances don’t leave Charlie Cush you breathless, then its work ethic certainly will.

But how do they manage all this, at a time when state funding is low and global economies are still recovering from the financial crisis? To find out IAM caught up with general manager Charlie Cush.

Firstly, how does Circa manage to create so many new shows each year? ‘Our process varies from show to show and depends on the schedule,’ says Cush. ‘With our artists touring as much as they do, we might have a number of weeks in creative development phase, then they continue to work on the ideas on the road, and then come back and work on it again.

‘So for example for our show The Return at the Barbican we had a four-week intensive session where we brought in musicians and singers and acrobats. Then there were two other blocks of development, with the acrobats working on it while on tour, so it probably came to about 11 weeks of development in total before the premiere. The Return involves partnerships with musicians to feature the live music so that adds another element. If it is just acrobatic work, they can be made surprisingly quickly.’

All shows are initiated by artistic director Yaron Lifschitz, who has

PHOTO: © TRISTRA KENTON

Hope falls led the company for 17 years. While this top-down model might seem prescriptive – and a strain on Lifschitz himself – it actually allows for a good deal of creative space in which the artists can work.

‘In a creative perspective, Lifschitz is the leader of all our shows,’ says Cush. ‘But he isn’t an acrobat by training, so he works with the artists to unpack the vision for the show. He leads, but they bring it out and expand on the themes. It allows us to create a lot of new work in a short space of time.’

It has also meant that its repertoire is surprisingly diverse. ‘Opus is 90 minutes looking at WWII, so that is quite a dense and difficult piece,’ he adds. ‘Whereas The Return brought in opera singers and was a much bigger production. Then we have shows like Beyond, based on the life of animals, which is lighter and a different aesthetic again.’

With Circus Oz alongside them, Australian circus seems to be at the forefront of international productions. What does Cush see as the reason for this success? ‘Circus Oz has been around for a long time, but what we do is very different. And it’s interesting to see how many great Australian circus performers there are to choose from.

‘There are probably a number of reasons for this, like the number of strong circus schools in Australia. But really our acrobats are highly-trained artists and athletes and they don’t have a choice to make this work – they do this because it’s vital to them.’

The next challenge for Circa is to stay at the top of its swing. But how do you continue to grow without compromising on quality – and safety? Says Cush: ‘It isn’t about growth for growth’s sake – it’s about growing better. Since we are not one of the major arts organisations [the group of 28 companies whose funding has been guaranteed by Australia Council for the Arts] we have to find funding from elsewhere.

‘What we have created for us is a business model that is very efficient. We’ve got great relationships with presenters. So what we have done is to set up a number of subsidiary businesses. We run a performing arts service, arTour, on behalf of the state government, where we help other companies put together tours. We just received a contract to present at the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games, and we’re launching a new company called Preposterous that will create specific works of scale, all featuring Circa artists.

‘All of these elements generate revenue and bring in new people to work with us. They make the company stronger – but their primary function is to help us make more work at Circa.’

Having said that, the general manager still sees many potential areas for growth internationally: ‘We want to grow in South America, Latin America and Southeast Asia. We’re creating great art that we think needs to be shared.’

circa.org.au INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

27

As one of the forerunners of the contemporary circus movement, Circus Oz has a stronghold in the market, having performed in 28 countries across five continents during its longstanding career.

Established in 1978 by the merging of two established groups, Soapbox Circus and New Circus, the founding members combined the skills and tricks of the traditional circus with elements of rock’n’roll, popular theatre and satire to appeal to modern audiences. Collective ownership, gender equity and teamwork were at the heart of the group’s philosophy and remain relevant today.

Surreal imagery, dynamic stunts, original live music and a good dose of humour are all aspects of its shows, which it says promote the best of the Australian spirit.

Highlights of its 37-year career include performances at Edinburgh Festival Fringe and a sell-out run on Broadway, shows for Indigenous communities in the Australian desert, and performances at a refugee camp in the West Bank.

Parts of its performances have been translated into a variety of languages including Danish, Hindi and Japanese.

Although the shows have developed and adapted over time, Circus Oz has chosen to keep some aspects consistent.

There are usually 11 to 13 performers in each production, including two specialised musicians, and traditional skills such as pole-climbing, flying trapeze and hula-hoop feature prominently.

One of the original founding members, Tim Coldwell, still performs with the company.

Circus Oz is a troupe with a conscience.

Since its early days, there has been a commitment to social justice, which has included topical content within its performances, providing free tickets to groups and communities, and raising money for charities through collections at their shows.

Shows on tour: the new 2016 Circus Oz production Straight Up premieres in Australia in March and travels to Brazil in May. In development: Circus Oz is heading to South America in 2016, the US and Asia in 2017, and is planning trips to the US in 2018.

What else you need to know: Circus Oz has some of the strongest women in the business. You will often find them being catcher for the flying trapeze – Aussie women are not to be messed with!

circus profiles

Based: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

n Circus Oz

circusoz.com PHOTO: © ROB BLACKBURN

Based: Montréal, Québec, Canada Shows on tour: iD in Bogatá, Columbia, 17-27 March; Cirkopolis in Montreal, Canada, 14-16 April.

In development: Saloon a good ’ole western yeehaw cowboy-style production will begin touring in autumn 2016.

PHOTO: © 2014 THEATRE T & CIE/VALERIE REMISE

What else you need to know: in 2015 alone Cirkopolis travelled 15,000km with 140 shows in 30 cities – phew!

n Cirque Éloize Cirque Éloize has combined traditional circus arts with music, dance and theatre since its establishment in 1993, winning a number of awards and accolades for the Montréal-based group.

Honours include eight medals and prizes at Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain in Paris, including five for the show Typo; a Gemini Award in the Best Performance in a Performing Arts Program or Series category and nominations for Broadway’s Drama Desk Awards in 2005 and 2006.

The company now features more than 100 individuals working on a range of projects, and up-and-coming artists are encouraged to visit its creative studio.

The current touring production, iD, is directed by co-founder Jeannot Painchaud and blends circus arts with urban dance in a story set in the heart of a city. It’s the first show from

Cirque Éloize to integrate multimedia, and features 15 performers from 13 disciplines along with a soundtrack created by Jean-Phi Goncalves (Beast) and Alex McMahon. The 2016 schedule includes dates in Singapore, Colombia and Chile.

To date, Cirque Éloize has presented almost 4,000 performances in more than 440 cities in 40 countries, from events such as Edinburgh International Festival, Recklinghausen Festival and Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro de Bogotá, to venues such as Barbican Theatre in London, Sydney Opera House and Tokyo’s Bunkamura Orchard Hall. Custom-made concepts for special events across the globe are another focus, and more than 1,300 of these have taken place so far.

cirque-eloize.com

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

29

circus profiles

Les 7 doigts de la main translates literally as ‘the seven fingers of the hand.’ It is a twist on a French idiom ‘the five fingers of the hand’ used to describe distinct parts united tightly, moving in coordination towards one common goal. It also refers to the seven founding directors – Isabelle Chassé, Shana Carroll, Patrick Léonard, Faon Shane, Gypsy Snider, Sébastien Soldevila and Samuel Tétreault – who, by combining their distinct talents and experiences, work towards common artistic goals with the beautifully awkward dexterity of a seven-fingered hand.

When first formed in 2002, each of the founding members had nearly 20 years of performance experience under their belts. Drawing from their decades on the road and in the ring, these friends and colleagues shared a desire to break the mould and offer a brand new form of circus performance. They envisioned a ‘circus at the human scale’ — shows seeped in intimacy and familiarity, that brought the empowerment of the extraordinary through the proximity of the ordinary, with very real human beings who breathed and danced and spoke from the heart.

The urge to redefine the circus medium has continued to drive each of their creations to newer, more hybrid and collaborative territories. Perpetually blurring the lines between contemporary dance and acrobatics, between theatre and athleticism, between interactive multi-media and immersive experience, they strive towards the undefinable, uncategorizable, visceral, breathtaking and touchingly human.

7doigts.com

Based: Montréal, Québec, Canada Shows on tour: Cuisine & Confessions in Europe, March-June; Triptyque in London, UK, 1-2 April; Traces in Paris, France until 23 April; Patinoire in Chile, July.

In development: currently working on a circus opera that will open in Russia in 2016, as well as a dinner theatre show for New Orleans in 2017.

What else you need to know: 7 doigts will open a purpose-built development and administration facility in Montreal in 2017.

n NoFit State NoFit State traces its history back to 1986, when it was created by five friends in Wales as a response to the recession the UK was in at the time. The founding philosophy, that the total outweighs the sum of the parts, is still very much a focus 30 years later.

Dave Williams, Peter Gregory, Richie Turner, Tom Rack and Ali Williams first began working together when they were taught how to juggle. They soon moved on to create routines and began securing work in the local area. By 1990, they’d raised money to buy their own tent and spent most of the decade touring the UK. Over the years, their show has developed with the support of funding from the National Lottery and the Arts Council of Wales, allowing them to produce more professional shows.

NoFit State’s performances, described by the group as ‘beautiful carnage and organised anarchy’, are just one part of the organisation’s work. It hosts classes and events at its community home and training facility in Cardiff as well as birthday parties and stag and hen events. The group also offers corporate events. The group has so far travelled to 15 countries and for 2016, NoFit State’s 30th anniversary, it will be making its first forays to China and the US when it premieres Bianco in New York and Hong Kong.

But although NoFit State has grown, it still believes in functioning as a community. The company works together, eats together and travels in trailers, caravans and trucks, an idea harking back to the circuses of the past. ​ nofitstate.org

PHOTO: © SEBASTIEN CHATELIER

n Les 7 doigts de la main

Based: Cardiff, Wales, UK Shows on tour: Mae Yna Le in Bangor, 12-13 March; Bianco in New York City, 3-29 May; Block in UK, 21 May-18 September.

PHOTOS: © RICHARD DAVENPORT

PHOTOS: © ALEXANDRE GALLIEZ

In development: Circus in Circles [working title], which will premiere in 2017-18 season.

What else you need to know: no longer a bright young upstart, 2016 marks NoFit State’s 30th birthday, which it will celebrate in its brand new Cardiff Circus Centre facility.

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

30 circus special

PHOTO © B© VIVIANA CANGIALOSI

Compagnia Finzi Pasca

Hugo Gargiulo Maria Bonzanigo

Compagnia Finzi Pasca is a circus super group, bringing together the talents of a large creative team. But how does everyone get their voice heard? Founding member Hugo Gargiulo explains

C

ompagnia Finzi Pasca is one of the newer additions to the contemporary circus industry as it was established in 2011, but its founders all have extensive experience in the performing arts industry.

These include Antonio Vergamini, Daniele Finzi Pasca, Hugo Gargiulo, Julie Hamelin and Maria Bonzanigo who joined together with existing group Teatro Sunil, led by Finzi Pasca, and Inlevitas, operated by Julie Hamelin.

The main focus of the organisation is to develop projects that broaden the ‘theatre of the caress’ spectrum; a theatrical technique based on the invisible gesture and the state of lightness. Clowning, theatre, dance, opera and cinema are all aspects of Compagnia Finzi Pasca’s works, although its main focus is on acrobatic theatre.

‘We seek inspiration through contact with each other, in particular deepening the way of ‘touching’ the audience through the poetic gesture of the clown,’ explains Gargiulo, who works as actor, writer and director for the company. ‘We seek inspiration in the simplicity and beauty of nature.’

‘Our actors, acrobats and musicians are trained in a particular way, with a clear understanding of not only what they are doing, but more importantly what the other is doing. This means always trying to look into the eyes of the spectators; we work as skilled archers who know where to focus their arrows.’

The group’s recent piece, La Verità, written by co-founder Finzi Pasca, is a great example of this concept. Featuring surrealist images,

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

including landscapes by Dalí, it combines acrobatics, theatre, dance and music. Reviewers have praised the power of both its movement and music, which draws the audience into an alternative world. Since its premiere in Montréal in January 2013, La Verità has been performed more than 200 times across the globe.

La Verità is just one show in a packed schedule for the company. ‘We have four performances on tour: La Verità, Donka, Bianco su Bianco and Icarus,’ says Gargiulo. ‘There are also other artistic collaborations like our opera performances created for the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg and Teatro San Carlo in Naples. We have also written and directed the opening ceremony for the Paralympics in Sochi and the closing ceremony for the Winter Olympics in the same location.’

On top of that Finzi Pasca is currently developing a new show Per Te, which they plan to debut at the end of the season. But how does such a broad group of collaborators go about creating a production? Through a few glasses of wine and a good time, answers Gargiulo: ‘Facing a new project we generally gather around a beautiful table and a nice glass of wine to think through the various creative roles. We don’t talk much: there is a silent understanding which passes through small signs.’

Once the core creative team has fleshed out the initial idea the show is then supported by a team of around 40 full-time staff, representing 15 different nationalities. ‘During the making of a new creation, this number increases because of the arrival of external collaborations,’ adds Gargiulo.

‘For La Verità, for example, we have indirectly worked hundreds of people.’

The productions involve even more people once you add in engagement elements. Says Gargiulo: ‘There are always lectures, masterclasses and workshops on our method of work. These are an important part of what we do, along with our own research, which develops new tools and props through the body and the voice. As a company we always try to stay up to date on the technological aspects that might entail some nice surprises that can be included in a theatrical atmosphere.’ finzipasca.com

circus special 31

Images: (from left to right) OVO, Amaluna, Zumanity

Lofty ambitions Extravagance or just extravaganza? The world’s leading circus company is undergoing a seismic shift. Maria Roberts reports

W

ithout doubt the most famous name in the contemporary circus movement, Quebéc’s Cirque du Soleil’s meteoric rise is something no other performing arts company could dare to replicate. In just under 30 years it has skyrocketed from a group of just 20 street performers to an iconic global institution of 4,000 employees.

Conceived and launched by Guy Laliberté in 1984 – then a regular street performer specialising in fire breathing and accordion playing – to date, more than 160 million spectators have seen one of its shows. In 2015 alone, Cirque du Soleil simultaneously presented some 20 different shows around the world.

The company is now the largest theatrical producer on the planet – but then it did have the backing of the Québec government to help it become the nation’s biggest cultural export.

During this time, it has been a recipient of many of the world’s most prestigious performing arts awards, including the Emmy, Drama Desk, Bambi, ACE, Gémeaux, Félix and Rose d’Or de Montreux prizes.

If there’s one thing Cirque knows how to do, it’s how to mix business pleasure and leisure into its programming. As the organisation has grown, it’s added more strings to its bow with the establishment of a variety of subsidiaries including a corporate division named 45 Degrees, a media company and a ticket-selling tool.

But is the bubble about to burst? Cirque du Soleil has not been immune to economic and cultural disruption: in 2014 the company announced hundreds of redundancies as part of its new artistic strategy – and then in 2015 announced a massive sell-off.

Last December, after seven years, Dianne Quinn, who had held roles as vice president ‘Show Quality and Integrity’ and senior vice president ‘Creative and

Artistic Operations’ left the firm to join American Repertory Theatre as executive director.

Now the circus, which was a part government-owned arts behemoth, has passed 60 per cent of its stake to a US-global private investment firm TPG. As part of the transaction, China-based deal partners Fosun also assumed roughly 20 per cent ownership – with the remaining 20 per cent of shares split between between Québec pension fund Caisse de dépôt, and Cirque du Soleil founder member and strategic advisor Guy Laliberté, who retained a board seat in addition to his approximate 10 per cent slice of the pie.

Chair of the Cirque du Soleil board Mitch Garber also acquired a minority ownership stake, along with the organisation’s current president and CEO, Daniel Lamarre, and the Bronfman family-owned private equity investor Claridge, Inc. At the time Lamarre told the press: ‘With the assistance of our new partners, we have already begun laying the ground work for the global expansion of the Cirque du Soleil brand, as evidenced by our recently announced growth plans in Asia. We look forward to working with TPG, Fosun and the Caisse for years to come, as we continue to bring Cirque du Soleil’s extraordinary artistic vision to audiences around the world.’

Garber added: ‘The incredible team at Cirque du Soleil is in a great position to continue building upon the legacy of excellence and imagination fostered by Guy Laliberté, and to expand this iconic brand to new markets. On behalf of the entire investor group, we look forward to partnering with the Cirque du Soleil team and seeing the amazing things that are yet to come from this truly unique organisation.’

IMAGES: COURTESY OF CIRQUE DU SOLEIL

The deal was thought to worth be around USD1.5bn (€1.37bn) – from the outside, it seemed the jewel in Québec’s crown had been apportioned-off like a zebra in the lions’ den.

Laliberté said in a statement: ‘After 30 years building the Cirque du Soleil brand, we have now found the right partners in TPG, Fosun and the Caisse to take Cirque du Soleil forward to the next stage in its evolution as a company founded on the conviction that the arts and business, together, can contribute to making a better world. Just as importantly, I am thrilled that the investors have demonstrated such a strong commitment to Cirque du Soleil’s unique Québec cultural heritage and the creativity and imagination of our people.’

It all sounded a little akin to corporate ‘saving-facespeak’ for a company that had become something of a megalithic structure and needed to make drastic changes to ensure its survival – and prevent a prehistoric rot setting in.

This month Quidam, which has been in production for almost 20 years, will perform its last show in Christchurch New Zealand after two world tours.

Iconic shows in Cirque du Soleil’s repertoire have included Saltimbanco, the group’s longest-running production. Cross entertainment-tribute hybrids include Michael Jackson ONE and The Beatles LOVE, as well as themed spectaculars Varekai, JOYÁ, Kooza, Luzia, Ovo and a rather unusually saucy X-rated, 18+ show, Zumanity, currently writhing away at the New York New York Las Vegas Hotel.

As part of world tour that began in January 2012, Amaluna, a female-centric reimaging of The Tempest made its debut at London’s Royal Albert Hall, where it will run until 6 March.

Not that the company is trimming the fat too much: hold on to your hats because a Cirque du Soleil theme park is set to open in Mexico in 2018.

cirquedusoleil.com INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

Reykjavík 35

PHOTO © COURTESY OF ISO

Iceland Symphony Orchestra

Arna Kristín Einarsdóttir

Q&A INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

36 Reykjavík Composer Hugi Guðmundsson

Ice, fire and earth Andrew Anderson meets CAPUT, the only ensemble specialising in contemporary Icelandic music

B

ack in the 1980s there were lots of composers emerging in Iceland with no one to play their music, and then a few students got together to form their own ensemble called CAPUT. Now, 30 years later, those same few students are still together. Fashions have come and gone, economies have boomed and busted, but CAPUT has kept on playing.

To find out the secret to their longevity I meet with flautist and founder member Kolbeinn Bjarnason in one of Reykjavik’s many cosy cafés. Bjarnason’s wry sense of humour and self-deprecating streak means he is reluctant to take credit for CAPUT’s success. So instead we start with a bit of history – why did CAPUT form in the first place?

‘It seemed that the need from our generation of composers was for bigger pieces,’ says Bjarnason. ‘And it was because of that we grew to our present size – 18 people – and we work together in a very flexible formation. We say to composers that we can perform in any kind of group they like.’

Unlike many ensembles CAPUT hasn’t diversified by crossing over into different genres; when they come together they play the contemporary music that remains threaded throughout their manifesto.

Continues Bjarnason: ‘I think that is because we are all playing very different kinds of music in other ensembles. For example our conductor, Guðni Franzson, plays clarinet, works with children and plays Jewish folk music. As a group we decided that when we come together to play in CAPUT, we will only play hardcore modernist music.’

CAPUT has travelled all over the world, releasing numerous albums along the way. It has recorded works by composers Toshio Hosokawa, Haukur Tómasson and Áskell Másson for labels Naxos and BIS. But, as time has gone on, the group has found its identity more and more in Icelandic music.

‘Now we are mostly just doing concerts of Icelandic composers. We are frequently approached by Icelandic composers who says to us ‘you

have not yet done a portrait of my music’ – and we like this, a forthright approach is so needed.’

In November 2015, CAPUT premiered Icelandic composer Hugi Guðmundsson’s new piece Absentia at IMMERSION, a pan-Nordic new music festival that took place in Reykjavík’s beloved Harpa concert hall. Next on the agenda is a concert of Haukur Tómasson’s work, followed by a portrait of Thorsteinn Hauksson.

‘Hauksson was among the first computer composers writing music in the 70s at Stanford University…only back then when he wrote something on punched cards he would have to wait several days and go to a special facility just to hear it.’

Then at the Reykjavík Arts Festival in 2016, CAPUT will play a chamber opera by Anna Thorvaldsdottir, . ‘She just received a commission from the New York Philharmonic, and her work is now played all over the world,’ says Bjarnason. ‘But when she was not known at all we were playing her music a lot. Her music is very rewarding to play.’

As Bjarnason sips his tea I ask him about the audience for new music – it is one thing to play the work of Icelandic composers, but how do they ensure that it is heard beyond the glaciers?

‘I think this kind of music happens at the top of the pyramid – this is where the audience ends. So the outreach work to introduce people to contemporary classical music needs to happen much lower down.

My view is that we have good composers that are writing good music and it must be performed.’ He pauses and then adds half-jokingly: ‘There are plenty of other stupid things people spend money on, so why not us?’

Does this lead to new music being a rather insular world, with fewer composers and groups gaining wider exposure?

‘Yes, sometimes new music festivals feel more like a conference.

They are often held in a small place, and we end up just meeting the same people and playing for the same people. Sometimes it can feel like we are subsidised musicians playing pieces by subsidised composers; it is a bit of an artificial need. Then there is no sarcasm, no humour in it. That is something we try to avoid.’

CAPUT is funded by the city of Reykjavík and the ministry of culture, with an agreement to play a certain number of concerts each year. But, says Bjarnason, ‘It is four times less in Euros than we had eight years ago…we cannot afford an organisational structure, 90 per

‘There are plenty of other stupid things people spend money on, so why not us?’

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

Spotlight 21

Creating emotional depth has to be a big commitment on our parts as conductors, if you are committed to that everyone comes along with you

There’s something about Marin What is it like to be one of the most famous conductors of our times? Maria Roberts speaks to Marin Alsop about life on the podium

E

verybody loves Marin Alsop. Interviews, reviews and media coverage on the conductor are full of adoration: she’s the kind of public figure that easily and naturally garners admiration and praise. Superstar, philanthropist, musician and mentor are just some of the roles she fulfills with aplomb.

‘I think as a conductor my responsibility is to be a messenger and a composer and that’s what I’m obsessed with: trying to share that vision of what I have and what I understand to be that vision,’ Alsop

tells me over the phone from Baltimore. ‘Creating emotional depth has to be a big commitment on our parts as conductors, if you are committed to that, everyone comes along with you. We are all there to serve the music as we go.’

And serve music she has: since she became the first woman to lead the BBC’s Last Night of the Proms in 2013, returning in 2015, Alsop’s been held up as a kind of gendered icon of possibilities. If Marin can do it, then so can you.

This particular strand of fandom is evident in progammes like the Southbank’s Women Conductors Day: ‘…apply now to learn under Marin Alsop’s baton and conduct the BBC Concert Orchestra…’ it shouts…where ‘Southbank Centre associate artist, conducting superstar Marin Alsop, leads a half-day masterclass for aspiring women conductors on Friday 27 January 2017.’

For GBP150 (€172) selected applicants get a conducting session INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

p21-23_IAM_Marin Alsop_Vol 12 Iss 12_vF.indd 27

21/11/2016 12:31

22 Spotlight Baltimore Symphony Orchestra percussionist Brian Prechtl

with Alsop and the BBC Concert Orchestra (up to 22 minutes), an open Q&A with Alsop, the chance to watch Alsop in rehearsal, and tickets to Alsop’s concert with BBC Concert Orchestra the following day. Brand Alsop certainly sells.

And whilst the ‘woman’ angle is fantastic – women in classical music need all the championing they deserve – that it took the Proms so long to enlist a female conductor to lead it’s world-famous Last Night was not so much Alsop’s achievement alone, but marked the end of a pretty shocking oversight on the behalf of the BBC that had gone on for decades.

Yet Alsop, who is music director at São Paulo Symphony Orchestra (OSESP) and Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO), is so much more than the ‘woman’ conductor. It’s a pigeonhole that she, quite rightly, refuses to occupy.

Her ebullient presence on the classical scene is down to her passion for finding new ways of engaging broader audiences with classical and contemporary music. Be this from aspiring professionals via mentoring and training schemes, to amateurs via the Rusty Musicians project at Baltimore, and youngsters through OrchKids, a free year-round during and after school music programme designed to create social change and nurture promising futures for youths in Baltimore City neighbourhoods.

OrchKids is a real beacon of achievement for BSO: in November 2013 the scheme was selected as a recipient of the National Arts and Humanities Youth Program (NAHYP) Award at the White House, part of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities spearheaded

by Michelle Obama. OrchKids was one of 12 recipients to be honoured for generating positive youth outcomes.

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall

In 2015 Alsop made history again when she conducted Lang Lang and the National Symphony Orchestra of Cuba for a watershed concert in Cuba.

Furthermore, she is the first and only conductor to receive the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, given to US residents in recognition of exceptional creative work, and she became the only classical musician to be included in the Guardian’s Top 100 women list, celebrating the centenary of International Women’s Day in 2011.

What drives her? ‘I’ve really felt a tremendous connection to every community in every city I’ve lived in. All I hope is that when I leave a place, I leave it better than when I arrived,’ she says humbly and without a hint of arrogance.

Our chat takes place a few weeks after her performance with Brazil’s OSESP at Usher Hall for Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) where, with the Edinburgh Festival Chorus, she introduced some lively Latin repertoire to Scottish audiences. In the grand environs of Usher Hall, the choir bobbed about to Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, Villa-Lobos’ Chôros No 10 ‘Rasga o Coraçâo’ and Shostakovich’s Symphony No 5 (it was quite entertaining to watch them shake free).

Within the concert hall you could feel a very real sense of anticipation in the air – Marin Alsop, with her beloved Brazilian orchestra, in Scotland – and the EIF audience certainly seemed grateful.

Spurred on by the energy in the stalls, the orchestra delivered a lively, distinct and sensitively executed programme. Alsop’s baton urged an emotional response from the audience: sniffles could be heard from the seats around me, and I spied a few concertgoers wiping away their tears.

Little wonder Alsop’s approach is magnanimous, as she was a student of American music legend Leonard Bernstein and both her late parents were musicians. She took over at the helm of OSESP in 2012, quickly turning one of Latin America’s leading orchestras into an in-demand international ensemble. But how does one of North America’s greatest living conductors tackle something so specific as contemporary Brazilian repertoire, within a European context? How is she able to stay faithful to the pulse of the music?

‘At EIF, for example, the choir were very good sports and willing to jump in, get their feet wet and give it a try. The tempo and the way Brazilians produce sound is very different. To try to install that rhythmic drive we worked a lot on the tempo, the choir did their best, they were very into it and that’s all you can ask of anybody.

‘I’m not Brazilian, so it’s hard already, but it’s music that I feel and that I can relate to. I don’t think there are enormous divides across the ocean, as there used to be 20 years ago. Today it is less obvious because we are so connected over the internet, through travel and through our experiences. So I don’t feel all of those differences – American, Brazilian, European – I don’t feel challenged in those ways.

‘And, of course, Europe looms large in the orchestra business because that’s where our great tradition emanates from, so there’s tremendous respect and idolisation of all things European at OSESP. ‘In Brazil musicians often travel to study abroad, particularly in Germany, so there’s the very practical aspect of the lure of Europe.

When they begin to marry that European experience with some quintessentially Brazilian elements and characteristics it brings about the best of all possible worlds.’

For Alsop the success of a performance lies in the preparation: ‘I’m curious about the context in which a composer is writing,’ she tells me. ‘So at EIF we had very different pieces, the Villa Lobos and the Bernstein. Ahead of a concert there was a lot of reading to be done as I tried to gain insight into the circumstances surrounding the composer and the moment in which the piece was written. In the case of Bernstein, there’s a constant quest to find faith, in a way that is not limited to religious denomination. In contrast, the Villa Lobos piece has elements of nature and mystery, there’s the context of treading a thin line of an authoritarian regime and appealing to his compatriots on a very personal and emotional level.’

And whilst there is little doubt that the pursuit of artistic excellence reigns supreme, Alsop is as famed for her public engagement projects with youth, community and amateurs as she is for her time on the podium with world-class players.

This summer she led the BBC’s Virtual Orchestra at the Proms, a mass digital experiment for which the public submitted a short video of themselves playing The Toreador Song from Bizet’s opera Carmen to the BBC Get Playing website. Later, clips were spliced and then edited together for Alsop to conduct onscreen. It was a joyous endeavour, fronted by well-known British comedian and novelist David Baddiel.

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

p21-23_IAM_Marin Alsop_Vol 12 Iss 12_vF.indd 28

21/11/2016 12:31

Spotlight 23

PHOTOS: © BSO

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra

‘I think the word ‘amateur’ says it all: amateur comes from the word love.

There’s a paradigm there: many passionate musicians may not have been able to pursue music professionally, but have a real love and appreciation for it’ Does she think amateurs get a bad deal on the professional classical music scene?

‘I think the word ‘amateur’ says it all: amateur comes from the word love. There’s a paradigm there: many passionate musicians may not have been able to pursue music professionally, but have a real love and appreciation for it. I often find that people with this life experience are the biggest fans and supporters of orchestras, so why not put musicians in contact with people who idolise them? Connecting with amateurs is a win-win on every level.’

Baltimore’s amateur-loving ‘Rusty Musicians’ strand was conceived

by Alsop in 2010 as a way ‘to attract new audiences through participatory opportunities for engagement as well as to enhance the BSO’s position as an educational and social community resource.’ The ‘Rusty’ ensemble is made up of non-professional adult instrumentalists and vocalists, whose career paths veered away from being professional musicians.

Has the scheme had the impact she hoped for? ‘I think it’s been hugely successful in terms of creating a community of people that are connected to my musicians. The ‘rusties’ know the players personally now on a one-to-one basis. As a club, BSO musician give back to the community by teaching these amateurs, rooting for them, helping them and coaching them.

‘We have a much deeper and bigger community now as a result of these initiatives. The project began as one-off evenings, but then developed into a week-long camp, like you might have in the states for sports.

‘We hold one called the BSO Academy, with upwards of 120-130 musicians attending each year for a week of intensive rehearsing, coaching and lessons. It’s a successful scheme; the return rate is 80 per cent.’

Alsop is slated to stay at Baltimore until 2021, a welcome extension as the long tenure will give her the opportunity to further develop her plans at BSO. ‘For a period like this, I think there’s the possibility for growth and depth in what you do. You can see projects through, you can help with the evolution of an orchestra, you can work to push the artistic level higher and higher. The role of an orchestra with its community is like any relationship: it requires lots of conversation and work.’

How is the ethos Alsop promotes in the US reflected in the work she does in Brazil? ‘At OSESP we have outreach projects for young people, we have an academy as part of the institution, currently we are training four conductors and 20 instrumentalists – we are making

a big commitment to training young people. Of the 105 we have trained, 99 are in orchestras and six are studying abroad. There is a 100 per cent placement rate of musicians in the field.’

Alsop’s ambitions are realistic: in October students of the OSESP Conducting Academy led the Heliópolis Symphony Orchestra from the Baccarelli Institute and guest soloist Olga Kopylova in a free concert at Sala São Paulo. It was such a success that Alsop announced straight after that she would ‘double the activities for our conducting students in the coming year…I aspire to create a conducting programme that offers a well-rounded experience so necessary for conductors in the 21st century,’ she said.

Do Brazilian musicians face different challenges to their American counterparts? ‘It can be a bit of challenge in Brazil. At Baltimore Symphony I loaned all of my instruments and bows to my musicians, so they are playing on my parents instruments as well as my own.

It’s really lovely just knowing that. In Brazil there’s a different situation: it’s harder for musicians in general as a great instrument is almost out of reach of a musician’s salary.’

Alsop is an agent of change: she founded the Taki Concordia Conducting Fellowship for talented young women conductors in 2002, for which she holds conductor workshops at OSESP’s Campos do Jordão Festival in Brazil, where she is the director and curator.

And whilst Alsop is less keen to speak about issues affecting her as a female conductor in interviews, she is all action.

‘I have never ascribed to the philosophy that, ‘It was tough for me so it will be tough for you.’ My philosophy is: ‘It was tough for me so that I could make it easier for you.’ This is the philosophy of my non-musician mentor, Tomio Taki, who was compassionate and unwavering in his belief and support of my goals to become a conductor. Without Tomio, my path would have been far more difficult.’

More difficult, but potentially achievable. Alsop’s ability to juggle her career with pioneering new schemes is phenomenal.

Does the weight of all this history-making sit heavily on her shoulders? Does she ever feel overwhelmed by her own ambitions in the face of all global attention? ‘No, I don’t feel overwhelmed. Should I? It’s a happy responsibility,’ she says nonchalantly.

marinalsop.com bsomusic.org INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

p21-23_IAM_Marin Alsop_Vol 12 Iss 12_vF.indd 29

21/11/2016 12:32

14

Industry insight

Strong foundations

PHOTO © RUTH KILPATRICK

The CEO of PRS for Music Foundation, Vanessa Reed, has energised a league of arts and music managers to make positive changes to their programming – now she’s leaving London for New York to work her magic there.

Interview by Maria Roberts

“As chief executive of a charity…we have a responsibility to use our roles to bring about change”

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

R Industry insight 15 PRS Foundation’s New Music Biennial 2017 at Hull, City of Culture

PHOTO © JAMES MULKEEN

W

hen I speak with Vanessa Reed over the phone, Rolling Stones manager Joyce Smyth has just joined as the patron of Women Make Music. This is the world of Vanessa Reed, the influential CEO of PRS Foundation, the UK’s leading funder of new music and talent development. Reed ranked third on BBC Radio 4’s prestigious Woman’s Hour Power List 2018, just behind Beyoncé in first place and Taylor Swift in second. She’s one of the few leaders as closely linked to rock and pop icons as she is to classical music stars.

Reed’s been at the helm of PRS Foundation for over a decade and without a doubt her impact has been shapeshifting: as CEO she devised, honed and executed groundbreaking campaigns, including the aforementioned Women Make Music and Keychange – two schemes that continue to nudge companies to invest in female talent. These projects came on the back of activism that urged the industry to look at their policies and take note of the glaring gender gap in the UK’s music scene.

Reed’s signature projects include the New Music Biennial, which commissioned works for the UK’s Cultural Olympiad in 2012 and was last presented at Hull City of Culture 2017 and Southbank Centre London; the Momentum Music Fund, created in partnership with Arts Council England (ACE), which has already given out GBP3m (€3.36m) in grants; and Keychange, an initiative launched in 2017 to create a 50:50 gender balance at music festivals and conferences by 2022. To date it has more than 170 festival signatories from countries as far and wide as Australia, Greenland, Turkey and Brazil and there’s more news to come later this month as the Keychange pledge opens to all kinds of music organisations striving for gender balance.

Throughout her time as CEO, Reed has been a prodigious partnership builder: PRS Foundation has worked with Spotify, BBC Music Introducing, Paul Hamlyn Foundation and Creative Europe, among others. Outside of PRS Foundation, Reed uses her influence in other voluntary roles such as her board position at Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, where she chairs the orchestra’s diversity group All this is the tip of the iceberg, Reed has the kind of professional bravery and tenacity that leaves you a little bit awestruck. Her willingness to influence has been recognised across the Atlantic: shortly after our interview PRS Foundation announced she will leave to take up a new job in New York at New Music USA this August.

Why would Reed leave the UK now? She says: “Throughout my career I’ve benefitted from working outside of the UK every now and then and have been able to draw on new perspectives and different ways of doing things. From 2001-06, I worked in Brussels and then at the European Cultural Foundation in Amsterdam, where I learned a lot about cultural policy and cross-border collaboration. Now I’m keen to turn my attention to the US, where I’ll be looking to connect with the diverse new music scenes there and identify the best ways to grow opportunities available to the many American composers whose music is not heard as much as it might be outside of the country.”

Says Reed: “The intention with Keychange was to build on what we did with Women Make Music by giving female artists and innovators a chance to collaborate with their colleagues across Europe. It came about from Creative Europe seed funding. We needed to make a statement about what we were striving to achieve with Keychange, so we set ourselves a target. I was really delighted that the idea that came from my male colleagues was to reach a 50:50 balance by 2022.

“Keychange began with six European festivals working on achieving a 50:50 programme and prioritising talent development. Soon, people started approaching us about getting involved. So we thought OK, let’s facilitate a pledge where everyone can sign up to it if they want to, it’s voluntary, not a quota, and they can shape it in a way that works for them. Keychange participants have just showcased at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, US. It is a growing movement and we are opening it up to any organisation that wants to make a 50:50 pledge, join the movement, and be more public about the commitment they are making.”

What has been her work ethos at PRS Foundation? Says Reed: “As chief executive of a charity, like others in this position, we should all have awareness that we have influence and we are in positions of perceived power; we have a responsibility to use our roles to bring about change.”

Reed’s 360° vision on the sector is a rarity. Who, or what, influences her?

And how does she keep her ideas fresh?

“What drives me generally, and this would probably be the same for people that work as leaders of charities, is that we are trying to fix something and make the world a better place; in our case we’re creating opportunities that otherwise wouldn’t exist for music makers, composers and artists from all backgrounds.

“The focus we have placed on gender equality came from the

knowledge we gained from analysing and evaluating our work, and realising that this was the area where we found the biggest discrepancy. Once I had spotted that discrepancy, it was impossible not to do something about it. In 2011 I realised that only 16% of applications to PRS Foundation’s grant schemes featured female composers and songwriters and in 2011 there wasn’t much discussion about the gender gap in music.”

Did Reed feel that bias on a personal level? “I would say that even for me, as a woman working in the music sector at that time, I wasn’t particularly aware that I was facing barriers in my career; that’s why data is so very important – because when you see the statistics, you suddenly realise that you’ve become used to this very unbalanced way of being.

“When you start to look at who you are supporting as a charity and where they are from [and you see data like that] you realise that this is not really the equality of support that you strive for as a charity – tackling those kinds of imbalances that exist in the industry drives me.”

Why are the figures in the sector weighted so much in favour of men?

Is there genuinely a dearth of talent? For example, pre-1990s, women simply weren’t as visible in certain professions, mainly due to delayed access to opportunities and training backed up from the preceding centuries. Therefore, is it simply the case that – right now – we are playing catch up? Or is continued blind ignorance, oversight and prejudice to blame?

“I think it is a bit of everything,” says Reed. “I think there are deeply embedded stereotypes and ways of working that we have to keep pushing against and that’s where all this increased awareness, the social media campaigns, #MeToo and so on, have made it possible to talk about gender equity and for that discussion to be an option. For us all to be at a stage where we are doing more than just thinking about equality and inclusion is an incredibly positive step forward.”

Reed is certain that open discussion, social media activism and campaigns like those at PRS Foundation have contributed to this shift. She adds that the way organisations view the conversation has progressed from INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

Industry insight

disparaging phrases like ‘positive discrimination’ to ‘what makes sense and what is good for business’.

“In the past, organisations and commissioning bodies were just not thinking about the balance of what they were doing and the potential quality and talent they were missing out on,” she adds. “What inspires me when I get involved is when someone says, ‘I know that the quality of my programme will be increased if I have more diverse talent on my lineup.’ That is such a refreshing alternative to the naysayers and resistors who say you have got to put quality first – and that diversity and gender equity doesn’t come into it.”

And it is this particular point that gets Reed agitated, the idea that diversity and quality occupy different realms. “There has been a lack of awareness around unconscious bias, we are stuck in patterns of the past and keep repeating them – this has not been helped by the fact that the workforce in music is generally dominated by men in producer roles, leadership roles, men in the recording studio, or men in promoter roles, or men in positions of influence.

“Those very tight circles are perhaps, without even realising it, just repeating the over promotion of a small group of people. That has certainly been the case in classical music and contemporary classical music, although it is changing massively. Part of that is because women now feel that they can put themselves forward as much as men for any opportunity.”

Reed acknowledges that, in some cases, those barriers are internal struggles: some women lack the confidence to put themselves forward – modesty holds them back. For example, when PRS Foundation launched Women Make Music and posted a call out specifically for that initiative, 79% of submissions came from new applicants. When Reed’s team delved into the reasons why women hadn’t previously put themselves forward for other awards, she heard comments such as ‘I didn’t think I was quite ready for it,’ and ‘I know your funds are really competitive’.

Explains Reed: “For some women, barriers come from a lack of selfconfidence and sense of entitlement, which men tend to have more of than women.” PRS Foundation’s strategy worked: now 52% of grantees are female creators or from a mixed group, and the charity finds itself in a much stronger position than when it first started the fund.

For Reed, the results speak volumes and demonstrate how targeted initiatives really can work. Taking this one step further, she wants the industry to consistently and consciously promote positive role models by putting the spotlight on women in senior roles and investing in talent through their various stages of career development, not just at the beginning.

Says Reed: “Some people think it’s only worth investing in the talent pipeline, I think that’s wasted investment if you are not at the same time talking about and demonstrating how to have a successful career as a woman. At the moment I feel incredibly optimistic about the future because there are so many important conversations taking place. Moving ahead, we’ve got to find a way to keep that going and make sure it continues via long-term, sustainable planning.

“Likewise, the landscape around us has changed. In the past 20 years business models have transformed and been disrupted, technology has completely taken over every decision being made, and yet the workforce in the music industry is similar to what it was, only just a bit older.

“There is a whole workforce of diverse talented young minds contributing to the industry right now, imagine what it would be like if more of them were in leadership roles.”

What does Reed think about the critics growing tired of the gender

discussion? Is it time to move on? “I think there is a way of pushing back when people think that you are suddenly focusing on a niche one-issue subject – gender equality is important for everyone, not just women.

“Women are attracted to companies that are led by women, millennials and the generations below are much more attracted to the values companies have and how they progress talent and reflect society.”

In the case of the music industry, it goes without saying that they need to reflect the demographics of their audiences.

Will there be a point when Reed feels she’s done all she can, that she has succeeded? Is that why she has taken the job in New York? “I think on a philosophical level, schemes like Keychange are successful when they are not needed anymore. If, in five years, we didn’t need to run Keychange then that would be very satisfying. I’m guessing though that in the music industry there will be other challenges that get lost along the way that we would need to pick up.

“Moving to New Music USA in New York doesn’t mean that I’ve done all I can in my current role; it is a good opportunity to ensure that the second phase of Keychange has even greater shared ownership amongst leaders in different European countries. Reeperbahn Festival, Musikcentrum Sweden and PRS Foundation will be leading the next phase with Reeperbahn Festival taking the lead on EU funding partnerships, just as Brexit continues to present potential challenges for UK arts organisations seeking EU funds.

As the founder of Keychange, I will continue to support the programme’s European partners from the sidelines in a voluntary role as honorary chair.”

In some ways the battle for Reed to get these voices heard is over as conflict of opinion has given way to collaboration. Now her journey is more of a hike up a mountain with the promise of tremendous views at the top – a gruelling journey, but well worth the effort. Her enthusiasm, though, is not waning. “The perspective has shifted to such an extent that there is almost awkwardness and embarrassment about what came before. We all have to keep working to sustain the progress we have made because, in the years to come, the media may not continue to focus on gender equity as consistently as it has these past four years. It feels to me that we are at a really exciting tipping point right now, there is so much momentum and so much energy for change amongst young men and young women.”

Below: PRS Foundation’s Women Make Music 5th Anniversary celebrations at Imogen Heap’s house in 2016

prsfoundation.com

PHOTO © VIC FRANKOWSKI

16

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

PHOTO © VIC FRANKOWSKI

“Gender equality is important for everyone, not just women”

artsmanager INTERNATIONAL

Volume 14 Issue 2 February 2018 £10 (UK) €17 (EU) / $25 (US)

www.internationalartsmanager.com

Belgian National Orchestra Intendant Hans Waege on ushering in a new dawn in Brussels

Country focus

News

Klarafestival, Flemish Jude Kelly, Spotify sued, Radio Choir, Brussels Phil, Brexit impact, Women BOZAR, QEC and more composers at BBC 3

Industry insight

Diary

Sven Helbig on labels; Q&A with Manchester Camerata’s Adi Brett

A week in the life of Welsh National Opera conductor laureate Carlo Rizzi

20 Belgium

Out of the shadows For the past two years Belgian National Orchestra has been undergoing a company-wide rebranding and rejuvenation operation. Maria Roberts caught up with CEO Hans Waege to find out what it takes to reinvigorate a national institution PHOTO: © CAROLINE LESSIRE

Above: Hans Waege with BNO’s new chiefconductor Hugh Wolff

I

meet up with intendant Hans Waege at a bar in New York as he’s on his way to another meeting. He lollops over to me, a great ball of energy, chatting at speed. He’s a likeable character: friendly, commanding, cheerful and intensely passionate about developing Belgian National Orchestra (BNO). Once managing director of Rotterdam Philharmonic, and CEO of Royal Flemish Philharmonic, his portfolio to date has seen him reinvigorate regional orchestras, giving them the edge in a competitive market and a strong unique identity.

Waege has been at BNO since April 2016, and set about the task with the diligence of a house renovation. He began by stripping the operation back to its individual components and clearing the decks so that the orchestra could freshen up its offer for modern audiences. The essence of BNO, he says, had fallen by the wayside. As a seasoned changemaker, he made it his responsibility to tackle despondency among the ranks by means of a dynamic strategy.

“Much of an organisation’s success comes down to the morale of its staff,” he tells me over a glass of white wine. “That’s probably the most important thing to talk about. It happens anywhere. With any company, with any institution, you go through ups and downs. When I arrived at BNO I saw the urgency of change: it was a company that didn’t innovate especially well.

“Over the last 10 years the orchestra had been resting on its laurels, playing the main repertoire, introducing few new conductors. And at BOZAR, the home of BNO, the orchestra was very much on the back burner.

“Together with the arrival of our new chief-conductor, Hugh Wolff, I thought it was very important to refocus the strategy on different levels: now we are more connected with BOZAR, innovate with the schedule of the orchestra, and we have many exciting young conductors that broaden the repertoire. This year James Feddeck, Stanislav Kochanovsky, Elim Chan and Constantinos Carydis will come to BNO for 2018-19, and the musicians react wonderfully to that, they are very happy.”

Waege’s strategy at BNO took in four key areas: one of which was the name and logo of the orchestra.

“A meaningless three letter abbreviation wasn’t very helpful in terms of corporate marketing, especially regarding the international profile of the orchestra,” he reveals. So they opted to use the English title in its branding. The intendant adds that he wanted to ‘dynamise’ the repertoire by programming contemporary music. Going forward, he plans to modernise the use of BNO’s marketing tools and rich data. More importantly, he wants to add family programmes to the schedule which somewhat remarkably (and almost unbelievably) had remained non-existent.

The new approach, he says, has been well received: “Strangely enough, when you take the risk of new music seriously, and when you take your audience seriously, you are sometimes surprised by the positive reactions you get.”

Despite being an academic himself (he’s been a professor at Ghent University for almost 20 years), his objective is to present music that gets a raw emotional response from the audience. Expands Waege: “We avoided some of the repertoire that was, what can I say, inwardly intellectual towards the classical music and too theoretical, we kept away from that in preference for something that is reflective.”

This portends to contemporary works as well as the classics. “This season we have a focus on John Adams and Ligeti. Although Ligeti is not quite so easy, it is superb music that reaches right into to the emotions of the audience. The idea is to get an audience that is willing to come to whatever you programme, and to eradicate this feeling of ‘Oh my God, contemporary music is awful’.

“The most daring project during the current season was a Webern-Ligeti-Kodaly programme. Coming up we have Scriabin’s Mysterium in March at Klarafestival. When you have your audience endlessly applauding after the Ligeti Requiem, you know that your orchestra has done something special. To be able to bring the Hungarian National Choir over to Brussels for this Ligeti concert was the icing on the cake. Doing this type of concert for your musicians and your audience is extremely rewarding.

“If an audience enjoys the concert, they will come back to take a chance on other lesser-known programmes, that’s what we call building trust with your audience.”

He references Mahler here, adding that the great Austrian composer had a way of connecting with the audiences of his time by making use of music they were familiar with. “I want to find this vibration that links contemporary composers with the sounds and the music of today. This is a very special task, I’m not here to commission yet another violin concerto.”

Has BNO’s modern take on programming refreshed the approach of the rank and file players? “Absolutely. They needed this change because

“I’m not here to commission yet another violin concerto”

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

Belgium 21

again and to meet our audience. Yes, we play Mozart, but we also play Mason Bates [a Grammy-nominated American composer of symphonic music and DJ of electronic dance music who was recently named the most-performed composer of his generation and the 2018 Composer of the Year by Musical America].”

What are the principles he follows as intendant at BNO? “The guideline is that we are not serving one community, for example the core audience of symphonic music, but we are serving a community of communities. I don’t mean this with regards to gender or race, as we all mingle nowadays, instead I refer to our fragmented spheres of interest.”

And how does BNO fit in with the wider cultural offer in Brussels?

“Enjoyment, having a good time, and nourishment inform what we do. A huge proportion of our audience will have been working hard all week and when they come to us on a Friday evening, for example, we must make sure that it isn’t too complicated an experience. At the same time, we must remember that we are bringing them into a zone that is not natural: the beauty and success of a concert comes from managing that tension in the hall. Yes, sometimes it is wise to present easy-going evenings but sometimes you need to present well-considered complex programmes that bring people into an inconvenient, demanding world.”

Above: BNO with chief conductor Hugh Wolff Below: BNO musicians arriving at BOZAR

nationalorchestra.be

PHOTOS: ©VEERLE VERCAUTEREN

they had been playing the same repertoire on loop. They love to be challenged with fascinating pieces of music and exciting concert programmes.”

Waege pauses for a moment to reflect on what he has just said: “I’m probably sounding too positive: yes, it’s not easy to make changes and we will make mistakes, that’s true, but the whole purpose of reinvigorating your players is to give them a challenge and you can do this by bringing young conductors and composers, from a new generation, who carry that energy with them.”

How is BNO measuring up to the ‘cool’ vibe he created in Rotterdam?

“I think we do much more contemporary repertoire at BNO than Rotterdam, and that’s good, it makes the musicians feel that they are relevant to today. At the same time, we’re also bringing more established conductors like Hartmut Haenchen, recently elected “dirigent des jahres”

by Opernwelt, who will bring a complete Brahms-Bruckner cycle overs several years. He’s over 70 years old and says his life’s work now is to focus on Bruckner as a last big statement. To bring a conductor of that level to your orchestra is a gift to the city, the people and the musicians.

Much like any renovation project, Waege is doing more than plastering over the cracks but digging deep to create a sturdy framework. He also embarked on a fundraising initiative so that BNO could buy more instruments. “One of the first things we did was raise more money to invest in the orchestra by buying new double basses, they are important as they are the basis of the sound for the orchestra.”

But it’s not all work and no play; BNO has also been zany in some of its activities: “We started some riskier high-profile concerts. While classical music has been presented in nightclubs by chamber groups and soloists, it’s not so common to place a full symphony orchestra is a nightclub. We did this at the Bloody Louis in Brussels with a Bates-Mozart-Beethoven programme.

There were a few issues with lighting and acoustics, you run into practical issues and make mistakes on projects like these, but it sounded OK.” Was he discouraged by the experience? “Even though we ran into certain practical problems, that’s not a reason not to do it. It’s not our focus to go into a nightclub per se, but it is our focus to go into the city

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

14 Industry insight

Freedom fighter PHOTOS: © CLAUDIA WEINGART

German composer Sven Helbig is a musician that doesn’t like labels. Maria Roberts meets with the innovator to find out what makes him tick and what he really thinks about the classical music industry

W

hen I catch up with Sven Helbig over breakfast at a hotel in Manchester he tells me that he’s already been up composing since 7am. “It must be handy having a laptop”, I say breezily.

Apparently not. “I don’t use a computer, I do it by hand because it’s a totally different aesthetic. Composing is about how far can I go with my brain and my imagination – I can develop my skills without a shitty computer. I have a totally different approach to a guy who makes music with computers. I prefer the old way – as a human being trying to improve their own skills of their own body and their own brain, their intellect and their fantasy and what’s coming out of here.” He taps his head to confirm his point. It’s this frank tone that sets the pace for the next hour of our interview.

Helbig is a prickly character, that’s for sure: intensely serious one minute, light-hearted and joking the next. He hasn’t much patience for small talk and he doesn’t have much tolerance for the classical music elite either. He’s part of a new generation of composers exploring the boundaries between classical music and

experimental art, pop and electronica.

He’s certainly not afraid to speak his mind.

I get the impression Helbig is slightly irritated by the hierarchical nature of the classical music business: once a lover of the genre, then thrown into its grasping claws as a success story, he soon found himself displeased by the rigid infrastructure of the industry.

Some five years ago Helbig had everything a new classical artist could have hoped for: representation at artist management company Polyarts (the trendy partner of HarrisonParrott), and a recording stint with Deutsche Grammophon (which released his album Pocket Symphonies in 2013). He relinquished it all to join indie German label Neue Meister (created by Berlin Classics / Edel Germany) and adopt a more hands-on entrepreneurial approach to his career.

Why the shift? Well, Helbig likes to write his own rules, not follow them.

Helbig’s recordings with Neue Meister include a concept album released in 2016. I Eat The Sun And Drink The Rain is a neo-classical

“Composing is about how far can I go with my brain and my imagination – I can develop my skills without a shitty computer”

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

Industry insight 15 work for choir, conducted by Kristjan Järvi and performed by Vocalconsort Berlin, that’s been described as “bewitching … and perfectly balanced with subtly pulsating synthesisers and electronica soundscapes .” The album was supported in 2016 by a live production featuring visuals from Icelandic artist Máni Sigfússon (Ólafur Arnalds, Kiasmos) and bespoke costumes designed by Berlin fashion designer Esther Perbandt.

Helbig’s also held a residency at Deutsches Nationaltheater in Weimar and is a joint-founder of the Dresdner Sinfoniker, the first European orchestra solely for contemporary classical music. Likewise, he collaborates with major artists such as the Fauré Quartett, René Pape, Pet Shop Boys and Rammstein.

Why the break from the norm? “Labels are there for sucking ideas out of artists and income. They concentrate on business and making money, what do they get their 50% for?”

He met his current manager, Christoph Becker, in a bar when they were “drinking dry Martinis and talking about music”. Helbig confided he was on the lookout for new management and two weeks later Becker, who had honed his craft at Universal Music Group and Deutsche Grammophon, called Helbig to put himself forward for the job. Now the pair work with booking agent Ralf Diemert at Selective Artists on touring projects.

‘Contemporary classical’ and ‘neo classical’ are labels that have been used to describe Helbig’s work, but how would he describe his music?

“It depends on the context,” he muses. “One thing is important, I do this for people, and I don’t care who likes it or not. I do this for making a living and for my crowd.”

It’s not that Helbig is unfriendly, far from it, he’s smiling as we talk, sort of, and I get the sense we could be friends – it’s more that he is entirely authentic about his ideas. He has an anarchic bite to his ambition, which although slightly unnerving, is rare. So many artists want to be seen to be doing and saying the right thing, Helbig says exactly what he wants and doesn’t care what you think of him.

He tells me that he is motivated by connecting society with music, rather than building his own reserves of money and fame (a consequence, no doubt, of his down-to-earth upbringing in Germany).

Music, he adds, defiantly, is just a vehicle for his message. “With music, I feel I can transport everything I stand for best. It’s a wrong concept that the individual does something only for himself – it’s the reason why we have the problems we do nowadays with the environment and politics.”

His real interests, he adds, lie in veganism and environmental issues, and it’s these issues that face nature that he wants to explore with his music. Hence I Eat The Sun And Drink The Rain.

“When I started composing in my 20s, I did so from a crazy art-mindset preoccupied with the avant-garde and being very special and provoking. I am not interested in those aspects anymore. I compose for my mother, my friends, my family, you, others … I think connecting with people is the most important thing. All other concepts of art are totally wrong.”

Where does he fit into the classical music industry? “Over the past eight years the classical music industry has changed a lot: now there is a phenomenon of genres. Classical music people and reviewers don’t see this new music as a different genre to the classical music that they are used to hearing. But classical people outside of the orchestra, they get that it’s different. Magazines like Drowned in Sound, The Quietus and your magazine, they get this music.”

Being a ‘mixed genre, within a genre’ is problematic, he adds because the press team for classical ensembles and venues invite the wrong reviewers: more often than not timeserved critics who can’t relate to new music, don’t respect the form, and don’t enjoy it.

“You would never call a jazz journalist to write a review of a classical concert, even though some of the instruments are the same. It doesn’t make sense. You wouldn’t call a blues guy to review world music, and for hip-hop you wouldn’t call an R&B critic, but this happens in my genre, they invite the wrong sort of critics.”

“Today’s composers don’t listen to just Brahms and Dvořák and Bruckner anymore, they listen to Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Sigur Rós, Mogwai, and post-rock artists that don’t have typical song

Sven Helbig

structures, as well as ambient artists like Biosphere and Ben Frost.

Contemporary composers create tracks that have large arcs of movement transferred to classical instruments, without being concerned with technique. And the audience for this type of music is growing: they don’t necessarily want to hear Brahms when they go to see Ólafur Arnalds or Max Richter.”

Helbig has a somewhat bleak view of the future of classical music.

“You know, this will all die because the younger generation don’t care about the greats of the past. If classical people stay ignorant of new music and new composers, there will come a day when nobody will end up at classical music concerts anymore,” he tells me.

Helbig seems pissed off. Does he think there are gatekeepers in the industry? “Yes, but the scene outside the border is growing, even if it is still locked down. Why do you not see a Max Richter work on stage between Brahms and Dvorák at a philharmonic concert hall? Why is there a difference? Contemporary and classical belongs together, I don’t get this attitude of savouring something at the expense of something else.”

I venture that those gilded gates serve a purpose: sometimes the classical music industry is intentionally elitist. What is his take on that argument?

Helbig counters that he thinks the industry can be insincere in its motivations towards contemporary music and claims that some programmers add new works in an ‘apologetic fashion’. “They are not living in the scene, and not adoring the music, but doing it because they have to – and that can be the case with big orchestras. They don’t say with confidence, ‘Let’s play this opera by Ben Frost’.”

How does his career differ now that he is away from a fancy recording label and revered artist management company? How does he make a living?

“All the money we have to share is the ticket money, so of course we have to think commercially – but in a different way. The traditional model for classical music makes use of a heavy reliance on taxpayers’ money, whereas we just get a share of the box office.

My audience doesn’t grow from the concert hall for one reason: for many people it is simply too expensive to go to the concert hall. If you have a young couple, and it is €50 each to get in, what can you do? It is

“I compose for my mother, my friends, my family, you, others … I think connecting with people is the most important thing.”

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

artsmanager INTERNATIONAL

Volume 13 Issue 4 April 2017 £8.50 (UK) €14.60 (EU) / $22 (US)

www.internationalartsmanager.com

Teach the World to Listen

Evelyn Glennie Country focus

News

Industry insight

Diary

Opera Australia, Sydney Festival, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

IAMA in Paris, AEAA, Edinburgh Int’national Festival, Funding, NYP

Manchester Camerata travel to Japan to share their dementia work

A week in the life of Stine Nilsen, artistic co-director Candoco Dance Company

Industry insight 15

Sounds of the

PHOTOS: © JIM CALLAGHAN, PHILIPP RATHMER, JAMES WILSON, ERIC RICHMOND

This year the unparalleled percussionist, Dame Evelyn Glennie, will embark on an ambitious new residency project in London.

She talks to Maria Roberts about sound, experimentation and her commitment to Teach the World to Listen

Underground I

meet Dame Evelyn Glennie twice: once in London as she launches her new King’s Cross musician in residence appointment at PRS for Music Foundation, and a month later in the private surrounds of a grammar school in Bolton, where she is delivering an inspirational talk to staff, young students and their families.

What I gather as we chat easily over a cup of tea is that Glennie is a fierce and brave individual. She’s the kind of artist that instinctively breaks new ground. She’s a player of firsts. The first deaf student to study at the Royal Academy of Music, paving the way for others to follow suit. The first full-time solo percussionist, spearheading other percussionists to consider a solo career. The first artist to play a percussion concerto in the history of The Proms at Royal Albert Hall in 1992, making it acceptable for orchestras to place percussion artists centre stage.

Glennie’s tenacity is well documented: among some 80 prizes to her name are a Polar Music prize in 2015 and two GRAMMYs. Her contribution to the British music industry has been recognised by Queen Elizabeth II, earning her an OBE in 1993, the title of Dame Commander of the British Empire in 2007, and the title of Companion of Honour in 2016.

Moreover, she is a prolific creator and refuses to be pigeonholed.

“When people tell me I’m a classical musician, I ask ‘What’s that?’” she jokes. And quite rightly too: yes, Glennie has performed concertos with the world’s best orchestras, but as a professional musician she’s also incredibly diverse in her tastes. Quoted as saying she’d like to work with rapper Eminem, Glennie has recorded with Björk and Fred Frith.

Her 30 solo albums cross the spectrum, ranging from improvisation to classical. Finding a dearth of available scores early on in her career, she has so far personally commissioned 200 new pieces that are available to artists following in her footsteps.

That Glennie was diagnosed as profoundly deaf aged 12, but continued to play by feeling the music through her body (often by performing barefoot), is a mere brush of the snare drum. It’s true that she’s a vocal ambassador for many causes relative to her own experiences, but she’s also equally forthright in getting the conversation to move on.

I find Glennie a joy to talk to – she’s a resoundingly honest and articulate artist with a barrelful of interests. It’s this passion for ideas, and for experimentation, that first launched her performance career and then her music business, Teach the World to Listen.

In a statement on her website she explains: “Life is full of challenges, but we can always find alternative ways of approaching our difficulties, which will often lead to new discoveries. My career and my life have been about listening in the deepest possible sense. Losing my hearing meant learning how to listen differently, to discover features of sound I hadn’t realised existed. Losing my hearing made me a better listener.”

Her aim, she says, is “to improve communication and social cohesion by encouraging everyone to discover new ways of listening. We want to inspire, to create, to engage and to empower.”

Glennie is perfectly pitched to empower; from a young age she took the entrepreneurial decision to employ in-house team, rather than an agent. Now she has a full-time PA and administrator who handles all of her scheduling, contracts and website requirements; a finance director who deals with contract negotiations; and a member of staff to fulfil her PR and marketing plans. The team has also benefitted from the help of two volunteers who have spent the last year maintaining the archives, as well as an Austria and Italy-based agent to draw on when needed. Not held back from pursuing her interests, she even has her own music-inspired jewellery line.

Does she enjoy the business side of being an artist? “There hadn’t been a solo percussionist on a full-time basis before, so I always had INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

16 Industry insight

to be making that first step as it were. In that situation, you can’t look up to see an example of another person doing what you do – there were no examples.”

As there was no precedent for a solo percussionist, Glennie had to create her own platform. “In that situation, you very quickly realise that playing is only one aspect of what you do. And so, for example, when I started asking composers to write pieces for me to play, which I did as a student, I looked through the British & International Music Yearbook and wrote letters – this was some time before email – asking them to write pieces of music. Some of them came back to me saying ‘Yes, that’s fine, my fee is XYZ’. I hadn’t even thought about the fact that they needed paying. Afterwhich began the thought of ‘How do I get the money ... ’ and on and on it goes.”

As we chat, the lilt and undulations of Glennie’s Scottish accent ripple through an entire universe of impressions. She is a naturally curious artist. I don’t say this lightly – many artists can speak passionately about music – but only a handful can speak with equal passion about its context in the world. Glennie’s strength is to place herself at the very centre of this imagined landscape, embodying a willingness to inquire, explore and play, topping it off with a touch of nonconformity.

And, of course, she has had to get to grip with the logistics of touring because she spends more than half her year on the road. As a percussionist she has around 2,000 instruments in her collection, for a typical performance and she will tackle up to 50 instruments on stage.

With so much to consider – public engagements, education projects, commissions, performances – does she ever waiver in confidence? She says not. “When I get nervous, I feel excited about that because it shows there is an opportunity out there.”

She isn’t fazed by the digital revolution and she doesn’t hold much truck with notions that classical music is dying.

“The whole industry has changed for everybody, and we’ve had to embrace that and see it as a really good opportunity. People have been saying for years that audiences are diminishing and it is all doom and gloom, but we can actually see [this pressure] as an opportunity to rethink what we are doing and how we are projecting that image. We can take a look at what we are actually presenting and rather than trying to water everything down, be excited about what we want to do.”

Where does her ambitious nature come from? “I don’t know. I think it’s a bit of everything. You have to be ambitious, there has to be that element, you have to believe that you can at least create the opportunities to achieve your vision.

“It’s not about saying I can, I can, I can. It’s about creating the opportunities to do these things so that you are giving yourself the best possible means to reach for those things. That’s really important, no matter what it is.

“And it can just be teenie little things that mount up, it isn’t just doing one mammoth thing and taking a massive step, it [happens] day by day: ask yourself ‘What can I do different today? or ’What difference can I make today?’

“It could just be simply saying to yourself, ‘Today I’m going to learn 10 bars of music’, or ‘today I’m going to approach a composer’, or ‘today I am going to achieve something else’ – it can be all sorts of things, but make sure that you are always moving forward.”

As for her tremendous work ethic that, she says, is inherited. “It comes from home, my upbringing. Being a farmer’s daughter, you see people work very hard and you see them work very hard every single day, including Christmas Day.” Not that she accepts all engagements: “I’ve found that [the demand] makes me consider why I want to accept a particular request that has come in. Then I ask myself ‘What about it is going to make you say yes? What difference will it make?’

“An engagement is a two-way thing – what can you give to that particular situation and what can that situation give to you? It’s really important because you have got to keep buoyant and inspired and do what you want to do and not go round and round the same path, simply feeling happy that you’ve got some dates in the diary.”

For Glennie making music is about connectivity: connecting to the music, the sound and people. A percussionist, says Glennie, is a perfectly placed agency for engagement. “Being a percussionist you are so used to seeing your instruments in so many different arenas as it were – the street, the concert hall, the recital hall, a church, a bar a pub, outdoors – it can be in any kind of space. Psychologically, we are not disturbed by seeing percussion in all sorts of places.”

Ever the shrewd optimist, I wonder what she thinks the industry

“The audience is a crucial part of the performance, we listen to them as they listen to us” will look like in 50 years’ time? Will it be a mere shadow of itself, or something brighter? “We don’t need to be hung up about how many people come to a performance, or what kind of music it is and categorising the music. Composers today are not classical composers, they are composers of today,” she says pragmatically.

I sense that Glennie enjoys a topsy-turvy approach to music making – she has been known to make percussion instruments out of just about anything. Is it her intention to find beauty in the raw material? Is her experimentalism an act of rebellion? Does she think the mix of acoustically perfect concert hall, magnificent score, and a synchronistic alignment of conductor, soloist and ensemble is actually the fastest route to standardisation?

“I’m not sure it’s about standardisation, but imperfection has that feeling that a human being is creating it. Just like we have a conversation, there are hums and hahs, and there are pauses. If we speak a perfect sentence with no pauses, with perfect vocabulary, where then is the personality?”

She adds that she believes in embracing the natural sound and personality of the environment, and to that extent Glennie is something of a musical libertarian, unrestricted by expectations. A wild child.

“Embrace the natural sounds of the environment you are playing in, because as soon as you get an audience in there it is going to

Industry insight 17

change anyway, so if we want the perfect hall we need the circumstances that will give us the perfect performance. So for every rehearsal, get an audience in.

“The audience is a crucial part of the performance, we listen to them as they listen to us. In a way they are telling us when they want us to begin a piece of music and they create the atmosphere.”

A major project for Glennie this year is King’s Cross Sounds, for which she will be the first King’s Cross musician in residence in partnership with PRS for Music Foundation. It’s a mass public engagement project exploring the London area’s past, present and future identity through sound.

“We’ll be encouraging people to gather sounds and they can upload those sounds onto the King’s Cross website.” [kingscross. co.uk/sounds-of-kings-cross] The residency features participatory events across the King’s Cross district, capturing the interest of local and international businesses operating in the area, schoolchildren, commuters and residents.

The area itself has a multi-layered history: once a red light district, it’s now the hub and central point of connection with Europe via the Eurostar. Likewise, its rail stations connect London with the North and elsewhere in the UK via its massive networks at St Pancras and Euston. Its streets vibrate with transience and movement, underpinned by tradition, stability, and expectations.

This part of London bubbles with gourmet restaurants, swish buildings (it is home to Google’s UK HQ), and glass-box wine bars.

The side streets are lined with seedy sex shops, and in among the luxury hotels and apartments are social housing estates. Furthermore, there are scars: a fire ripped through the underground in1987 and in 2005 it was a target in the London underground bombings.

For the residency Glennie wants to do more than simply compose a piece of music. Instead, she has a small team of collaborators that she will work with to capture the essence and heritage of King’s Cross. This comprises historian Christopher Lloyd, composer Jill Jarman, and outreach specialist Tim Steiner.

Glennie says she wants to examine how a changing soundscape, like the changing landscape, reverberates on the people who live and work there. And though sound-clip contributions may not be used in their entirety, they may influence the final score that they create.

For Glennie, the residency hits the heart of what makes music so important – it is not just about an artist playing to an audience, but a shared sonic experience that brings people together, whether that is in a concert hall or across a community.

“We think of colour and how that makes us feel, but we are just beginning to think about the sound business in that way, it’s really important,” she adds. evelyn.co.uk | kingscross.co.uk/sounds-of-kings-cross

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

PHOTOS: © BRUNOFIDRYCH_ PENDERECKI.

32 Poland

The composer leans forward from his chair for a moment: friendly, interested, disinterested, it’s hard to tell. “Yes, of course, but only as a composer, I am not connected with the politics of Poland. I am doing my work, and trying to do the best I can, but I am not politically involved, I’m far away from politics. As a composer, I’m more known abroad than in Poland really.”

“My husband was one of the so-called Polish school,” adds Elżbieta. “There was Lutosławski, Górecki and Kilar, they all started in the 50s, at what was a very hard time in Poland.”

“A composer is very individualist,” interjects Penderecki. “I never connected with any other group of composers, Polish, or otherwise.

They were my colleagues, yes, but as far as my music was concerned I was writing my music, not connected with anything which was written by my colleagues.”

Penderecki’s scores dip into the dark annals of human history: St Luke Passion, Polish Requiem, and Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, to name a few. Right now, he’s working on a composition in remembrance of the victims of the Armenian genocide.

As a composer, he has a thoroughfare to the heart of darkness: his scores have evoked fear in film audiences for The Exorcist, Wild at Heart, Children of Men, Fearless, Twister and Shutter Island among others. I wonder what drives him as a composer? How does he find the brace between narrative, horror and musical nuances?

And where does he find the inspiration to create hair-raising music?

“This question nobody is able to answer, even for a composer like me,” he says pragmat-

The living legend Few composers have enjoyed a lifetime of success like Krzysztof Penderecki. Maria Roberts met with one of Poland’s most famous ambassadors for contemporary music to talk about life, inspiration, and Polish history

I

Above: Krzysztof Penderecki

meet with Krzysztof Penderecki and his wife Elżbieta in the lobby of the Westin Dragonara hotel in Malta. It’s a beautiful day. I’ve dragged the pair away from lunchtime drinks on the seaview patio for an indoor interview against the clatter in the restaurant. They are here for Malta International Music Festival and set to fly to London the following day.

As a couple, Krzysztof and Elżbieta are easy to spend time with: relaxed and open, they are resplendent with the sort of the composure that comes from sharing the best part of your life with a supportive partner. Penderecki is 84, to his wife’s youthful 71, and during his illustrious career he’s achieved the almost impossible for an avant-garde musician.

Widely touted as a “living legend”, and Poland’s “greatest living composer”, he’s attracted legions of fans across the film, classical and contemporary divide, bridging the spectrums of secular, religious and spiritual genres.

Has this trailblazing success changed his perspective? Does Penderecki feel a sense of responsibility to his fans, to Poland, to the contemporary music scene and the young composers that want to follow in his footsteps?

ically. “I was composing from the age of six. Nobody taught me composition in the beginning. I was self-taught by studying the scores of my great colleagues. My greatest inspirations were Monteverdi, Palestrina, Bach, some pieces of Stravinsky and, as far as symphonic music is considered, Shostakovich. I love Prokofiev’s music very much. When I was young, I was not very much connected with Polish music actually, or not at all.”

Remedying the response, Elżbieta situates Penderecki’s musical life back into the context of the Polish oeuvre. “My husband wrote the Polish Requiem, this piece is very important in Polish music. It was first performed in the early 1980s with the cellist Rostropovich. This work is very much connected to a tragic time in Polish history, it was dedicated to the victims of Auschwitz, the victims of the Warsaw ghetto and later on to the Solidarity [a 10 million-strong trade union formed in the ‘80s that wanted to end Soviet control of the country].”

Penderecki’s Polish Requiem is an epic homage to protests, revolts, and tragedy that befell the nation as it struggled to free itself from the shackles of communism. The first piece, Lacrimosa (dedicated to Lech Wałęsa) was commissioned by Solidarity in memory of activists killed in the 1970 anti-government protests and accompanied the unveiling of a statue at the Gdańsk shipyards.

From there, this body of work expanded to a requiem, with each individual piece inspired by the gains and losses of Polish citizens: The Agnus Dei (1981) in memory Cardinal Stefan Wyszyńsk; The Recordare (1982), for the Catholic “Beatification” of Franciscan friar, Maximilian Kolbe, who died at Auschwitz; The Dies irae commemorated the Warsaw Uprising of August

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

p32+33_Krystoph Pendercki_Vol14 Iss6_VF.indd 26

21/05/2018 16:00

d

Poland 33

and September 1944; Libera me, while Domine remembered the victims of the Katyn massacre.

Penderecki later added Jesu Pie and Ciaccona, the latter in memory of his friend, Pope John Paul II. Explains Elżbieta: “The Pope and my husband were friends. They met when John Paul II was an actor at a theatre in Kraków, where my husband was writing music.

Pope John Paul II was important not just for Polish history, as the first Polish Pope, but for world history. His appointment was a historic moment and very important for our political life and the position of Poland in the world.”

Penderecki’s work is loaded with milieu, both personal and political.

(Even if he doesn’t want to talk politics, his music has context.) His workin-progress to commemorate the Armenian genocide strikes a personal note as his grandmother was half-Armenian. “Like anyone,” says his wife, “my husband feels the tragedy of another nation.”

How does the composer dig deep to find an aural retelling of these harrowing stories? Is there a method? Does he create a narrative?

“No, no, no,” Penderecki nonchalantly shakes his head at me to signal I have it all wrong. He leans forward again in his chair to explain the process to me. “The best music is abstract, it is not connected with any politics, any narration, that could be dedicated to anything. It is not describing anything, there is no illustration of something that is happening around me.”

“I’m not a musician myself,” says Elżbieta. “But listening to him, and having spent so many years with him when he was creating something, and always being present, I feel his music is extremely dramatic.”

Penderecki disagrees: “No, it is not always dramatic. When you are writing a piece, like the piece that commemorates the genocide, you have to have in your mind the tragedy of a generation – but in an abstract way.”

Putting aside the disharmony of opinion at the table (I suspect there is narrative, while he adheres to abstract notions), has he achieved what he thought he would achieve? Has he met his own expectations?

“Yes, I think so. Not now, but many, many years ago, I found my way and my expression. This [expression] was different from other music and it is how and why I made a career – because I was not copying colleagues of mine, but looking inside of myself and writing music that became identifiable as my music.”

Adds Elżbieta: “You know, it started a long time ago, in 1966, when Berlin was a mecca for contemporary music and young composers. One day, my husband decided to go his own way. He wrote St Luke Passion, nobody after Bach had touched this passion series.”

Ever humble, Penderecki adds his own slant. “There were some Passions written, but they were not really great.”

I ask Penderecki where that independent spirit comes from: is it something he has to nurture? Or does it just exist? “One day you have inspiration and you cannot – nobody can – describe how it is. There are no rules. You have to be born as a musician or a composer, I think. Though being able to write such a piece like St Luke Passion, and all the big oratorios afterwards, came from years of studying polyphony, counterpoint and instrumentation.”

Adds Elżbieta: “My husband would say to students who said that they did not want ‘to study for years’: “First you have to learn inspiration, then you have to learn counterpoint and polyphony, and then you can be a composer. You cannot teach composition.

“This comes back to your question, “Where do you get inspiration?” I think this is what my husband didn’t answer. All his life he has been very interested in literature and art and reading. Now he’s interested in nature and he says he is always finding inspiration in nature, am I right?”

Happy with the story his wife is telling, Penderecki nods in agreement.

She continues: “We have a lovely 18th country house, some old furniture, some contemporary pieces, some Dutch paintings and the arboreto – and this is the place where he gets inspiration. All his life he followed certain rules, and this gave him his inspiration, I believe.

He is patron of Krzysztof Penderecki European Centre for Music

(KPECM) in Lusławice. The campus has a dormitory for over 100 students and a concert hall for 650 and rehearsal rooms. All his life he has been looking for something to do with music, but also something to leave behind where his students could find inspiration. On the campus grounds he has been overseeing the creation of a huge park. ” Elżbieta is engaging, captivating, and a veritable data bank of information on the life the two have spent together. There is little doubt about the fact that she is a component in the engine of the composer’s success story.

She is an academic force to be reckoned with; I get the sense that with Elżbieta in your corner, you could achieve just about anything. Coupled with a strikingly bright mind, her astuteness leaves an unforgettable impression. Quite rightly, Elżbieta has been recognised in Poland for her charity work and for her work as a cultural activist.

Picking up on my thoughts, Elżbieta adds fondly: “My husband doesn’t talk too much. He is sitting every day in the morning, taking the paper and writing for a few hours. It doesn’t matter where, every single day, even if we are travelling, he goes off to write for a few hours.”

For a moment Penderecki protests that he is not working all the time, until his wife reminds him that he is, actually, always going away with a pencil and paper to write, even in their hotel rooms, even here in Malta.

He nods in quiet agreement, this time happy to concede ground.

“My work is the foundation and also my festivals, which I do voluntarily [she is involved with the Ludwig van Beethoven Easter Festival, founded the Krzysztof Penderecki Festival, is president of the Ludwig van Beethoven Association and sits on the board of Łańcut Castle Foundation and KPECM]. My goal is to support and to help young artists, these days there are so many great musicians all over the world: here in Malta, the US, Armenia, Russia – but these artists need help, they need guidance. I’m trying to help these artist through the Krzysztof Penderecki Festival and Foundation. It is very important to help the young generation.”

Before the couple are called away to go to a concert I want to know what is next for Penderecki; as he gains in popularity by the year, I guess retirement is out of the question. “I have almost finished my fourth string quartet; this is always very difficult but important chamber music.

Now I have to continue again with my ninth symphony, it’s a good European tradition to write nine symphonies. Sometimes it takes a few months, like St Luke Passion, sometimes it takes a long time.”

“The best music is abstract, it is not connected with any politics, any narration, that could be dedicated to anything. It is not describing anything, there is no illustration of something that is happening around me”

http://penderecki-center.pl/en/

Left: Krzysztof and Elzbieta Penderecki Below: The Pendereckis in Maltal

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

p32+33_Krystoph Pendercki_Vol14 Iss6_VF.indd 27

21/05/2018 16:00

Korea 23

Back to Bach We speak to Kyung Wha Chung ahead of the release of her new album out on Warner Classics this October Interview by Maria Roberts

PHOTO © COURTESY OF KYUNG WHA CHUNG

K

‘Whether you work in art, science or maths, there is a certain point where you must go beyond simply having talent, to having tremendous imagination’

yung Wha Chung is a tough nut to crack: she’s intriguing, fascinating and just a little bit frightening as she alternates from being as wily as a puma or as playful as kitten. Chung’s as sharp, honest and brutal with herself as she is with everyone else. What’s more, she knows it. In a world where so many stars sound the same, you need artists like Chung to sing and shout from the parapet. I like her. It’s this mix that makes for an intoxicating player and personality.

Take the infamous comments she made at Royal Festival Hall in 2014: ‘Renowned violinist berates coughing child’ blasted the BBC News headlines after Chung suggested to a parent from the stage that the child should ‘come back when she’s older’ — voooom an online debate raged instantly, fuelled by critics, the public and columnists. ‘I have always welcomed children to my concerts,’ the violinist wrote on The Guardian’s classical blog. Storm in a teacup over.

During our phone interview I tentatively raise the issue with Chung – was she shocked by the furore?

Chung is laughing. Good. This means we are on safe ground. It’s mid-July and she’s at her hotel room in Verbier, ahead of the festival’s opening concert with Charles Dutoit and the young Verbier Festival Orchestra. ‘You know,’ she says chattily, ‘if I think back to how I have approached my career over the past 50 years, I am still the same.

When I was young, I was extremely passionate, sensitive and demanding: whether with a new or an old maestro, I went for what I wanted. I don’t hold back when there is something to say.

‘I have never hesitated to express myself, and this has been shocking for a lot of people. When I look back, I can see the great musician I was. As a young musician, I very much wanted to have the gift that others recognised in me, and, of course, they saw my gift and because of this they treated me in a particular way.’

I think this is Chung for saying she knows she can be…(it’s hard to find the politically correct word: ‘a madam’ is too sexist for 2016, and ‘diva’ doesn’t quite represent her mischievousness) ‘challenging’, but that makes her sound boring and Kyung Wha Chung is anything but boring. Eccentric? Maybe.

Prior to the Royal Festival Hall incident she had been the darling of the media. Didn’t she find the resultant hoo-hah a little unfair?

‘No, no, no, no,’ she says adamantly. (I have to admit, I’m surprised by her reaction, some comments were cruel, I’d be out for revenge). ‘I don’t think of it in terms of fair or unfair, they reacted in their way at that time.’

Kyung Wha Chung performs with NCPA Orchestra

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

24 Korea

PHOTO © COURTESY OF KYUNG WHA CHUNG

‘If there is one thing I know in my life, it is that my first choice will always be to share my gift of music with the public’

She accepts the part she played in the drama. ‘One thing I wasn’t aware of was how the public had changed. My recollection of performing in England was that the audience had been fantastically quiet, there was no problem at all when I had previously played in London.

Then I was told afterwards that this is a present day phenomenon, everywhere at concerts people do cough.’

The debate certainly affected my own attitude towards attending concerts: because of Chung’s comment I missed Yo-Yo Ma at Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA, instead I retreated to my dull hotel room with an annoying cold. ‘Go to the concert, it’ll be fine,’ my companion had urged. ‘No, it’s not fine,’ I retorted – because, like Chung, I too believe that during a live performance the artist has only a finite number of moments to make a defining difference. More importantly, the public pays a lot for concert tickets. Every single person, including the artist, deserves to participate undisturbed. Unless it is a relaxed performance, as different rules apply.

Chung’s opinion matters because she is an icon. She’s fabulously self-assured, there’s a devilishness that accompanies her pride, and she’s an incredible role model for all – and yes, women in particular.

I’m in awe of the ease with which she can be self-possessed, fun, and gracious all at the same time.

Chung sounds much more at peace than when I interviewed her in 2014, which was before the whole controversy occurred. Naturally, there is a brusqueness to her chatter, but there is also a great deal of tenderness and joviality too. She’s happier, that’s for sure.

The violinist readily admits that before the comeback concert, which came after five years in recovery following an injury, and a INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

12-year hiatus from performing in London, she felt the weight of emotional pressure. For a short time, at least, the experience altered her.

While her focus was firmly set on delivering a strong performance for the audience, an operation just months earlier on her thumb meant that by the time the December date arrived, she was still in pain.

‘In some way it was a miracle that December concert happened at all,’ she says brightly. ‘I was looking recently at some video coverage, there were photos where I had my left thumb pushed back. Even though I’d had surgery on 24 September, it never occurred to me to postpose my London concert. I just went ahead with it.’

She pauses for a moment to remember. ‘You can imagine the physical pressure: I had been on medication since September, and performed a number of concerts in China in October.’

And now? How is she? ‘I am relatively OK with my fingers, though I don’t expect to ever be totally comfortable.’

Uncomfortable, perhaps. Healed, most definitely. The change is obvious: in the promotional coverage for 2014, Chung is composed and demure, yet also serious and somewhat stormy. It was a sharp contrast to her 1972 concert at Verbier, where for her Tchaikovsky violin concerto she coaxed out the notes with imperious control.

But now the legend of Chung really is back, and her domination of the instrument, coupled with a flirtation of style, flooded the stage at Verbier on 22 July (you can view the opening concert online at Medici.tv).

She’s worked hard to climb to the top. Throughout her 50-year career, Chung has spoken candidly about the challenges of being a perfectionist. In her youth, this steely determination served her well, but in the tertiary years of her life [she is 68], and with an injury to

manage, she has had to learn to adapt. Is she easier on herself now, less critical?

‘I am not necessarily easier on myself, but when you grow older you have a much clearer preference of what you want, simply because you understand what is important to you.

‘You outgrow self-consciousness as you age, now I take each moment as the ultimate gift. The important point to remember, perhaps, is that no one is without pressure in their life, everyone always has some kind of predicament to counteract.

‘When you are a young artist, you are protected from what life throws at you by your parents and managers. Now, at my age, I have had quite a lot of life experience of gaining and losing in every form.’

Chung adds that it is this balancing act of ‘you win some, you lose some’ that has enabled her to tap into what brings her the most pleasure in life. Being on the road again, playing concerts, recording, the whole package makes sense.

‘I’m enjoying touring,’ she says with the sincerity of someone who has overcome some personal trials. ‘I was talking to my assistant this morning and since the December 2014 concert at Royal Festival Hall, I’ve done all sorts of things I never imagined I would do.’

Chung is referring to the three-disc deal she secured with Warner Classics, the first of which, Bach’s complete Sonatas & Partitas for unaccompanied violin, is out this October. Later this year she will return to London to play solo Bach at the Barbican on 26 October, after Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall (12 October) and Dublin’s National Concert Hall (17 October); just three of the stops in a 20-date world tour that will take her to Tokyo and Carnegie Hall in 2017. The violinist is delighted by the prospect: she might be an intensely serious artist, but she’s also unabashedly thrilled by the thought of being back on the road.

‘Recording the unaccompanied Bach Sonatas and Partitas is something that I never thought I would realise because of my injury.

It began when I put the repertoire on my programme in 2012 in Korea, and it has all gone well since then.

‘Bach was a wonderful violinist; you can see this from what he has given us to play in these pieces. For musicians, this repertoire is a gift.

The best representation of his talent is the Chaconne; with this piece every player has a different interpretation.’

Has she rediscovered the music in the recording process? ‘Life as a musician is a continuous discovery,’ says Chung. ‘I began playing the Chaconne when I was 13, so that’s 55 years of journey. There have been both positive and negative challenges for me with this piece.

‘Positive, because I am closer to Bach’s repertoire and more deeply familiar with it, which gives me far more ideas of what I like to try out, and negative because of my physical state.

‘– and I don’t say this lightly because of my present age,’ she adds candidly. ‘When you are young, you have the challenge of everything being unknown. Now I am absolutely thrilled to be able to connect to the Chaconne in such a different way, imbued with the experience of life in my performances.

‘The unaccompanied Bach was something I have wanted to do since I was very young and now I am doing it. If there is one thing I know in my life, it is that my first choice will always be to share my gift of music with the public.

‘When you record an interpretation, you put your mark on the repertoire. A live performance is quite different to a recording studio, particularly with these unaccompanied Bach pieces and the Fugue. The originality of any performance is in the way the technique is executed. Moreover, each venue has a different reflection of the sound on stage – over time you know how to extend the acoustic in your own individual way, only experience teaches you that.’

For Chung, meeting her audiences in the middle is achieved by presenting the best violin repertoire she can offer, at the highest standard she can achieve.

‘I’ve come to realise in my life (and knew from my very first moment on stage witnessing the audience reaction to a Mozart concerto), that I’m 100 per cent connected and committed to performing to a live audience. That, in itself, is charity, don’t you agree? You don’t have to do it (be a musician) but you do it because you believe in your bones you want to do this for other people. I want to deliver music for people with whatever passion I can grab hold of and I’m more passionate about performing now than I ever have been before.’

This seems true enough. There’s a transcendental state to Chung’s playing and it’s clear that she pushes herself as close to the intersection between brilliant and brilliance as humanly possible. On a personal level, it must be emotionally draining to give so much of yourself all the time?

PHOTO © COURTESY OF KYUNG WHA CHUNG

PHOTO © COURTESY OF KYUNG WHA CHUNG

Korea 25

‘Absolutely, it is emotional, sometimes I do think ‘am I giving too much?’ but then I go ahead and just give it my all anyway,’ she laughs. ‘That’s my nature, I cannot deliver music other than with my full commitment. Whether you work in art, science or maths, there is a certain point where you must go beyond simply having talent, to having tremendous imagination.

‘This is the same for a violinist: music requires so much training and as you grow older, and as you experience more, you ask more questions, although it seems there is no final answer to anything.

‘A student once asked me,’ she continues, ‘what my message is that I portray through my music. I said my message is a question: ‘Do you love what you do?’’ warnerclassics.com/kyung-wha-chung icartists.co.uk/artists/kyung-wha-chung

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

14 Industry insight

PHOTOS © MICHELLE OSORIO

Lionel Bringuier

Clockwise from below: Anand Bhatt; Aakash Odedra and Hu Shenyuan in R&D for Samsara; #JeSuis

Homecoming Conductor Lionel Bringuier is the new artist associate for Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice for the 2019-20 season. Maria Roberts travelled to the Côte d’Azur to meet him

W

hen I catch up with conductor Lionel Bringuier at the elegant entrance to Opéra de Nice – home to Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice – he’s just returned from a concert in Japan where he conducted Tokyo Symphony Orchestra with Alina Pogotskina at Suntory Hall and Muza Kawasaki Symphony Hall. A few recovery and rehearsal days later, he’s opening his homecoming concert with Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice; the first in his new capacity as artist associate.

We meet early the morning following his inaugural concert: the sun is bright, you can smell the sea, bread and coffee, and the quaint French streets in the historic part of town are clattering awake.

Within minutes it’s obvious that Bringuier is reassuringly free of the affectations that come with the trappings of early success and fame.

Welcoming and relaxed, he offers to take me on a tour backstage. As we

stroll through the narrow corridors, he merrily chats away about settling back in the city of his birth and his career to date.

After a long spell in Los Angeles, and then Switzerland, Bringuier’s happy to be finally putting roots down in France once again. Born and raised in Nice, he recalls how as a youngster he poured over scores in the local library – with the aim of winning a place at Conservatoire de Paris.

His efforts paid off: he left for the City of Light at just 13-years-old; first training as a cellist and then as a conductor when he turned 14. He has been working in music ever since. In 2005, aged just 19 and still a student in Paris, he took first prize and the ‘Prix du Public’ at the 49th Besançon International Competition for Young Conductors. Soon after his prestigious win, he was rubbing shoulders with some of the most famous conductors of the time: in 2007, he joined Los Angeles Philharmonic as an assistant conductor, appointed by Esa-Pekka Salonen, who was then succeeded by Gustavo Dudamel. He later became a resident conductor at LA Phil, leaving the post in 2012 to become chief conductor and music director of Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich.

This morning, standing on the empty stage, Bringuier leans against a plush red and gold box, stage right (situated as close to the musicians’ chairs as you can get, without playing among them) reminiscing; as a small child he would sit with his mother and father, gazing over at the conductor on the podium, relishing the music.

L

Industry insight 15

Lionel Bringuier conducting at Opéra de Nice in 2018

“I make music and have great friendships with singers, conductors and soloists. I do what I like and I am happy”

Below: Interior, Opéra de Nice

Of course, as a youngster, he had no idea that one day he’d be pride of place in front of his home audience. Personally appointed by the mayor of Nice as artist associate, his 2019-20 season in Nice is all part of a municipal strategy to establish the famous destination on the French Riviera as a cultural centre of excellence.

He has taken this role seriously – emotionally, even – and flicked through his contacts book to bring in prestigious friends that can win local and international attention. As artist associate, he’ll deliver five concerts over next nine months. On the Friday we meet, he, Hélène Grimaud and Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice are performing popular works by Dukas, Stravinsky and Ravel, including The Rite of Spring. Later in the year, his brother, the cellist Nicolas Bringuier, will join him for one concert; while French icon Renaud Capuçon will end the Nice residency with two concerts on 19 and 29 June 2020.

Says Bringuier: “I moved back to Nice completely in 2012, my last year in Los Angeles. It’s an important place for me. I have brothers, sisters and family in Nice. I can work on my scores here outside; it’s very peaceful, and I prepare for concerts and relax here. It became clear to me after LA that I would live all my life in Nice and do my travels from Nice to engagements in other parts of the world.”

As we leave the opera house and walk towards the nearby flower market, I realise just how connected to the city Bringuier is: at a café on a corner he is beckoned over by a group of men sitting and drinking coffee (some of them musicians), they chat for a while in French as I hang by the table. Further along, at a restaurant on another corner, we are ushered to a quiet spot at the back by the manager – who is obviously delighted to have his company. The manager later waives the bill, our coffee and sparkling water are ‘on the house’. Once we are seated, a couple sitting at a table adjacent to ours stand to embrace Bringuier; he hadn’t spotted them when he’d entered, but they are delighted to encounter him. The elderly man it turns out is a fellow conductor and former mentor.

Bringuier has just turned 33 – in conductor years, that’s still very young – yet he’s led some the best orchestras in the world: among them Dresdner Philharmonie, Gewandhausorchester, Berliner Philharmoniker, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, and New York Philharmonic.

After almost 20 years at the podium, what has he learned from the best orchestras in the world? “I realised over the years that what is important is that a conductor must have the clearest idea of the 100 people all together: there is no chance to hesitate in front of the orchestra. The top five orchestras have a high sense of what is expected,

PHOTO © COURTESY OPÉRA DE NICE

L

PHOTO © SIMON PAULY

PHOTOS © DOMINIQUE JAUSSEIN

Lionel Bringuier

and the technical quality needed. A conductor must quickly understand how the orchestra works and how they like to interact during rehearsals.

This, of course, differs between the US, Europe and Asia. So, whilst you know what you want, you must have flexibility to arrive at the same place with a different approach.”

What does he make of l’Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice? “There is a will from the players in the orchestra, there is great energy, they want to give all they have in their hearts and for me that’s really important.

I want to feel that the players are willing to the give their best. As artist associate, I will be making a kind of ‘festival in a year’ – with concerts at the start of the season, the middle of the season and at the end of season. The idea is to bring top soloists to Nice – and it has worked. We have sold out the concerts. As this is an opera house, they don’t have classical concerts every week; so, this concept has been very popular.”

Bringuier has a close relationship with all of the soloists on the programme, especially his brother who lives and teaches in Korea, and Grimaud and Capuçon, who are beloved by French audiences. From the intimate nature of their friendships, I suggest that the concerts are more like salon performances on stage than recitals. He agrees. “I am sure that is the case because in music you can’t lie, everything that you have in your heart is played on stage and transferred to the audience.”

As we go to press, Bringuier is in Stavanger with violinist Lisa Batiashvili. This will be followed by a short trip to Australia to Sydney Symphony and then to Western Australian Symphony Orchestra. Back in Europe he heads to Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in Switzerland, and then hops over to Austria for three dates, before returning to Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice on 26 January for a concert of his favourite Brahm’s repertoire with his brother.

As well as guest appearances with top orchestras, and a BBC Proms debut, he’s recorded for Erato, Decca and Deustche Grammophon, conducting Yuja Wang and Ray Chen, among others. What’s next, does he have his eyes set on a prize for the future? “What is beautiful about this job is that it is not work, it is a passion,” he says affectionately. “I am always discovering something new from the scores – and even more so now with all the online videos where you can even find the likes of Stravinsky talking about his compositions, and then there are all the books about composers and all the repertoire to learn!

“Over the years many people have asked me what my ambition is – but I never set out with the intention of thinking ‘I want to do this or that’: I make music and have great friendships with singers, conductors and soloists. I do what I like and I am happy.” lionelbringuier.com | opera-nice.org

32 ICanada

The world’s first national Indigenous Theatre company is set to open next year in Canada. Maria Roberts chats to artistic director Kevin Loring and managing director Lori Marchand about reclaiming lost voices and creating a future in the context of a harrowing past

Landmarks

I PHOTO: © ANDREE LANTHIER

Left to right: Lorne Cardinal, Kevin Loring and Gordon Patrick White in the NAC’s 2012 all-Indigenous production of King Lear

Kevin Loring, Cheyenne Scott and Trish Lindstrom in Children of God, written and directed by Corey Payette

PHOTO: © EMILY COOPER

“We’re putting together a programme that reflects experiences from across the country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific and the Arctic”

032_IAM_1118.indd 14

t’s hard to comprehend why it is only now that the world has its first national theatre department for Indigenous artists. The inaugural Indigenous Theatre (IT) season will open at Canada’s National Arts Centre (NAC) in Ottawa next year, a place where English-speaking and French-speaking theatre artists have thrived for five decades. From Autumn 2019, First Nations, Métis and Inuit theatre practitioners will be supported by everything NAC has to offer, plus a CAD3.5m (€2.32m) budget, and an experienced management team with Indigenous heritage.

IT shows will share the NAC calendar with its French and English theatre counterparts as well as the NAC Orchestra. The move comes as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada exposes just how wounding the actions of the past have been on Canada’s First Nation communities’ personal and cultural perspectives.

Individuality-erasing policies like the residential schools (for over 100 years, Aboriginal children were forcibly taken from their families and educated in government and church-run institutions) removed family culture and tradition from the lives of Canada’s Indigenous peoples.

And when you consider that our general experiences and memories of childhood are shaped and formed by the stories we hear, the people we see and the family and community experiences we share – you can see why the launch of NAC’s Indigenous Theatre is such a big deal.

IT’s new artistic director Kevin Loring is a successful playwright, actor and director, who also runs his own company, Savage Society. He is a member of the N’lakap’amux nation and grew up near a residential school, witnessing the trauma inflicted on families by crown and government policies first-hand. He also has a long-standing relationship with NAC: his award-wining play Where the Blood Mixes was performed there in 2010 and he has served as an NAC artist in residence.

Loring’s been in the IT post for a year, laying the groundwork and building relationships across Canada. “I’ve been travelling to meet companies and seeing work, we’ve been building the team. I’ve been a keynote speaker for the PACT conference (Professional Association for Canadian Theatres), a keynote for Arts Day on the Hill, which is an arts industry advocacy initiative on Parliament Hill, and I also gave a speech at the Canadian Arts Summit at the Banff Centre in Alberta.

“Dr Lindsay Lachance and Mairi Brascoupé, have been going out into the community and doing lots of outreach, which is an ongoing process.

Lindsay is of Algonquin Anishinabe and settler Canadian ancestry and is one of two Indigenous people in Canada with a PhD in Theatre Studies.

This connection has been helpful as both have family and friend ties to the community.”

An example of the outreach work so far is the symposium Experiencing Indigenous Works – Developing Critical Voice, curated by Dr Lachance in June 2017. For this, professionals gathered at the NAC’s Salon on unceded Algonquin territory to watch Corey Payette’s Children of God – a powerful musical about an Oji-Cree family whose children were taken away to a residential school in Northern Ontario. Professionals then had the opportunity to take part in critical workshops where they jointly created a working list of performance analysis tools to support the viewing, reception, and teaching of Indigenous theatrical works, expanding on the issues raised by Conversation Leaders.

Although the national company will be located in Ottawa, Loring is not going to be capital-city focussed in his approach. “There are Indigenous artists creating work all over Canada. We’re putting together a programme that reflects experiences from across the country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific and the Arctic,” he says.

“As Canada is such a vast country, it’s a big challenge to cover all those communities (though the companies we work with can). There are over 634 distinct First Nations in Canada, speaking more than 50 distinct Indigenous languages. Unfortunately, I can’t represent them all but what I can do is support the artists that exist and encourage more to get onboard.

19/10/2018 17:09

Lori Marchand

Canada 33

PHOTO: © COURTESY OF NAC

PHOTO: © COURTESY OF NAC

Kevin Loring

“Indigenous work is different, it is not a linear narrative but a circular narrative”

“So far we have nine shows on the schedule for our first year, with four being staged for our launch. They encompass everything from dance, theatre, circus and hybrids of these contemporary forms.”

He adds that once the theatre is up and fully running, the plan is to present around eight shows per season. Some will be co-productions, some new commissions. “We are focussing on work that already has some sort of momentum. We are not lifting anything off the ground from square one, although there are a couple of pieces we’ve been involved with from the beginning. For example, Les 7 Doigts (Montréal), Artcirq (Igloolik) and Taqqut Productions (Iqaluit) are creating an Inuit story circus extravaganza.

Lori Marchand joined as IT’s managing director in April 2018, having previously led Western Canada Theatre as executive director for 18 years.

A member of the Syilx First Nation, she has played a key role in the encouragement, development and production of Indigenous work.

Some of this has been linking IT up with existing associations.

Says Marchand: “There are national organisations we can link with, such as the Indigenous Performing Arts Alliance and Professional Association of Canadian Theatres. One of our goals, as Kevin said, is to create a platform to showcase work that already exists – because, frankly, there hasn’t been the opportunity to showcase Indigenous work on a national stage under a specific spotlight like this.”

Marchand adds that she and Loring have worked together, in one capacity or another, for the best part of 20 years. This means they have hit the ground running, with both making sure that the business and artistic objectives of IT are communicated.

“The basis of our business recognises our context that we are a national institution,” explains Marchand. “However, we are on unceded Algonquin territory, so we must be sure we are being respectful and representative of that whenever possible.

“We also recognise that we are an Indigenous company within a regional colonial organisation and that some of our work is not just about what we are doing outside the organisation but also inside the organisation, ensuring that the Indigenous mandate is reflected inside NAC – this encompasses everything from what is on stage to outreach projects.”

As managing director, Marchand is well aware that IT will be entering the national theatre fray from a different perspective. “The NAC is a crown corporation and so in many ways it’s a very well-oiled machine that has been operating for 50 years. We are an Indigenous company that now has the benefit of what it can offer. That means marketing services, production teams, and all the logistical nuts and bolts that go into making work happen. Now, for the first time, we can do what the French and English theatre departments have been doing for 50 years – and that’s a

gamechanger for our sector.

“We will benefit from CAD3.5m in funding, it’s the most any Indigenous company in our country has had before – after all we are national in scope.”

Every cent counts when you consider how far IT must travel to fulfil its objectives of inclusivity.

“Canada is an enormous landmass, if you go North to the Arctic there is a lot of amazing work to be found,” affirms Loring. “But when travelling to these areas, especially with a theatre company, all of your costs quadruple; food, travel, accommodation, you name it! I think people underestimate how much of a component that is in the framework of what we are trying to accomplish.”

Along with the logistical, political and historical pathways to navigate, Indigenous work has its own methodology that needs to be taken into consideration. Explains Loring: “Indigenous work is different, it is not a linear narrative but a circular narrative, reflective of story-telling methodology, with a background in oral story-telling. One of the best examples of contemporary Indigenous theatre, from a playwright’s perspective, would be the works of Marie Clements, a Canadian Dene playwright, performer, director, producer and screenwriter. In her work, you can find multiple linear storytelling progressions in the characters that capture the Indigenous form of ‘any place and all places in time’. These break down linear narrative structures to create something that is circular, unfolding and weaving.”

As the first national theatre department for Indigenous works, will IT leverage this to become an international hub and centre for best practice, connecting with companies in the US, Australia, and so forth? “I’m interested in hosting the discussion around how we engage with Indigenous works and the differences in Indigenous, colonial and settler perspectives and models of performance,” says Loring. “Once we get up and running in 2020, we will be interested in touring and presenting internationally. I had an amazing week at APAM meeting Indigenous artists from the Southern hemisphere – there are some very powerful conversations happening there. We bear in mind that we will be the world’s first national Indigenous Theatre department. We want to be a beacon and send our work out into the world.”

Here Marchand adds her point of view: “The three Rs in IT’s manifesto will inform everything we do – Retention, Resurgence and Resilience.

Fundamentally, we must recognise where the Indigenous people of Canada are right now: so many languages and cultures are in a precarious place because of the impact of residential schools and colonial practices and policies, our stories going back will be the ground and strength for the important work that is ahead of us. Our first step is acknowledging that they are in a weakened state and there is tremendous work to be done ahead of us to bring the language and stories back into current knowledge.” nac-cna.ca/en/indigenoustheatre

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

032_IAM_1118.indd 15

19/10/2018 17:10

28 Finland

Wild thoughts I

PHOTO: © SASA TKALCAN

Artistic director of Espoo City Theatre Erik Söderblom speaks to Maria Roberts about giving range to the voices he presents on stage

f you look at the promotional videos on YouTube for the city of Espoo you’ll see it has high ideals. The original home of Nokia, Espoo is a kind of neat Silicon Valley blanketed in crisp Baltic woodland air, where working in tech and going wild swimming coexist as a lifestyle choice.

Since the ‘70s, Espoo’s interest in health, progress and environment has contributed to create a kind of work/life nirvana. Now, after something of a quiet spell, it is hoping to become a rejuvenated city by investing in its arts and cultural scene.

The theatre celebrates its 30th anniversary this year and interestingly, for a national theatre, presents far more contemporary works than classics. Given its science and tech demographic, do they have a strong base of avid cultural consumers from which to draw from?

Erik Söderblom tells me that the tech community is propped up by a flow of talent from the nearby Aalto University, which provides graduates for companies like Nokia, Microsoft, Tieto, Tekla and Kone among others. The region has a population of 1.1m, Finland itself has a rather small population of around 5.5m. (By comparison London has a population of 8.1m, New York 8.5m and the entirety of Switzerland 8.4m.) Espoo is 20km from Helsinki, while Espoo City Theatre’s (ECT) two venues are slap bang in the middle of these two central hubs, making it perfectly placed to attract audiences from both municipalities.

“There is a transition going on at the moment,” says Söderblom.

“Generally theatre and the arts have attracted elderly audiences, but now more and more young people are coming to the theatre. There are many newcomers to Finland from different communities; if you take into account that 17% of the population is non-Finnish born, in that sense the community is very international.”

To meet the needs of this mixed audience, from autumn onwards all ECT productions will be presented with English surtitles. When Söderblom and I speak, ECT has just staged an adaptation by Antti Mikkola of Maria Jotuni’s 1965 novel Tottering House. The 2018 version switches the protagonists’ roles around: now the spousal abuse is by a woman against a man; Lea is a narcissistic female tyrant, while stay at home dad Eero is financially dependent on his wife.

Why the focus this season on gender, identity and sexuality? “Tottering House is a story about domestic violence, in which a woman is violent towards her husband. I think that Maria Jotuni, the writer, can best be described as a Finnish Brecht.

We reversed the

“The world is an unstable system and it changes all the time, theatre is a space where you can address this” INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

p28+29_CF-ESPOO_1018_vF.indd 28

21/09/2018 11:22

PHOTO: © LUCIA EGGENHOFFER

Clockwise from top left: Espoo City Theatre’s Huojuva talo; All the Sex I’ve Ever Had;Coco Chanel; Espoo City Theatre artistic director Erik Söderblom

roles because we know that domestic violence against men happens, and yet it is not dealt with in the same way. Everyone has a deep human need to be seen, that is what we can do with more varied representations in theatre.”

Söderblom adds that ECT is open to presenting works from varying viewpoints and showing issues from different angles. One thing the #Metoo movement demonstrated was the need to present alternative male realities.

“We have a task as artists and theatremakers not to be a closed club; we must challenge audiences, and be influenced by what happens outside the theatre and in the real world.

“When we get preoccupied with rigid flock behaviour we stop seeing the world in its broadest sense. Theatre is well placed to address this because what happens in all great dramas is that an alien or a messenger lands in a community, family etc. to tell something that forces the community to change and accept new circumstances, for example in Hamlet when the ghost arrives.”

Continues Söderblom: “Who is allowed to tell what on stage is crucial: Finland in particular has been a homogenous culture for a long time. Now this is changing and we intend to include newcomers more, we know that we need more people to move here and pay taxes and take part in society, so we should include them in the culture that we have.”

Among the international works in the autumn programme that defy expectations are Songs of Lear by Teatr Pieśń Kozła, Poland (26-27 October). This one-hour restaging of Shakespeare’s classic is made up of scenes selected by the cast, set to music and poetry.

Directed by Grzegorz Bral, it is performed in Polish with surtitles in Finnish and English and is the result of a partnership production with Adam Mickiewicz Institute / Culture.pl.

From 15-17 November, ECT hosts audience interactive piece All the Sex I’ve Ever Had by Canada’s Mammalian Diving Reflex. The show addresses one of the final taboos: sex and the elderly. For this Espoo’s senior citizens will reveal all about their sexuality, how sex has changed during the course of their lives, their current sex lives, challenges and pleasures. The show has already been realised with local performers in Portland, Prague, Scotland and Singapore and will be presented in Espoo in collaboration with Baltic Circle International Theatre Festival.

Continues Söderblom: “It’s as much a question of presenting what is not being shown and who is not being shown onstage. The world is an unstable system and it changes all the time, theatre is a space where you can address this.”

Society and globalisation is put under the spotlight from 12-14 December with Nature Theater of Oklahoma (US) and six dancers

PHOTO: © SANNE PEPER

PHOTO: © ESPOON KAUPUNGINTEATTERI.

Finland 29

from EnKnapGroup (Slovenia) who present Pursuit of Happiness.

At almost two hours long, it is a story of aggressive Western growth and the aftermath of the American dream. It considers how the Declaration of Independence places “the pursuit of happiness” among “unalienable rights” and poses questions like “what is happiness?”; “into what dark corners do we each individually and collectively chase it?”; and “how far will we go to pursue it?” The story is told through characters such as a Mexican bartender and an Austrian sales rep, via a trip to Baghdad, a modern- day magic potion and cowboy dances.

ECT stages up to 10 international productions each year, 10 domestic productions, and four of its own. How does Söderblom nurture Finnish talent? “Today in Finland we have huge potential in theatre,” explains the artistic director. “In fact, most theatres stage new writing rather than classics. There is also a strong supply of directors, dramaturgs, sound and lighting designers coming from University of the Arts, Helsinki.”

“We don’t have a regular artistic team, instead we are a production house and we invite freelance staff to work on our shows. Most of the interesting work in Finland takes place in between genres, combining for example circus with dance or opera with visual art and so on.

Not having a regular ensemble means we are free to invite the people we want to perform at ECT.” Söderblom has been with the company since January but is driven by the prospect to improve and develop what ECT has to offer. “We plan to strengthen the theatre scene here in Espoo and by 2025 the municipality will be home to a new 700-seat theatre.”

“Everyone has a deep human need to be seen, that is what we can do with more varied representations in theatre”

espoonteatteri.fi

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

p28+29_CF-ESPOO_1018_vF.indd 29

21/09/2018 11:23

24 Germany

The state of play Brecht and Goethe loom large in theatre’s collective consciousness, but what of the new wave of writers? Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar’s head dramaturg Beate Seidel and in-house director and playwright Jan Neumann talk to Maria Roberts about what drives German theatre today

Jan Neumann

Beate Seidel

Germany has a long history of era-defining playwrights and writers.

Does the weight of its literary and dramatic history encourage or hinder new dramatists?

Beate Seidel: This history plays a major role for playwrights creating pieces for German theatre nowadays. On the one hand, theatres are expected to offer the so-called classics of European cultural heritage, and on the other hand many new plays. Quite often they commission works from individual writers which are then produced as world premieres.

Jan Neumann: The payment of authors is such that they have to write two or three pieces a year to feed a family. That’s an enormous pressure for a playwright. Since we know that some of the greatest German poets found themselves in similarly dire situations, at one time or the other, one could say that parsimony is a tradition in Germany.

BS: In addition to literary drama many other dramatic and expressive forms of theatre have developed in the meantime. Texts are often created on stage by the actors themselves during the artistic process. Alongside a devised approach to making new work are other forms: verbatim, documentary and improvisational theatre, reworking and rewriting existing texts, etc. All of these methods are equally valid and can be found in municipal theatres and on the independent scene as well.

Are theatres outside of Germany more likely to stage Brecht than a new German playwright? What are you doing to push new German writing and directors at home and abroad?

BS: It’s common practice, even at German theatres, to fall back on what is tried and tested. Theatres often decide to go with a wellknown play and not experiment with new work as audiences and theatres have mutual expectations of these experiences. Nonetheless, there is an extensive network in Germany that promotes young playwrights. Alongside the writing workshops, in-house programmes and scholarship schemes, writers’ conferences are held at many theatres where authors can present their new pieces. The biggest event of this kind is the Autorentheatertage, held at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin every year, where they offer writers a laboratory to stage and test out new texts. The problem, in my opinion, lies in the continuity of funding.

JN: Sometimes one gets the impression that with funding programmes it’s all about new names and discovering an author, because that’s what generates attention in the national cultural pages of newspapers. This is how new writers are produced for the market each year – which doesn’t necessarily result in more commissions for new plays, and very few playwrights have their pieces restaged.

BS: I find that theatre all too often lacks the patience required to cultivate new talent in the long term, which includes accepting failure.

JN: Because of this obsession with world premieres a play stands or falls depending on the director, or a single performance, or on the

Jan Neumann’s 2,7 Sekunden

specific performance delivered on its premiere. Yet the dimension of a text can only be gauged when viewed from various perspectives, and when staged and performed by various teams at varying times.

Are there specific current and emerging trends in the German writing and directing scene?

BS: There are so many different attempts, so many different ways of producing relevant theatre, that it would be presumptuous of me to describe a general trend. I have noticed, though, a desire for narration and an urgent wish to make theatre a place of social engagement.

Currently there is a lot of debate in Germany about how to produce political theatre, at the same time, this leads to another question, namely whether theatre can truly engage in the political developments of the day – or even if it should. Indeed, should we expand the definition of the term ‘political’ altogether?

JN: Theatres are searching with all their heart and intellect (perhaps with more intellect) for reality-based forms and politically relevant material. Audiences are usually happy to feel the heart of a story alone: they generally enjoy a good narrative, which they can relate to their own lives, more than a replay of major world events.

What names should we be looking out for?

BS: Our own resident director and writer Jan [interviewed here] is one theatremaker to watch. We began working with him even before his involvement with DNT Weimar. Jan writes and develops his own plays with the actors, but he also stages existing pieces. His is a very interesting combination of approaches, because it includes the very practical process of theatremaking in the development phases.

Dirk Laucke is another important partner for us because his plays have a lot to do with the experiences of people in the new German states. Laucke’s work excellently portrays the processes that have taken place in Germany over the past 27 years.

How does DNT Weimar work with new writers and cultivate them?

BS: The author Dirk Laucke inspired us to make a literary rediscovery when he drew our attention to Jura Soyfer, a Jewish poet who died in the Buchenwald concentration camp. This impulse influenced our decision to produce Soyfer’s magnificent work Astoria. Dirk Laucke transferred Soyfer’s thoughts on the founding of a fictitious state to the year 2015 and wrote a play based on Astoria. Currently Laucke is working on a new piece for two actors of the ensemble scheduled to premiere in 2017.

JN: I’ve been working with Hasko Weber and Beate Seidel for seven years now, first at the Schauspiel Stuttgart, and now as in-house director and dramaturg at DNT Weimar. Hasko Weber once told me a story about himself as a young director, watching a rehearsal of his production. The general theatre director leaned over to him and said, ‘It’s going to be a gigantic flop. But it doesn’t matter, we’ll keep working together.’ I think that is exactly the position the DNT is trying to

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

p24-25_IAM_National theatre_Vol 12 Iss 10_vF.indd 28

23/09/2016 14:26

Free time

PHOTO: © SEBASTIAN MARCOVICI

This summer Sibiu International Theatre Festival (FITS) celebrates 25 years. Artistic director Constantin Chiriac speaks to Maria Roberts about strengthening the Romanian city’s cultural economy

I

Constantin Chiriac

Above: Det Norske Teatret perform Mourning Becomes Electra

f you have been to FITS (Sibiu International Theatre Festival) you’ll know that it offers a truly packed schedule of theatre, dance, music, circus and more in a range of spaces: from outdoor industrial sites, to small studios in university spaces, and the traditional surroundings of Teatrul Naţional “Radu Stanca” Sibiu (TNRSS). And with 3,300 performers hitting town, for 525 events, it packs a punch with the public as well as professionals – within a month of tickets going on sale, 14 shows sold out. The public festival takes place in various venues across the city, whilst a professional networking arm, Sibiu Performing Arts Market (SPAM), is held during the festival from 11-16 June at the IBIS hotel.

FITS is a fun gathering that takes professional networking, the business of theatre, and having time to kick back and play, seriously. When IAM went to Sibiu in 2016, we were astonished by just how energised it was – we watched theatre, dance and opera from noon until nightfall and danced until dawn. Its success is down to the vision of artistic director Constantin Chiriac, his staff, and an enormous cohort of volunteers.

Says Chiriac: “This year we mark the 25th anniversary of FITS. In its first edition, we started with three countries and eight shows. This year we have 525 events from 73 countries with around 3,300 artists playing in 73 venues, attracting around 69,000 spectators daily.

“Last year the theme of FITS was ‘Love’, this year it is ‘Passion’, and in 2016 it was ‘Building Trust’. Each year we dedicate the festival to an important aspect of life that we truly believe in.”

On the whole, the festival runs like a well-oiled

PHOTOS: © ERIK BERG

18 Industry insight

machine. This is thanks in no small part to the efforts of the 450-strong FITS Volunteering Programme, for which young people from Romania – and an equally impressive amount from abroad – help festivalgoers across the city figure out where they are going and how to get there; contribute to the technical running of the festival; and document it with new media. The volunteer scheme truly ignites the city and adds to the visitor experience.

Why did Chiriac want to build such a large bank of volunteers? “An extremely important part of our vision is that we involve the next generation in FITS,” the artistic director tells me. “The young people on our volunteering programme undergo training, assume responsibility, and demonstrate the passion and determination required for a career in the performing arts. The 450 volunteers we eventually work with are selected from thousands of applicants who are determined to be part of FITS. We select them based on various criteria, such as skills, dedication, hard work, cultural knowledge, ability to speak foreign languages etc. And, of course, they have to be competent in their field, because we rely on these volunteers in all kinds of activities: from accompanying guests and companies, technical work in all the venues in which we perform, to ticketing and marketing roles, photographers and videography. Even though there are many dimensions to FITS, the volunteers are a very important part of our team. We need to be able to trust them.”

The volunteer selection process takes place from September to December, and then from December until June participants embark on a training programme to equip them with an idea of what FITS means to Sibiu, the delegates and the registered companies.

Expands Chiriac: “We also have volunteer agreements with various countries. For example, 12 years ago we developed a collaboration with Japan. For this we selected 25 volunteers from all around Japan, and not just from Tokyo, but from all the important cities. When the volunteers return to Japan, they take with them what they have learned here in Sibiu and replicate it in their communities. In conjunction with volunteers who came to Sibiu over the past 12 years, we are now working on “Tokyo 2020 Volunteers” for the 2020 Olympic Games and the Culture and Education Commission. We are also developing a volunteering programme with the

“The young people on our volunteering programme undergo training, assume responsibility, and demonstrate passion and will for a career in the performing arts”

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

p18-21_FITS_Vol14_Iss6_VF.indd 14

21/05/2018 15:08

European Capital of Culture programme, for which we will we help them build a bank of volunteers and train them here in Sibiu.”

2018 is an extra special year for the festival as the 25th anniversary falls as Romania marks the centenary of the ‘Annus Mirabilis’, when the country emerged from the Great War in 1918.

“For the 25th anniversary we will pay tribute to important world events: 70 years of the State of Israel and the special relationship between Romania and Israel. Israeli artists in the festival include Gesher Theatre, Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company, and Amir Kolben’s Kolben Dance Company. Likewise, we will celebrate 80 years of the British Council in Romania with a huge UK season, including companies such as Protein Dance, Neil Bartlett, Leeds Beckett University, Royal Academy of Arts, London Community Gospel Choir, Architects of Air, Birmingham Community Gospel Choir and more.”

Further afield FITS is building strategic relationships with US architecture firms, performing arts companies, research bodies and education providers.

FITS will present the American Democracy Series (for NATO soldiers based in Romania) on a specially designed stage at the “Nicolae Bălcescu” Land Forces Academy. There they will present Peter Sellars and The Flex Community in front of the soldiers and a civilian audience. Other shows include a piece by actor Denis O’Hare, who won the 2012 Outstanding Solo Show of Lucille Lortel Awards.

In Europe FITS will team up with French companies for a six-month cultural exchange programme. French partners are Isabelle Huppert, Wajdi Mouawad, National Theatre of Bretagne, Les Percussions de Strasbourg, L’École du Théâtre National de Bretagne, Compagnie Planète Vapeur, Cie Carabosse, Miguel Gigosos Ronda, and Cie Libertivore.

Then in 2019 the collaboration reverses and Chiriac will take TNRSS to France with a number of productions, including a special project at Micro-Folie, inspired by Follies Parc La Villette, for young children.

This year China Shanghai International Arts Festival celebrates its 20th anniversary. Last year ChinaSPAF and FITS signed a partnership agreement aimed at creating common development, cooperation, and support strategies. What does this mean for both? “Over for the next three years we will create coproductions and encourage universities specialising in performing arts to work together.”

Adds the artistic director: “China is also one of our strongest partners and there are a number of important Chinese performances being presented during FITS. What is more, a delegation of 30 festival directors, theatre and cultural centre managers, and cultural leaders from China will attend the performing arts market and will bring Chinese culture closer to all the participants from around the world.”

For Chiriac FITS is more than an opportunity to present a vast range of productions, it’s about cementing a strong cultural economy in Sibiu

PHOTO: © EYAL HIRSCH

20 Industry insight

“Each year we receive thousands of applications, so we need to plan and work many years in advance” whole year, because we see how the spirit of FITS has changed this city. For instance, every month special conferences take place (much like those we present during the festival), introducing important people in the performing arts. We organise monthly play-readings and we are developing a new European project. In fact, right now we are involved with five different European projects – that’s a total of 50 partners overall.”

You’d be forgiven for thinking Chiriac had more than enough to keep him busy, but he has also established a special FITS Theatre School. The standalone Drama and Arts Management Universities Convention will give undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to showcase their work over the course of 10 days Joining five universities from Romania are delegates from Pace University, Brown University, State University of New York, and Yale University, American Academy in Rome, The Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw, Freiburg Schauspielschule, L’Université de Moncton, Central Academy of Drama in Beijing, Academy of Arts in Osijek, and Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava.

“It’s so great to be able to create something for students in the middle of this huge festival in Sibiu. The Drama and Arts Management Universities Convention is a new festival of theatre schools bringing students closer to the biggest names and biggest artistic experiences in the world.”

“We wanted to give students the freedom to manage their meetings in the form of an independent festival. Launched last year, they now take charge of a special entity for students which hosts workshops, special conferences, volunteer programmes during the arts market. We want young people to take advantage of the opportunities FITS has to offer,

that will benefit generations of creative professionals to come.

“When it comes to rebuilding a community by means of cultural solutions, Sibiu is a fine example. Generally, a city’s state fund for culture is usually no more than 1%, maybe 2%, of the total budget; here in Sibiu it is 12%, ranking it as one of biggest in the world. But our vision and successful endeavours are proved by the fact that this investment of 12% returns 16% of the city’s budget – FITS is unique in this aspect.”

He adds that the impact of the festival on the city of Sibiu has been immense: it was the “engine” of the 2007 Sibiu European Capital of Culture, and it was at this time that the Municipal Theatre in Sibiu shifted up a rank to became TNRSS, now the biggest and most important theatre in Romania.

He adds that even when the festival ends the enterprising essence remains. Says Chiriac: “The festival doesn’t last for only 10 days, we’re expanding the activities of the festival to take place throughout the

Below: Hieronymus Bosch: The Garden of Earthly Delights by Marie Chouinard

PHOTOS: © NICOLAS RUEL

“When it comes to rebuilding a community by means of cultural solutions, Sibiu is a fine example”

Above: Mothers Milk, Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

p18-21_FITS_Vol14_Iss6_VF.indd 16

21/05/2018 15:09

14

Festivals

Q&A one festival Many cultures:

OzAsia Festival artistic director Joseph Mitchell has a tough task on his hands: to bring together diverse cultures from across the Asian continent and turn them into a cohesive whole. He tells IAM how he does this, while still keeping the festival affordable.

Interview by Maria Roberts

I

t is easy from the outside to think of Asia as a single entity, with a single culture. But of course this could not be further from the truth – it is a continent of huge diversity, that encompasses everything from the rich thronging classical music of India to the J-Pop of Japan, the traditional Khmer dance of Cambodia to the contemporary companies of Australia and much more besides.

This year’s OzAsia Festival, which marks its 10th anniversary, brings together artists from Hong Kong, Cambodia, Japan, India, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia and more. Increasing in popularity, more than 230,000 attended in 2015, the last edition set an attendance record for the most people ever at a single event in Adelaide’s iconic Elder Park. Now artistic director Joseph Mitchell has plans to make it even bigger and more inclusive than ever before.

This is your second OzAsia Festival. What did you learn from last year and what changes have you made for 2016?

Last year was my first festival and the programme then was very much about shifting the focus to OzAsia Festival’s position as one of the only arts festivals in Australia dedicated to showcasing work about contemporary Asia. For 2016, we’re not changing course in any drastic way but really introducing more inspiring contemporary work coming out of Asia.

Often what I find in Australia and in many other countries is that a lot of people look back to the traditional icons that make up Asia, like dragons and so on, but Asia is actually at the cutting edge of visual arts and performing arts.

The performing and visual arts have to draw from somewhere: if you look at inspiring architecture in cities, fashion-driven culture in places like Jakarta, or underground subculture scenes in Tokyo or Seoul you see this reflected in the work produced.

There’s some really inspiring stuff coming out of Asia. Young people are in a phase where, especially in the case of China, they kind of need to reinvent how to socially engage with what is now a capitalist society, make their own rules, and manage the influence of social media.

All of this comes together when we look at putting together a contemporary festival from Asia.

How do you combine such a vast array of Asian cultures into a single festival?

Obviously every country has a different cultural background and a different aesthetic no matter where in the world you look. As I pulled together this programme, which is very much focussed on Asia, I looked for the links within those countries that are about the younger generation of artists making work in this contemporary society and

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

PHOTO © BERNIE NG

Bunny – a collaboration between Singaporean and Australian artists in the 2016 OzAsia Festival programme

Festivals 15 what that means in terms of relevance to their country.

If you look at Cambodia, there is not a huge contemporary arts scene. There isn’t the same degree of government support for the arts as there is in Australia, and the country is recovering from the genocide that only ended some 20 years ago.

Phare Circus is really shining light on a collective that got together only 20 years ago and had a very strong vision to establish artists in a meaningful way. It has ambitions to educate people, portray relationships and find a way to tell the recent story of Cambodia.

In this way the arts are bringing people together. The work from Cambodia is fundamentally very interesting. It links into the broader contemporary arts and culture theme seen across the entire programme and fits into the genres of both physical theatre and circus.

I’ve seen a lot of circus and physical theatre around the world and this is of a world-class standard: some of the stuff they do is phenomenal and I haven’t seen anything quite like this before.

The programme also includes Cosmic Cambodia, which celebrates Khmer Dance, Kmer pop and mixes East with West. So there is room for two very different things, and that is just from one country.

How do you go about curating a festival that covers such a huge geographical area and includes so many cultures?

The programme essentially comes from my interest in contemporary performance art: I travel and research different regions to see who is creating exciting work and put feelers out across the networks of people that I know.

With Cambodia, however, I was proactive about seeking out work.

Often when you are talking about contemporary performance culture, it’s really easy to look to Korea, China, Japan or even Indonesia.

I didn’t want to take those large developed countries for granted and instead wanted to incorporate places like Cambodia, Vietnam and the Philippines into the programme.

That said, there is still a lot of work from Japan: theatre shows like God Bless Baseball, dance from Hiroaki Umeda, Kenta Hayashi’s incredible one-man-band, as well as other nations well known for their performing arts scenes.

PHOTO © CLAUDIO RASCHELLA

Below: Moon Lantern Festival at OzAsia Festival 2015

‘My view, as artistic director, is that there should be something for everybody and that the festival is about community.’

Your programming last year put community cohesion at its centre, has this produced results?

As artistic director my view is that there should be something for everybody and that the festival is about community. On another level, it’s very much about introducing contemporary arts and facilitating community participation at our multicultural events.

PHOTO © RYUICHI MARUO

PHOTO © BERNIE NG

Are there collaborations between different countries too?

Bunny is a good example of this – it’s a partnership between Australia’s Luke George and Singapore’s Daniel Kok. What is really exciting about this production is how these two artists have worked together: they’re both highly regarded in their own right in the performance and contemporary dance scenes of their own countries and this collaborative work has been supported by numerous producers.

I saw the Bunny premiere in Japan at the start of the year and I thought, ‘This has to be in the festival.’ The bondage in Bunny draws on a combination of Macramé and Chinese knot-tying styles as well as ideas around contemporary bondage and partnership as different ways for people to explore their relationships together.

Everyone will have a different idea of what this show is about.

Before they see it for themselves they may have some nervousness around the world of bondage as something that is masochistic.

What this show does for me personally is demonstrate how two people can engage in techniques, such as rope tying or bondage, in a beautiful and inventive way that brings people together.

It doesn’t just bring the two performers together. You can see, as an audience member, that the performers already have a close relationship. What it does is actually bring the audience into the experience of bondage and disarms any kind of prejudice and any fear we have about it.

By the time you get to the end of this experience, which lasts two hours, the people are very much kind of ‘tied up’ together, sometimes literally and sometimes emotionally.

What’s great for our festival is that there’s a kind of literal and metaphorical tying together of Asian, Australian and Singaporean cultures. There are so many layers to OzAsia Festival. Bondage can sometimes make people anxious and Bunny breaks these preconceptions down – you leave the show with a very warm feeling.

Holistic Strata– a play from Hiroaki Umeda

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

Cosmic Cambodia

Moon Lantern Festival at OzAsia Festival 2015

Company

Genre

Country

Production

Meng Jinghui

Theatre

China

Two Dogs

Vertigo Dance Company

Dance

Israel

Vertigo 20

City Contemporary Dance Company

Dance

Hong Kong

As If To Nothing

Phare Circus

Circus/Theatre

Cambodia

Phare Circus

Soumik Datta & Adelaide Symphony Orchestra

Music

India

King of Ghosts

Hiroaki Umeda

Dance

Japan

Split Flow & Holistic Strata

Margaret Leng Tan

Music

Singapore

Cabinet of Curiosities

Daniel Kok & Luke George

Theatre

Singapore & Australia

Bunny

Croquicky Brothers

Comedy

Korea

Croquicky Brothers

Some of our most attended events are the free and outdoor events: one such event is the Moon Lantern Festival, the largest lantern parade in Australia. Around 1,200 people carry lanterns through this giant parade that stands at around a kilometre long. Last year, 50,000 spectators turned up, which broke records for attendance here in South Australia for an event in Elder Park.

We’ve taken our community strand a little bit further this year because we are celebrating our 10th anniversary. We wanted to do something to bring the community programming alongside our contemporary arts programming, so more people cross that bridge [of attending an arts events].

With support from the federal and state governments we programmed 10 nights of free music for the general public in Elder Park, the most popular outdoor location in Adelaide. Here we’ve got 23 international acts coming on stage, we are presenting world premieres, work from Indonesia, contemporary performances from places like Taiwan and Korea, and some East and West fusion music with traditional Chinese instruments, pop stars, and jazz from Hong Kong – it’s a really big mix of genres.

Everyone is welcome to come and watch major concerts for free with community performances being presented on stage before the main acts. You can participate and hang out at the Good Fortune Markets every night during the 10-day festival period.

Does that mean free and affordable events are crucial to the success of the festival? Are there some events where it is necessary that you charge more?

Affordability is so important at OzAsia Festival because outside of the free events, which obviously speak for themselves, a lot of our contemporary arts programming has never been to Australia before. So if you are rolling out Robert Wilson for the 20th time, yes you can charge AUD100-AUD200 (€70-€140) because of the track record of that particular artist.

But when you are talking about directors such as Meng Jinghui, who is arguably the most prolific contemporary theatre director in China, you have to price accordingly for an Australian audience less familiar with his profile.

If you have a coffee with him in Beijing there will almost always be people beside you asking for his autograph – he is absolutely huge there, and his shows sell out theatres across China. Few people in Australia know who is, but in China fans are paying upwards of AUD200 a ticket to see his work.

So we have to be careful that artists with very high profiles in their own country are priced correctly. When we are introducing existing artists for the first time to our existing Australian audiences INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

we keep the price low, and then grow the market for them so that ten years from now, when they’ve been back year on year, their profile has stature. Then from the economies of scale within the existing arts market, you can reflect ticket prices accurately.

During my tenure at OzAsia Festival my interest is in introducing this talent to the Australian market so that in future years and generations they become as established as Robert Lepage or Robert Wilson or any of those regular European or North American artists or arts companies that do the circuits around festivals.

Is Australia particularly suited to large-scale free outdoor events?

Australia is a large country with big open spaces – outdoor events are very much part of the Australian identity. The arts should be for everybody and you can address that need that by looking at existing arts crowds with ticketed theatres and performances and servicing that, but also growing arts audiences for the future.

I think that there’s a collective belief in Australia that making the arts accessible to all through free or outdoor events and programming is an entry point for growing audiences for the future. That includes making sure we programme work to suit changing demographics.

Over the last 20 to 30 years we have experienced increases in migration and so the arts should reflect that: now second and third generation migrants, like my own family, are settled here (I grew up in Newcastle, New South Wales). For migrant communities there is a personal need to focus on education and work as a priority – the arts in this context are considered to be something of a luxury in any country.

Therefore, ensuring we have accessible and free events sets the tone for the future of arts. As generations move on, I think Australian festivals in particular, will have that at the forefront of their minds.

What about audiences: who attends OzAsia Festival?

We can look at the data to monitor the demographic but I think it is more important to stand at the front of house and look around you.

By being physically present you can see who is sitting in the audience in the park and at the venues.

Whilst OzAsia Festival has a very strong arts programme, we want to be very sure that it’s not just the established arts crowd attending OzAsia Festival events. I’m proud to say that we have a very broad audience. ozasia.com.au

PHOTO © SIMONE ROMANIUK

Moon Lantern Festival at OzAsia 2015

PHOTO © COSMIC CAMBODIA

16 Festivals

14 Spotlight

Expands McGrath: “Jeremy Deller’s art work, What is the City, but the People?, was a celebration of the people of Manchester; for 2019 we are taking it in another direction with Yoko Ono’s BELLS FOR PEACE – where everyone is invited to join in with bell ringing and singing in Cathedral Gardens.”

When the MIF board offered McGrath the job, he was free to make changes.

Instead he decided to retain MIF’s original core offer – new work created by contemporary artists. Surely presenting only world premieres is restrictive, expensive and time consuming?

Says McGrath: “That MIF had always been a festival of entirely world premieres is its core identity, its special quality is that the works are ambitious in scale and you can’t necessarily say what artform it is – is it dance, visual art, theatre? A lot of the programme defies genres.”

Ambitious premieres this year are Tree, created by Idris Elba and Kwame Kwei-Armah, inspired by Elba’s album Mi Mandela. Interactive theatricality is added via Invisible Cities, which will take place in Mayfield Depot, a vast former railway station, it melds theatre, choreography, projection mapping, music and architectural design. Invisible Cities relays the story of the relationship between explorer Marco Polo and Kublai Khan.

“For MIF19, 12 of the 20 new commissions are coproduced. After their premiere in Manchester, they will travel to the stages of their coproducers”

PHOTO © JON SUPER

PHOTO © REBECCA LUPTON

Alphabus sees Reggie ‘Regg Roc’ Gray, a New York choreographer, join forces with Manchester’s word powerhouse Young Identity and local and NYC dancers to explore power, weakness, triumph, tragedy, anti-heroes and fallen angels. Also appealing to millennials is a concert with singersongwriter Janelle Monáe.

The Anvil: An Elegy for Peterloo, by composer Emily Howard and poet Michael Symmons Roberts, performed by BBC Philharmonic, marks the 200th anniversary of the pivotal 1819 Peterloo Massacre. Hallé music director Mark Elder joins Dutch theatre director Johan Simons to present Leningrad. Philip Glass and Phelim McDermott have created Tao of Glass. Performance artist Laurie Anderson is in residence at the Royal Exchange during the festival with To The Moon, made with artist Hsin-Chien Huang, a VR experience and immersive installation that takes audiences on a ‘visit to the moon’, 50 years after Armstrong’s historic steps.

MIF’s reason for presenting world premieres is not to create shows that burn bright and then reduce to embers once the festival ends, but to ignite new works and give them a life outside of the city, thus placing Manchester on the map as a culture creator of note.

Successful past MIF productions include Monkey: Journey To The West (MIF07) by Chinese actor and director Chen Shi-Zheng, British musician Damon Albarn and British artist Jamie Hewlett. Meanwhile wonder.land, an adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland transposed to the digital age, was a popular coproduction between MIF, National Theatre and Théâtre du Châtelet (MIF15).

What Is the City But The People? at MIF17

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

In 2019: a number of MIF shows will head out on tour (see page 16). Wayne McGregor’s Tree of Codes (MIF15) goes to Paris Opera Ballet this summer (26 June – 13 July); Jeremy Deller’s What is the City but the People? will be restaged at Ruhrfestspiele in Germany (4 May); while Akram Khan’s Giselle (a Factory ‘trailblazer’ coproduction) heads to Harris Theater, Chicago (28 Febraury to 2 March) Les Théâtres de la Ville in Luxembourg (27-29 June). A French language version of Thomas Ostermeier’s production, Returning to Reims, tours France and has two stop in Switzerland (11 January to 15 June).

A registered charity, the last festival (MIF17) had a turnover of around GBP12m (€14m). It receives funding from a variety of sources, Manchester City Council (MCC) put in GBP2.5m per two-year festival, with additional grants coming from Arts Council England (ACE) and Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA). Funding also derives from ticket sales and cocommissioning partners and sponsors. The festival has strong support from businesses and private sector sponsors, as well as charitable trusts, foundations and individual donors.

Adds McGrath: “There is a particular philosophy to touring within MIF, most of it is initiated through coproducing partnerships: what h a p p e n s is that significant arts organisations, venues, festivals and so on contribute to the originating costs of work in the festival. For MIF19, 12 of the 20 new commissions are coproduced. After their premieres in Manchester, they will travel to the stages of their coproducers across the world.

This time, for the first time, the amount of money brought in for the coproduction exceeds the amount of money we received from MCC.” (McGrath tells me it’s about GBP3m.)

The Factory, which is due to open in 2021, will be a year-round operation with an inevitable Mark Ball increase in the organisation’s annual turnover (the venue is currently estimated to cost just over GBP130.6m to build). “When The Factory opens, MIF will be working to a very different budget.

As with MIF, international coproductions will be at the heart of The Factory.”

The largest proportion of funding to build The Factory is coming from the UK government as part of a national strategy to create a “Northern Powerhouse” (the London-centricity of arts and funding has long been criticised, and this redistribution to the North is a political move to even out the playing field). Further funding is coming from Manchester City Council and through the National Lottery.

Says McGrath: “The Factory is a step change and about shifting the ethos in Manchester, which

Artis press

16 Spotlight Tree of Codes at MIF15

2019 is a big year for Manchester International Festival (MIF). As well as presenting the biennial event in July, more commissions from previous years are set to tour the world, including works by Björk, Akram Khan, Thomas Ostermeier, Jeremy Deller and Wayne McGregor. Since being launched as the world’s first festival of original, new work and special events, more than 1.25 million people have seen MIF commissions in over 30 countries.

“We’re delighted that so much work made in Manchester is being shared with the world,” says MIF artistic director and CEO John McGrath. “MIF’s collaborations with great artists and major cultural institutions means many more people have the opportunity to experience the work that we commission and that Manchester’s impact as a world-leading city for culture and creativity is being felt ever more widely across the globe.”

First up is a a French language version of Returning to Reims, which we at IAM were lucky enough to see at MIF17. Inspired by Didier Eribon’s novel of the same name, it follows the story of a man who tries to return to his roots and find that everything has changed. Adapted by Thomas Ostermeier, it is on a 13-strong tour in Switzerland and France with stops in Lausanne (5-7 April), Douai (24-25 April), Annecy (2-4 May), Clermont-Ferrand (14-16 May), Pontoise (22-23 May), and Lausanne again (28 May – 15 June).

Another performance from MIF17 that is getting a second life is What is the City but the People? Devised by Jeremy Deller, it will be restaged as part of Ruhrfestspiele in Recklinghausen, Germany on 4 May with over 100 local people taking part in the public parade.

Two works from MIF15 are also on tour in 2019: Mark Simpson’s The Immortal and Wayne McGregor’s Tree of Codes.

The Immortal is inspired by both Mozart’s Requiem and Victorian

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

PHOTO © JOEL CHESTER FILDES

MIF on tour

beliefs in occultism. It will head to Cincinnati’s May Festival for a performance on 17 May. Tree of Codes has been one of MIF’s most successful shows, touring extensively over the last four years. This summer it will take to the stage at Paris Opera Ballet from 26 June – 13 July.

MIF is also involved in coproductions that exist outside of the festival. For example, it continues its collaboration with Björk via the multimedia exhibition, Björk Digital, which opens in São Paulo in June, after successful runs in Sydney, Tokyo, Barcelona, Mexico City, Moscow, Montréal, London and Los Angeles.

Also, going on tour is Akram Khan’s Giselle, the first full-length ballet from the acclaimed choreographer. Coproduced by MIF as a pre-Factory trailblazer event, Giselle sees Khan put a twist on the romantic classic, infusing it with classical Indian movements and themes of migration, unrest and inequality. It is next staged at Les Théâtres de la Ville in Luxembourg from 27-29 June. (Megan Ward and Andrew Anderson) mif.co.uk

20

Festival guide

O

ne of the most exciting shows of the 2019 festival season must surely be aus LICHT. A new creation from Dutch National Opera (DNO) for Holland Festival, the 15-hour production is based on Karlheinz Stockhausen’s seven-opera cycle LICHT. Split into three five-hour parts, aus LICHT will have its world premiere on 31 May. Normally festivals are working on shows that are one, two or perhaps three years away. However, for the hugely ambitious aus LICHT the planning had to start even earlier, as DNO business manager Anne-Marie Hoogland explains: “Conversations about the production first started five years ago between former artistic director of Holland Festival Ruth Mackenzie and Pierre Audi, former director of Dutch National Opera. The show finally became a reality three years ago, when Royal Conservatoire of The Hague and StockhausenStiftung für Musik joined the partnership.”

Why did DNO decide to work with Holland Festival in particular? “The Dutch audience is really engaged with contemporary opera and Holland Festival has always staged new ambitious works,” says Hoogland. “Every five or six years DNO tries to have an exceptional project. We find the right partners and build from there.”

These partners are important, not only because of the financial cost of putting together the three five-

Karlheinz Stockhausen’s sevenopera cycle LICHT is being revived by Dutch National Opera at Holland Festival. Maria Roberts finds out about their ambitious new production aus LICHT

“The Dutch audience is really engaged with contemporary opera and Holland Festival has always staged new ambitious works”

hour operas – although Hoogland insists that it will cost no more than a typical production of Tannhäuser – but also because of the large cast requirements, which Royal Conservatoire of The Hague can assist with populating.

“Holland Festival is an important coproducer and Royal Conservatory of The Hague is preparing the new generation of musicians via an MA at the institution,” she says, as we chat over a coffee in Berlin.

So there will be no risk in staging such a huge show?

“We have accounted for the risk, but it is manageable,” she responds. “aus LICHT is a very expensive production, but 30% of the budget has been met by private funds. There has been great support from the fundraisers in all the partner companies as well as a lot of public support by our friends and fanbase; it is an opportunity to see a once in a lifetime project realised.”

LICHT is Stockhausen’s most ambitious work, with the seven operas composed over a 26-year period. It originally began as the score for a dance work commissioned by Tokyo’s National Theatre, before evolving over the years into a 29-hour epic. Each of the seven operas represents a day of the week as well as planet (or in the case of Sunday, the Sun).

LICHT has never been performed in its entirety, and nor will it be at Holland Festival. Instead, it has been split into three sections with selections taken from each of the seven operas. The key theme of the piece

is eternity, with the whole work having a structure that – like the week itself – has in Stockhausen’s words, “neither end nor beginning”. aus LICHT will be performed in German with a total of 9,000 seats available over the course of the nine-show run, with each production playing to a 1,000-seat capacity. Part 1: Michael is staged on 31 May and 4 and 8 June; Part 2 Lucifer and Eva takes place on 1, 5 and 9 June; while Part 3 Cooperation and the Opening up of Space runs on 2, 6 and 10 June.

In one of the scenes a small group of musicians, the Helicopter String Quartet, will play from four helicopters circling the sky above the Gashouder, Westergasfabriek, a venue in Amsterdam.

DNO has plans to tour aus LICHT in an adapted format. Continues Hoogland: “We hope to take aus LICHT abroad. Out of the full 15 hours we could adapt it to make a smaller composition of the work, so it is suitable to be hired or bought by other opera houses or even other festivals.

“Stockhausen is the father of electronic music in the world,” concludes Hoogland. “We think it is very important that the statement he made in the 70s is rediscovered and shared with as wide an audience as possible. We hope with aus LICHT we can revive his ideas for modern times.” auslicht.com hollandfestival.nl | operaballet.nl

PHOTO : © MICHEL SCHNATER

Shine a light

Dutch National Opera: aus LICHT

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

p20_AusLicht_Profile_vF.indd 14

22/03/2019 14:56

going on in the city or country you are visiting, or you can use it to find something specific like a puppet theatre festival, for instance, and plan your trips accordingly. It’s still in development and growing every day, we now have a database of 2,000 festivals.”

The database works by allowing festivals to go into the website and populate and update their descriptions themselves. “It is driven by the festival sector itself,” she clarifies. “We are not a private company and we are not a marketing company. Eligibility is currently confined to 45 countries (which is more than the 28 member states of the European Union and Creative Europe countries) and includes countries like Georgia, Ukraine and others that have bilateral agreements with the European Commission that allows them to participate in the Creative Europe programme. We are in a contractual agreement with the European Parliament but we have received the OK to increase the FestivalFinder’s scope to countries beyond the Creative Europe programme.”

This, of course, brings us to Brexit – EFA has a number of prestigious British members, what will be the situation for them once the UK has separated from the EU? “The UK is a very important part of our organisation and the entire artistic and cultural economy of the festival scene – the door would not be closed on the UK. Historically, EFA was created in 1952, at the time of the emerging Iron Curtain and it was essential to have members from both sides of the Iron Curtain.

EFA goes way beyond geographic politics – the arts do not have borders and there is a strong solidarity and wish to continue to collaborate with partners in the UK.”

PHOTO: © LANDER LOECKX

Festival guide 19

ism has had a lasting impact on the community. “Like Barcelona, the locals are now getting overwhelmed by tourism because of how it empties the city and how Airbnb is moving people out to the fringes of Lisbon.”

One challenge for EFA members and attendees at the forthcoming summit is the need to provide quantitative data on their actions. EFA knows the challenges of this only too well. “Unlike a festival, a network doesn’t have a structure and the return on investment can be less clear,” Deventer explains. “It’s a very hot topic because when you are a member of an association there are demands to count back from every euro spent and to be accountable for

Kathrin Deventer and the EFA team

Next up on the calendar for EFA is its annual ‘gettogether of festivalmakers’ – Arts Festivals Summit 2019, taking place in Lisbon this month, has been programmed under the header “Impromptu”: Senses, Places and Destinations or Arts Festivals, Cities, Communities & Cultural Tourism.

This year it is hosted by Portugal’s Festival Estoril Lisboa (see profiles on pages 21and 27). Deventer is expecting 250 participants to attend, all members or participants in EFA initiatives. “This time we will be focussing on cities, cultural tourism, the role of festivals in shaping the urban agenda: mayors and tourism agencies, and European platforms of cooperation such as Eurocities, will contribute to the dialogue about how we are shaping our lives in cities today.”

Lisbon was chosen, adds Deventer, because tour-

your actions.

“I would counter that the biggest return on investment in EFA is being part of an alliance, a European collective: even the biggest festivals across Europe, flagships like Edinburgh or Lucerne, will never be able to represent the entire festival landscape on their own. EFA underlines the need for alliances, especially today in the context of political situations like Brexit.”

“Festivals can make an immensely important contribution to political discussion,” adds Deventer. “Yes, festival leaders work on a local level but they work at the highest level and are leading voices in their cities.

It’s very important to nourish work we do locally.” efa-aef.eu

17-22 june 2019\ The 23rd edition

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

p18+19_EFA_Profile_vF.indd 15

22/03/2019 14:58

h: The ts by

network with our connections, and grow into professionals.”

Naturally, with so much to offer, Chiriac has to be organised. “Each year we receive thousands of applications, so we need to plan and work many years in advance. We are already working for the 2021 and 2022 editions. I have even selected some shows for 2024. This is to be expected as some of the biggest names in performing arts can’t come with just one year or two years’ notice.”

For the punter and professional, FITS is a mecca of delights offering workshops, masterclasses, play readings, debates, exhibitions, installations, book launches around the city, as well as after-show parties in the special festival courtyard at the theatre.

The FITS programme this year is an international sweep of storytelling. Just a few of the shows to make the bill are One Green Bottle,

by Hideki Noda (Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre / NODA MAP, Japan); Mourning Becomes Electra by Eugene O´Neill (Det Norske Teatret, Norway); Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov (Red Torch Theatre of Novosibirsk, Russia); The Scarlet Princess of Edo, Hedda Gabler, and Humans and Their Love (all TRNSS, Romania). Dance pieces include Mother’s Milk, choreographed by Rami Be’er (Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company, Israel); On the Edge by Amir Kolben (Kolben Dance Company, Israel) and Hieronymus Bosch: The Garden Of Earthly Delights, choreographed by Marie Chouinard (Compagnie Marie Chouinard, Canada).

With such an array on offer, what stands out to Chiriac as unmissable? “First of all, it is important to see the openings: we are opening The Scarlet Princess of Edo, that will also launch the 2020 Culture Games and Olympic Games in Japan, the performance is based on a kabuki text, directed by Silviu Purcărete, and will be staged at Fabrica de Cultură.

“You should not miss Metamorphosis after Ovid, also performed at Fabrica de Cultură and, what is certainly the one of the biggest shows in the world, Faust – all these three are directed by Romanian director, Siviu Purcărete.

“You should definitely see Cion: A Requiem of Ravel’s Bolero from South Africa’s Market Theatre, Your Gogol directed by Valery Fokin, Exit the King, Peter Sellars’ FLEXN, and Hieronymus Bosch: The Garden of Earthly Delights, choreographed by Marie Chouinard. Eugenio Barba is again in our festival, this time with the performance The Tree. And the oldest theatre in the world, Yamamoto Noh Theatre, is doing a special show for the 25th anniversary of our festival. And don’t forget An Iliad

by Denis O’Hare and Lisa Peterson – there are so many shows that you should not miss!”

At the professional networking strand, SPAM, 300 international participants from an impressive mix of cultural organisations (artist management agencies, NGOs, public institutions, independent companies, and so on) will huddle for a week of presentations, talks and networking events.

Partners to collaborate with SPAM in the past include CINARS (Canada), Tokyo Performing Arts Market (Japan), Performing Arts

PHOTO: © VIKTOR DMITRIEV / FITS

bbutz mpany

Industry insight 21

“We want young people to take advantage of the opportunities FITS has to offer”

Market Seoul (South Korea), Rideau (Canada), APAM (Australia), Market for African Performing Arts Market (Abidjan, Ivory Coast), Performing Arts Network of South Africa (South Africa), Moscow International Performing Arts Market (Russia), Western Alliance of Arts Administrators (US), and Northeast State Performing Arts Centre (US).

Key speakers at SPAM 2018 are Divya Bhatia, artistic director and producer of Rajasthan International Folk Festival and Alexandru Ion, copresident of “Ideo Ideis” National Young Theatre Festival, who will be in a discussion conducted by Nelson Fernandez, director of consultancy firm NFA International Arts.

Volunteer programmes will be discussed during a special conference event on the European Capitals of Culture: speakers on the panel are Vojislav Prkosovački from Serbia’s Novi Sad 2021 team; Valletta 2018 programming coordinator Joanne Attard Mallia; and a spokesperson from the European Commission (name to be confirmed).

At the speed-networking event, participants will get meet Sabrina Chen, programme director of Shanghai International Dance Centre; Thomas Kriegsmann, founder of ArKtype; Ása Richardsdóttir, director of Ice Hot Nordic Dance Platform; and Winnie Karnofka, dramaturg and artistic director for international cooperation projects, to name a few.

It’s an eclectic mix that will appeal to even the most seasoned festivalgoer. Your biggest problem will be how to fit everything in.

Well that, and the lack of sleep.

Above: Red Torch Theatre’s Three Sisters; a workshop at Sibiu Performing Arts Market

sibfest.ro | sibfest.ro/bursa/bursa-en.html

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

p18-21_FITS_Vol14_Iss6_VF.indd 17

21/05/2018 15:10

14 Industry insight

In mind and spirit

OOTS perform in China

David Curtis, chief executive of Orchestra of the Swan (OOTS) in the UK, has an ambitious plan to deliver music to every care home in the Midlands. Here OOTS’ learning and participation manager, Sue Pope, updates IAM on how the scheme has delivered 90 workshops, visited 20 care homes, and performed to 200 residents so far. Interview by Maria Roberts

O

rchestra of the Swan (OOTS) is very proactive in making people feel part of the family, and our main focus at present is delivering music to residents in care homes with dementia.

To date we’ve offered workshops in Warwickshire and Worcestershire.

We’ve been able to do this because OOTS has been very successful in applying to trusts and foundations for our work to send duos of musicians into care home settings.

The players perform with, and to, residents, carers, family and friends visiting on the day. When you are performing in an intimate setting, it’s a very different way of delivering music. For example, performing in a care home lounge you might have anything from eight to 28 residents sitting together; there are various levels of interaction: some people will chat and others not; when you look around you will see some residents tapping their feet and fingers. A lot of residents become animated and join in with the singing, which is lovely to see.

At our sessions so far, we’ve played a variety of music. Obviously, OOTS is an orchestra, so there have been classical pieces slipped in among some more well-known tunes, but we’ve also played hymns and folk music. For those who make requests we’ve had conversations about pieces they’d like to hear and taken on their recommendations.

Residents will ask ‘have you got this piece of music? I remember it

OOTS perform at a care home

from school,’ and the musicians will go away and take it upon themselves to try and source something to play for them when they make a return visit to that care home.

We aim to offer each care home four to six visits, within a four or six week period. The sessions tend to follow the pattern of 45 minutes, followed by a tea and coffee break, and then another 45-minute session. For ease of logistics, players generally visit two care homes in the same locality on one day.

The more money we can attract for these projects, the more time we can spend in the care homes as the activity is all funding dependent. From autumn we will be visiting care homes in the Birmingham area. Each project costs around GBP4,000 to GBP12,00 (€4,650€12,000) depending on the number of care homes we are working with, and the money goes to paying the musicians and all the administration time required to organise the sessions.

When we evaluate the impact, we see that the feedback we have received from all of the care homes has been positive. Like this quote from a resident: ‘I do hope you can come back – it’s the highlight of my week’; and from a musician: ‘The session felt very positive and happy. Lots of participation and singing from everyone. The ‘special requests’ went especially well’; and from a member of staff: ‘The music played was beautiful and really cheered up some of the residents. It was so good to see them smile and genuinely enjoy and benefit from the experience’.

The concerts can be a moving experience for visitors, who see their family and friends act differently. Depending on their dementia journey, a resident might become more animated, whilst a smaller but significant shift might be that someone is sitting up and is more alert than usual. On a personal level, this can be an emotional experience for the players, the residents, their family, and the carers.

In a care home setting, players perform just metres away from people. As a result, some of our musicians have become quite skilled and adept at performing in a one-to-one scenario. I’ve seen

PHOTOS: © OOTS

‘Music is a non-verbal means of communication, a language that tells a real story. The incredibly rewarding work the orchestra undertakes in these care homes has profound benefits not only for those living with dementia, but for their carers, their families and also our own players’ – OOTS CEO, David Curtis INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

Special focus: Ageing 15

one of our singers get down to the same level as someone who is seated, hold their hand, and sing to them. Those unable to come into a lounge can have a performance in their private room.

For some of the projects we embedded Mindsong training, which we will continue in the future. This encourages reflection pre-, midand post-project. Now all the musicians taking part have an awareness of dementia and the different pathways it takes.

The feedback the musicians undertake with the care home activity coordinator gives them the opportunity to identify what might have been challenging – because sometimes challenging behaviour will happen. For example, residents may become anxious, or an issue may be going on elsewhere in the care home.

The project has been a learning process for us at OOTS as well:

we make time for the musicians to get together again after the series of visits at a care home to reflect on what they’ve been doing.

Sometimes this reflection can be quite tearful, but tearful in a good way. For the musicians, our work in care homes is an uplifting way of communicating with an audience that differs remarkably from their normal experience – where you are on stage behind the conductor, and the music stand, at a distance from the audience.

In the future we hope to explore the impact of this work on the musicians themselves and how it affects their way of communicating with audiences in general.

orchestraoftheswan.org / mindsong.org.uk

Be Alzheimer’s aware

A

n Alzheimer’s or dementia diagnosis can often lead to a person becoming cut off from the things they used to enjoy, including creative outlets. But that shouldn’t be the case.

In fact, participating in creative activities can play a crucial role in treating the symptoms of Alzheimer’s and dementia as well as ensuring a high quality of life.

Everyone has a right to participate in the arts, and for people living with dementia, we know that there are many benefits. It can improve quality of life and well being by becoming a stimulating and enjoyable experience.

Aspects of socialising and remaining independent can be difficult when a person develops dementia. After a diagnosis people can feel isolated and unable to visit the venues and partake in the activities they have come to enjoy. We know that participating in the arts can also be key to unlocking memories, accessing a creative part of the brain that can help to restore personal identity and reduce the various stresses that are associated with symptoms of dementia like memory loss, co-ordination and challenges around communicating.

Alzheimer’s Society Singing for Britain service is just one example of how arts participation – in this case group singing – can provide a way for people with dementia, along with their carers, to express themselves and socialise with others in a fun and supportive group. The activities also build on preserved memory for song and music in the brain – many people find music easier to recall than other memories.

All art venues and professionals should work towards enriching the lives of those affected by dementia and consider how its activities, work and programming can be accessible to all people, including those with dementia. Alzheimer’s Society recently launched Becoming a dementia friendly arts venue: A practical guide, which explains how this can be achieved.

For people with dementia, arts venues can be stressful environments especially if they are easily disorientated, have mobility issues or dislike crowds. In order to create a better experience for people with dementia in the arts, art venues should consider having clear signs where necessary, provide a quiet seating area where people

with dementia can take ‘time out’ if they are finding it difficult to cope with noise and other distractions.

Of course, it is not just about audiences – dementia affects artists themselves. Careers in the arts are wide ranging and diverse and so when someone is diagnosed with dementia and works in this field there are greater opportunities for them to be reassigned to a different work area with the same job satisfaction, linked to their passion and enjoyment but simply with a different role to play.

While there isn’t a one size fits all approach to supporting people with dementia, Alzheimer’s Society has produced a guide Creating a dementia-friendly workplace. This helps employers gain an understanding of dementia, how it impacts organisations and the practical steps they can take to support employees to continue to work.

Emma Bould – programme manager Dementia Friendly Communities

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

16 Special focus: Ageing

Age is a Work of Art

The Polish poet Stanislaw Jerzy Lec once said that ‘youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art.’ We couldn’t agree more, so with that spirit in mind here are four inspiring performing arts ensembles that place older performers centre stage, proving once and for all that when it comes to making great art getting older is a help rather than a hindrance. By Andrew Anderson The Royal Exchange Company of Elders perform Flicker and The Flying Books alongside members of the Young Company

The Royal Exchange Elders Company The Royal Exchange Elders Company began in 2014. We want to work with a group of people aged over 60 in a very practical way – so we collaborate with them in making theatre that challenges the stereotypes of ageing.

Recently we’ve been developing our intergenerational work by bringing together members of our Young Company to work practically with the Elders. Artistically this is really exciting, as the performing ensemble is very diverse and it isn’t common to see different generations working on stage in this way.

Taking part in practical work that explores one’s own creativity can have real health benefits, both physically and mentally. The health benefits of movement and artistic expression can be particularly pertinent for older people who may be at risk of inactivity or loneliness.

Making innovative work is exciting for the participants, but also for audiences who might have preconceived ideas about older people – all of this can help challenge stereotypes.

We don’t really see it as a separate company, rather part of the whole Royal Exchange Company. Some older people have struggled with our title the ‘Elders Company’ – perhaps not wanting to identify as being an Elder. For us, we see Elders as being older people who are respected for their experience. I have yet to meet a younger person who tells me that they struggle with the title of our Young Company, because they don’t want to be identified as a young person. The fact that some older people initiallly struggle with joining the Elders reveals widely held and deep-rooted feelings of how we as a society view growing older as a negative thing, when actually we should be reclaiming that word Elder and celebrating experience, wisdom and longevity.

I think all theatres should be valuing older performers. We should also think about how older performers might want to make work, and how that might shift throughout their careers. As a theatre company, we should be able to respond flexibly to that.

– Andy Barry, director of The Royal Exchange Elders Company

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

PHOTO © THE ROYAL EXCHANGE

Genre: Theatre Manchester, UK

‘I’ve discovered something new about myself…and that’s been really uplifting’ – Gordon Emerson, The Royal Exchange Elders Company

18 Special focus: Ageing

Genre: Theatre Tokoyo, Japan Saitama Theatre was founded by Yukio Ninagawa, who had a passion to search for a new form of theatre based on the personal histories of older people.

Although the company lost its director when Ninagawa passed away in May 2016, Saitama Arts Theatre remains determined to continue his legacy.

As soon as people retire, they end up having to live a lifestyle that is totally different from what came before. Joining the theatre provides an alternative space to thrive outside of their homes, and it’s also a great way of staying active. For instance, in order to participate in rehearsals, actors need to communicate with others. The theatre encourages you to memorise lines and placements, to speak loudly, and to move your body: it activates the whole body and brain. In our experience, the joy of moving bodies, and the joy of being looked at on stage, positively affects the health and wellness of older people.

From an artistic point of view, we are interested in establishing a new form of theatre by those who haved lived varied lives as ordinary citizens. Our repertoire is based on the personal histories of people of age. We want to create a stir in existing theatre.

The company has 39 members at the moment: that is 39 people with long and very different lives. It is so wonderful – and very often surprising – to see how richly expressive on stage they are as a group. No other theatre group can bring about such strength,

– Hajime Matsuno, section chief of Saitama Theatre drama department

Ilbijerri

alongside younger performers who have the opportunity to learn from their colleagues.

The Elders that we work with have witnessed immense cultural changes in their lifetime.

For people like Uncle Jack Charles, Uncle Gary Foley, Aunty Wilma Reading and Uncle Noel Tovey, they have directly experienced the heights of racial discrimination. They have lived through the Stolen Generations, the civil rights movement, the 1967 Referendum, the launching of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, the National Apology and much more.

These significant social changes, and what they have learned living through and participating in these events, cannot be taken lightly. To not highlight and share these life lessons would be a missed opportunity, not just for Indigenous people but for all Australians.

Genre: Performance Melbourne, Australia

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

‘Do not give up because of your age. Older people have to race against time.’

– Fumiko Kamio, Saitama Theatre

Our work with older performers has consistently been enthusiastically received by audiences and met with critical acclaim. However, not everyone is aware of older performers’ special needs, whether that is restrictions in mobility, the need for longer and more frequent rest breaks, or recognition of the ongoing impact of past traumas. The expected deliverables in terms of scheduling, travel routes and budget efficiency on touring companies are often not conducive to catering for special needs of any kind. This needs to change at a policy and funding level in order for performers of all ages and abilities to participate in this work equitably.

– Iain Finlayson, development and marketing manager at ILBIJERRI Theatre

LUSH LIFE creative Team left to right: Dr Lou Bennett (musical director), Ursula Yovich (performer), Aunty Wilma Reading (writer & performer), Rachael Maza (director)

PHOTO © JAMES HENRY

ILBIJERRI is Australia’s leading and longest running Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander theatre company.

We create, present and tour challenging and provocative theatrical works that describe with empathy and honesty the experiences of Indigenous people living in Australia today. Our work urges discussion and brings Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices into the foreground of the national agenda.

Our work is active reconciliation.

Over the last 25 years we’ve commissioned over 35 new Indigenous works and performed to more than 250,000 people – works like Jack Charles versus The Crown, Blood on the Dance Floor and LUSH LIFE have all toured nationally and internationally.

Fundamental to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture is the passing down of knowledge from Elders to younger generations, so our work must also take on this same sentiment. In an Indigenous context, having a separate company for older people is not only culturally inappropriate, but also misses opportunities for sharing.

Our Elders are our cultural custodians and their knowledge of our histories is essential to the continued growth and development of our communities.

The work we do is important because we provide access to our Elders – their stories, their lessons learned – on a platform that is engaging and actively provokes debate.

The Elders we work with come to the rehearsal room with lived experiences not just as a performer, but as an Indigenous person in Australia. It is important to ILBIJERRI that these older artists come with a willingness to pass on their knowledge. This is particularly beneficial when they are working

Saitama Theatre’s Ravens, We Shall Load Bullets

PHOTO © MAIKO MIYAGAWA

Saitama Theatre

such persuasive power. Of course, working with 39 people senior in age means 39 different life problems. Some members become ill, some may have aged family members who need care, others may suffer financial difficulties. Nevertheless, no one gives up being a member of the company.

We have to be aware that keeping the company homogenous may limit artistic possibilities.

Therefore, when necessary, we introduce different elements into the group. We invite younger playwrights and directors to the company, so new forms of theatrical direction may be borne out of conflicts between different generations. We also invite young actors to perform with us.

Older people sometimes cook for the younger actors, many of whom are fledgling artists in financial straits. It is very interesting to witness the generations communicate with each other through theatre practice. It is all the more poignant as traditional family and local community ties loosen.

In Japan, the artistry of matured actors is highly valued, especially so in traditional forms of performing arts such as Noh, Kyogen, and Kabuki. It is often the case that young Kabuki actors who play a role for the first time seek guidance from older actors. We may lose our smooth flowing movements with age, but what we gain instead is a privileged access to alternative acting resources; and the deep feelings we have experienced through life. There is no end to acting.

Special focus: Ageing 19

Seniors Orchestral Society of New York

Dr Elliot Levioff conducts the Seniors Orchestral Society of New York

Seniors Orchestral Society of New York (SOSNY) is a resident community orchestra in which accomplished senior citizens come together with their peers to study, learn and rehearse the classical music repertoire. Since 2012 we have strived to make classical music available to as wide an audience as possible through the presentation of free concerts in public spaces, thereby enriching New York City’s cultural life.

We challenge the conventional images of seniors by establishing an orchestra of highly-skilled energetic musicians, and serve as a celebration and affirmation of the ability of seniors to create something of beauty, quality and permanence. In addition, the orchestra also contributes to the health and wellbeing of its members.

Groups like ours are important because they are a tool of expression for people who share common values and experiences. SOSNY was founded in no small part to challenge the conventional idea of seniors no longer having anything meaningful to contribute to society as a whole. By having the presence of an orchestra that is comprised of skilled, energetic and musically talented individuals, who also share a collective life experience and a particular set of

PHOTO © SOSNY

Genre: Classical Music New York, US

life knowledge, the work we do showcases that life can – and should – be lived to its fullest.

We also think it is absolutely necessary that separate groups for elders exist. Given the plethora of youth ensembles currently extant, and the emphasis on youth culture, it is perhaps more important than ever to have performance groups out there that can showcase equally

accomplished seniors and bring more mature musicians to the forefront.

The performing arts world doesn’t necessarily need to change its attitude, but rather be more aware of the skill, abilities, and achievements of senior players in the arts community.

– Dr Elliot Levioff, founder and music director of SOSNY

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

24 Spotlight

Senior moments At what point do arts consumers become service users?

Maria Roberts speaks to Dr Michael Eades, cultural contexts research fellow and public engagement manager at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, to find out

Dr Michael Eades

T

here is a moment that sticks in my mind – or rather a few – but this is most relevant. It’s 2015. I’m in the DR Koncerthuset in Copenhagen for the Malko Competition. It’s the interval and I’m on a press trip and in all honesty I’m feeling lonely. I’ve been away from home for a few days and my energy for networking and chatting has dwindled down to its salty reserves. And so it is that I’m cutting a solitary figure, with my glass of Merlot in hand, looking out of the vast glass windows of the concert hall at the Danish landscape before me.

To my right, on the bench that sits around the internal perimeter of the building, is an elderly lady. I wait a few moments to see if anyone else arrives – no one does – and then, because of my own 30-something loneliness, I turn to her to strike up a conversation.

‘Hello,’ I say. ‘What a beautiful view of the sunset.’

‘Yes,’ she agrees. ‘I used to sit here regularly and enjoy the view with my husband.’

It turned out that for the duration of their marriage they attended concerts together. Sadly, her husband died a few years earlier and now, without him for company, she attends concerts alone. Quite simply, her ‘in real life’ social network died out. She misses her friends.

That evening we chatted for around 15 minutes, and I enjoyed every second of her conversation. I had a better evening because of her engagement with me. When the bell rang to go in, my new 80-something friend turned to me and said. ‘In the 18 months I’ve been coming here alone, no one has ever spoken to me. Thank you for taking the time to talk to me, that was very kind of you.’

My new friend thought that I’d been dutiful in my short-lived camaraderie, and for that I felt terrible. She thought that I’d been doing her a favour, but the truth was quite the reverse. And so I set the record straight.

‘Thank you for talking to me, I was missing home terribly.’

She smiled at me: ‘In that case, we helped one another out,’ she said, then she turned to make her way back to the the auditorium.

I’m personally interested in how we engage with, talk about, and include senior citizens. I worked in elderly care for some years in my twenties: first as a care worker, then as editor of a medical journal that carried academic and CPD research on elderly care. (I herald from a family of social work and care providers.) It irritates me that when people reach a certain age we depersonalise their interests by giving them labels like ‘service users’. I believe that they are first and foremost consumers, with particular requirements. With this in mind I called Dr Michael Eades, a lecturer specialising in public engagement, to hear his point of view.

Maria Roberts: Do you think arts companies are providing sufficient provision for older people?

Dr Michael Eades: Not as much as they could, although there’s a lot of stuff

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

p24-25_IAM_senior citizens_Vol 12 Iss 12_vF.indd 26

21/11/2016 12:34

Spotlight 25 going on, much of it at a grassroots level. It’s also the case that a lot of vital services were hit by funding cuts: arts and health programmes here in the UK have suffered since 2010. I think there’s definitely room for improvement.

MR: Do you think the sector has the right attitude when it comes to serving older people?

ME: No, I’m not sure that we do. It comes back to what you have been saying: there’s a slight division created by thinking of them as ‘service users’ – and catering for them in that way and via provision through charities and so on – rather than seeing this group as people who can enjoy culture, who would naturally be interested in attending events, but are somehow restricted from doing so.

Some of the people I have worked with have had a very long-term engagement with culture over the course of their lives. Their drop in participation has been because of a relatively small change in their personal circumstances. Perhaps they have had to deal with the onset of memory problems, or it might be the case that they have become socially isolated. Scenarios might be that they have lost family members, or they have moved to a different city, or from a different country, and so their social network and the number of family members around them has changed. Another possibility is that they have simply outlived their social circle. Even small things, – that may not seem so significant – can stop people from leaving the house and going out and accessing stuff. These people are then somehow left out of the loop.

I’ve worked with people in various different walks of life that are socially excluded or isolated in one way or another. There is an overlap between getting older, then your partner dies, and your friends die. Or you move into sheltered accommodation and your social life changes.

There’s a fairly small missing stitch needed which can bring all those people back into participation in the arts or activities with a cultural context.

MR: Do you know of initiatives that are excellent examples of appropriate engagement with older people?

ME: An interesting project I worked on in Nottingham (in the East Midlands) a few years ago was Arts on Prescription. Basically, instead of a GP prescribing antidepressants, or some other medication, they prescribed a course of social activity. In this case, it was taking part in arts and classes – it’s not art therapy, as such, because the benefit is simply being part of a group of people doing something that is engaging. That project was very cool and very inspiring, but unfortunately, like so many other good schemes, it’s struggling to find funding at the moment.

Another project I worked on, which is still ongoing, is Festival in a Box. This is a local festival that can be seen as a kind of ‘social prescription’. For this we have been working with Age UK in Camden, a befriending service.

Basically, what they do here is train people and pair them up with individuals who are socially isolated around Camden. The volunteers make weekly visits and become friends with an older person, taking them out to do activities if they are able to go. With the Festival in a Box project we set up a two-way collaboration with Age UK Camden.

We took a miniature version of the festival out into people’s homes: it was a kind of ‘Cultural Meals on Wheels’ service. It felt like you were forming your own community and getting to the root of what a festival actually is; creating connections between communities of people. This was made possible with the support of Age UK Camden’s Dementia Befriending Service.

MR: It seems to me that from a branding and marketing perspective a lot of arts organisations want to be perceived as youthful in their outlook – does the very nature of this approach alienate older people and by proxy make them feel excluded? If older people are in the audience, it mustn’t be on-trend, etc.

ME: It’s an interesting thought. Here in the UK there really are a lot of places that are working in the arts to include older audiences, one really good project is in Liverpool called House of Memories. For this the museums open up the doors to older people and work hard at getting people with memory problems to see the collections.

In terms of the aesthetic of arts, youth, and older audiences, I have to admit it’s not something I’ve thought about. But what’s certainly true is that in order to include one, there is some element of excluding the other. Marketers may think: ‘If I don’t do XYZ with audience segmentation, and target specific audiences individually, then it

About Festival in a Box F estival in a Box brings specially selected artists together with people in the community who cannot get out to London’s Bloomsbury Festival due to health or mobility reasons – at present, the participants are people living with dementia. Artists visit people in their own homes, or in day centres and provide company, cultural activities and entertainment. The visits are supported by Age UK Camden’s Dementia Befriending Service and the participant’s interests and cultural tastes are matched with individual artists. These artists take ‘the Box’ on their visits and it serves as both a toolkit for sessions, containing artists

materials and items that may be of interest to the participant, as well as acting as an archive for the project and for the Bloomsbury area by being a place to collect comments, stories and artworks created during visits. The Bloomsbury Festival in a Box project was initiated in 2013 for an AHRCresearch project led by Dr Michael Eades [pictured on the opposite page].

The project explored different ways of measuring the impact of arts initiatives working with people with dementia, as part of the AHRC’s Cultural Value Project. The final project report is available to read online: festivalinabox. blogs.sas.ac.uk

Right and below: an example of Festival in a Box going out to residents in Camden

becomes one size fits all’.

MR: Will there be implications if arts organisations look at moving all of their ticket selling and advertising online?

ME: It’s definitely problematic and its really difficult, even from point of view of a festival such as ours. It’s a big issue in terms of resources because online is a much more cost-effective way to sell tickets than knocking on doors. Research shows there are more older people online than you might think: so this is not the sole change that excludes older people, though it is an issue that needs to be addressed. bloomsburyfestival.org.uk/festivalstories/festival-in-a-box michaeleades.net INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

p24-25_IAM_senior citizens_Vol 12 Iss 12_vF.indd 27

21/11/2016 12:35

Kula – To Europe

Germany 25

Are there any specific tours planned?

BS: We’ve been invited to the Festival de Teatro Clásico de Almagro 2017 in Spain to perform A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which, by the way, Jan Neumann also directed. Our production Kula – To Europe will also be going on tour to several theatres in Germany, Switzerland and France.

take. Real support begins with continuity which also includes the possibility of failure.

BS: With Karen Köhler we created a three-part theatre series for children over 12. At the centre of this trilogy is the story of young man’s struggle with right-wing extremism, an important issue in Thuringia right now. Our collaboration together lasted three years. And that is quite extraordinary in the German theatre landscape.

How does German theatre differ from its European counterparts?

JN: Last year I was at the writers’ competition ConTesto in Milan, where actors were specifically cast to perform in the pieces. There are hardly any permanent ensembles in Italy, which means actors have to go from one job to the next. At the time a director told me that one of the actresses was really great, but unfortunately hadn’t performed for a long time. In contrast to this, the German municipal theatre system is special because it makes it possible – at least in theory – for actors to work and develop themselves artistically on a continual basis.

BS: This system is closely linked to what we call Regietheater, or director’s theatre, in which the actors are allowed to try out lots of things during rehearsals. In the meantime, there are many points of contact between German theatres with other theatres in Europe.

There are also numerous models of cooperation and attempts to share experiences. Even theatres aren’t immune to globalisation.

n

What are the highlights of the 2016-17 season?

BS: One of our main highlights has already premiered: Kula – To Europe. It was an international theatre project held during the Kunstfest Weimar which is affiliated with the DNT. The project had French, German and Afghan actors on stage, reflecting on a principle of exchange called Kula. And now we’re busy with the stage adaptation of Visconti’s film Rocco and His Brothers. At the end of the season, we’ll be presenting a new play by Jan Neumann at the Recklinghausen Ruhrfestspiele. The piece centres on the concept of values, for which we absolutely need a new definition.

‘I find that theatre all too often lacks the patience required to cultivate new talent in the long term, which includes accepting failure’

PHOTOS © LUCA ABBIENTO, THOMAS MUELLER, KERSTIN SCHOMBURG, SEBASTIAN KOWSKI

DNT Weimar’s production of Friedrich Schiller’s Mary Stuart

p24-25_IAM_National theatre_Vol 12 Iss 10_vF.indd 29

What are some of the challenges facing theatre in Germany?

BS: The question of how to preserve the unique theatre structure in Germany has become increasingly urgent. Municipalities are unwilling (and perhaps unable) to continue supporting culture at the level they’ve done in the past. On the other hand, we, the artists, insist that the cultural and artistic experiences that can be gained at artistic venues are more important than ever.

Theatre has always been a place of immediate social interaction.

Where else can you find that aside from perhaps sports stadiums?

Theatre is still a democratic place because it is accessible to many. If it didn’t exist, many regions would have nothing but supermarkets.

This struggle to merely preserve what we have, and not even to pursue a vision of the future, takes a lot of energy. But that’s what it’s all about – how we wish to envision ourselves in the future.

Our audiences are getting older, young people don’t automatically find their way into the large theatres. Theatre is an old-fashioned institution in many respects, but isn’t that exactly what we ought to cultivate in a world which is becoming increasingly digitalised? At the same time, especially in the area of spoken theatre, we have to be aware of social transformation. Our ensembles in city theatres don’t yet reflect the make-up of our society – but when it does it can be successful, as the Gorki Theater’s attempt to produce postmigrant theatre has demonstrated.

JN: Theatre is the last advertising-free zone. The last place for free-thinkers to explore the future while examining the present, a place that not only fosters collective literary memory, but also critically evaluates it. It’s imperative to defend theatre against market mechanisms of all kinds. Demand should not dictate the supply.

Theatre must be allowed to remain or become a refuge for the other, one of the last counter worlds that we need like forests or an intact ocean.

What excites you both as a director and a dramaturg? Is your interest in new German writing, or do you take submissions from outside the country and in other languages?

BS: I find it exciting to work with texts that have to do with the region we’re working in. This year our programme features the world premiere of a monologue by Jörn Klare which centres on the story of a milker in the backwoods of East Germany. The character is representative for many around here who feel politically disenfranchised and want to break away from the status quo. When that sentiment is brewing, it can be dangerous. What we want to do is to take this piece and show it to people outside the theatre, to initiate discussion with them on location. If we manage that, I’d be very happy.

JN: At the moment I’m very interested in the question of how much of our daily news should be addressed on stage. I find it amazing, for instance, that one can discover such references in Goethe’s works which still move and fascinate people. Thanks to the media and networking, we enjoy a vast supply of reality. Reality has a place of its own, but in our field, we can invent a place for reality which can – or must – be strange and artificial.

How does the influence of cinema factor at the theatre?

BS: Cinema frequently offers exciting narratable and compelling stories that seem suited to theatre: some movie blockbusters also become theatre blockbusters. That’s the incentive for writing stage adaptations despite the differences in media. This time we’ve decided to produce a play based on Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers. Still, it’s necessary to present one’s own perspective of the film material.

Purely retelling the story is boring.

JN: With cuts and close-ups, film offers fundamentally different ways of telling a story. Theatre offers that live experience. There are formal, but essential differences between the two. Regardless, be it a novel, film or drama, in the end it’s all about telling a good story.

nationaltheater-weimar.de INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

23/09/2016 14:26

Next Generation 17

The importance of being mentored PHOTO: DON LEE,

Robert Binet began his career at The Royal Ballet where, from 2012-13, he was choreographic apprentice to Wayne McGregor. Now a choreographic associate at The National Ballet of Canada (NBC), he is a mentee of artistic director Karen Kain. Binet says there are two vital elements to nurturing new talent: trust and honesty. Interview by Maria Roberts

O

nly in his mid-twenties, Robert Binet is already a poster boy of ambition and motivation. In fact, his progression from dance studio to rising star makes his career trajectory look easy. This month dancers of The National Ballet of Canada (NBC) and The Royal Ballet will perform his acclaimed 2016 immersive work, The Dreamers Ever Leave You. Though they have a history of collaboration, it will be the first time ever the two companies have appeared on stage together. In the same month his new work, Children of Chaos, will be premiered by Fall For Dance North.

The young choreographer’s output over the past five years has been prolific. His recent repertoire includes The Kreutzer Sonata, which premiered at Ballet Moscow in June; a nine-minute piece, The Sea Above, The Sky Below for NBC, in honour of principal dancer Xiao Nan Yu’s 20th anniversary; Self and Soul (two dancers, nine minutes, NBC, 2016); Void and Fire, created for The Royal Ballet as part of Wayne McGregor’s 10th anniversary (six dancers, 17 minutes, 2016); Terra Incognita (five dancers, 50 minutes, Wild Space, 2016); The Blue of Distance (seven dancers, 13 minutes, New York City Ballet, 2015); and Orpheus Becomes Eurydice, a co-comission between The Banff Centre and NBC (four dancers, 23 minutes, 2015) – and this only just touches the surface of Binet’s output since 2012.

NBC artistic director Karen Kain has faith in the young star. In fact, such is her belief in his ability that, when she was awarded the Governor General Performing Arts Award Mentorship Programme (a Canadian award scheme that sees an established figure select a mentee), she chose Binet as her protégé.

Together, they will bring his biggest work to date to the NBC stage in 2018.

“The mentorship with Karen allows me to take the leap from making medium-scale works to larger works,” Binet tells me over the phone from Canada. “It’s a very different kind of relationship than working with a choreographer because it allows you to see how to balance what you need with what the company needs. Karen’s help has been invaluable.”

Binet has always been one to take on big opportunities. In 2012, aged just 20, he served as a choreographic apprentice to Wayne McGregor at The Royal Ballet. Knowing he was inexperienced on paper, he applied for a two-week choreographic programme at the Royal Opera House (ROH) called “DanceLines”. Initially, too young and too inexperienced to participate, he was told he could watch from the sidelines. Undeterred, the young hopeful packed his bags and flew to London to meet Wayne McGregor at Covent Garden. It proved to be the most defining moment of his fledgling career.

Binet’s training had been in the classics, but the workshop with Wayne McGregor introduced him to the exciting world of contemporary dance.

“Everything was new,” he recalls. “From the different modes of working with

INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

Félix Paquet and Emma Hawes in Robert Binet’s Orpheus Becomes Eurydice

dancers and choreographers, to the fact that everyone came from completely different backgrounds from anything I’d encountered before.”

On day two, McGregor invited Binet to join the class. “And so, from the second day I participated as a choreographer – and it was an incredibly steep learning curve – I loved it! I learned a great deal and most importantly I made an impression on them. At the end of the two weeks, I said to Wayne: ‘I don’t want to go home, I want to keep learning from you.’ Luckily, he replied: ‘OK, see if you can get a visa and write a proposal for what you want to do’.”

Back in Canada Binet acquired the visa, wrote a proposal, sent it on to McGregor and waited. “A few months later, Wayne called me and said ‘OK, I’d like to make you The Royal Ballet choreographic apprentice’ – so I packed my bags and moved to London.”

Would Binet describe himself as fearless? “I didn’t see it so much as ‘being fearless’ because there was nothing else I was wanted to do – asking to train with Wayne McGregor made perfect sense to me! But it wasn’t like I wasn’t afraid; it took me a couple of months to walk into ROH without feeling like I was going to be sick to my stomach. It was so thrilling to be around all these incredible artists that, until then, I’d only read about in the press.

“Those two years at The Royal Ballet were so hard because everything I did I was doing for the first time,” he laughs. “There was not a single situation I could walk into and think, ‘I can handle this’. I was actually making work for the company, which was brilliant. Wayne gave me feedback and guidance, but he never told me what decision to make or how to do something; the end result was always completely up to me.”

What did he learn from the process? “Taking responsibility like that is hard, but it is the best way to learn in this career. A good mentor should balance how to teach you, and how to help you find your own voice. In dance, for example, you don’t want to learn how to choreograph just like another choreographer.

Wayne never did that, instead he taught me how to use my own brain to find my own intentions. My time as his choreographic apprentice was such a gift.”

In Binet’s experience, what makes a good mentor? “Trust young people with their ideas. Karen, for example, is honest, she’s always been completely straightforward with me. She tells me when she thinks a ballet works and when it doesn’t. She will be frank about what I need to develop. In the end, any emerging artist just wants to get better and better at what they do.”

Does he have any advice for young choreographers? “No one knows what you want unless you ask for it. When you get a foot in the door, all you have to do is just keep showing up, keep doing it, and keep pushing yourself.” robertbinet.net INTERNATIONALARTSMANAGER.COM

Where Next?