Botanic Park. Foundation Stage. 11 Mar 2018
The ultimate moment of this year’s festival is the masterpiece Place des Anges (Place of Angels) by Gratte Ciel. The spectacle has toured the world since finally convincing an Arles festival director to let them stage the incredible aerial show. The work is the result of a collaboration between technical director Stephane Girard and the late Pierrot Bidon, a rule-breaking French circus director and promoter who is considered a "founding father" of the New Circus movement, which ousted animals, clowns and children from circuses to bring them back to their vaudevillian roots. His circus shows were sexy, dangerous and strictly after hours.
Place des Anges tells the story of a group of angels who, given a day's reprieve from their do-gooder lives in heaven, are lured to the temptations of earth. As they fall from the heavens, feathers falling from their wings, they play and frolic and revel in their freedom. Some float, others glide, and others still shoot across sky so fast that if you are facing the wrong way, in turning you will miss them. It's a heavenly party we are invited to view, and the finale is like nothing you'll experience again.
Set high above the tree line, the show draws the audience’s eyes up to the heavens, re-connecting us with the night sky. Previously, the show has been performed in urban settings, with the zip lines crossing over head between buildings and monuments. The aim was to juxtapose the angels with modern city architecture, highlighting the meeting of the celestial with the industrial.
WOMADelaide is the company's first opportunity to stage the performance within a natural space and it creates a whole new dimension.
The zip lines crisscross the sky above the festivals main Foundation stage, strung between cranes which seemed imposing in the daylight but are obscured by night fall. The anticipation begins some time before the show evens starts, as in the dusky sky you start to glimpse white figures inhabiting the top of the cranes during the show preceding theirs. The mind boggles at what might be coming.
By the time their moment arrives, the sky is dark and you can barely see them. A fierce, otherworldly soundtrack starts and suddenly, angels appear in the sky. Intense spotlights guide your eye, so you don't miss a thing.
As the show progresses, the non-uniformity of the "stage" gives the effect of the angels appearing and disappearing as they fly overhead; the trees masking their entry or exit in the dark. Some fall all the way to the ground and disperse into the crowd, giving many mere mortals a chance to glimpse a white-clad, feathered angel walking among them, sometimes close enough to touch. The angels are excited and happy, their eyes also cast upwards to the aerial show.
A one point, the lights die and the audience gaze around, wondering what comes next. From the left of the stage, a giant white shape looms larger and larger until one can see it in full - a huge cherub floating over the audience, soaring up to the zip lines and dipping back down almost within grasping reach. As it makes its way across the crowd, angels wheel above dropping a cyclone of feathers. What follows can only be described as a feather storm, as they burst from the ground and fill the air like snowflakes; the faces all around a picture of joyful surprise and awe.
The company is comprised of a 16-strong troupe of aerialists, gymnasts and dancers (all brave beyond belief), with another 16 supporting cast and crew integral to making this wonderful performance happen. Every spot on the ground affords a slightly different view of the spectacle, and there are no bad seats in this house. For those with four-day passes, every night is a new experience.
It cannot be guaranteed that no pillows were harmed in the making of this performance.
Nicole Russo
Photography by Paul Rodda
Botanic Park. Foundation Stage. 10 Mar 2018
Eight years after first appearing at WOMADelaide, the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble return to remind us why they are still the coolest brass band in the history of music.
Hypnotic Brass Ensemble is largely a family affair, led by seven brothers who grew up playing and touring with their father, jazz great Kelan Phil Cohran. As adults, they stepped out to forge their own music journey with great success. The band's sound includes drums, guitar and bass, but the focus, unsurprisingly is the brass. Featuring, trumpets, trombones and sousaphone, they mix their modern jazz soul roots with a raw hip hop edge. Their music is a beautiful marriage of the two, fresh, sultry and in-your-face.
Recording and performing independent albums, with the likes of Damon Albarn and the Gorillaz, De La Soul, Snoop Dogg and Prince, they have taken brass to a whole new audience and earned their own musical stripes.
Their super high energy live performance, which differs significantly from their more laid back albums, has driven their notoriety and for very good reason. On stage, the group are brassy, charismatic and cool-as-hell in spite of the 35 degree heat. Easy on the eye and the ear, the often bare chested band members take it in turns to man the microphone on the vocal numbers. Their rhyming overtures are a live-only extra and take the music up a notch.
The self-proclaimed "Bad Boys of Jazz" know how to entertain on so many levels; they tease the audience and get them involved from the moment the set starts. Unlike other brass bands, who are largely behind their sizable instruments during song, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble are always engaged with the audience and feed off crowd interaction and response; they get plenty of it too! The audience laps up the cheeky repertoire and calls back on cue whenever required.
These boys can come back to our fair shores any time they like.
Nicole Russo
Botanic Park. Stage 2. 10 Mar 2018
In a performance that stays with you, JoJo Abot is a blast of cool style and back-stiffening attitude.
Originally from Ghana and now living in New York, Abot spends her time contributing to creative communities across the globe and expressing her art music, film, photography, literature and performance. She recently emerged from a stint in New York as part of the New Museum's incubator program, NEW INC.
On her first trip to Australia, Abot is brightly and elaborately dressed with gold face and hand paint which glitters in the setting sun that bathes Stage 2. Her striking stage presence has you transfixed with all eye on her.
Abot's music is as intense, hypnotic and varied as she is; a wall of experimental sound that moves your body and mind. She is joined on stage by drums, keyboard and two dancers as she performs songs from her album Fyfya Woto. Singing in English and Ewe (spoken in southeastern Ghana), Abot's sound is a mix of electronica, reggae and Afrobeat, but can be much better described by how it feels rather than its musical styling.
Abot's songs are imbued with her passion, it's intense, earthly, sensual and sorrowful. Her vocal range is impressive, and she moves between soaring highs and guttural growls with ease.
In a set that is much more than a music concert, Abot talks to us, mentors us, empowers us with her words, dance and music. In her own words, Abot wants to "share this moment" with her audience, and she urges her audience to stand up to injustice and say "To Li" (rhymes with bulls**t) when we see it.
Her voice is a defining example of modern Africa; worldly, influential and ready to change minds. May we all go forth as brave as she.
Nicole Russo
Botanic Park. Foundation Stage. 9 Mar 2018
On the opening night of WOMADelaide 2018, Anoushka Shankar sits comfortably upon the Foundation Stage. Diminutive and softly spoken, she cuts a tiny figure on the huge stage, but as she starts to play her presence resonates out to the audience. She is a picture of strength and peace as her fingers dance across the sitar.
Shankar last appeared at Womadelaide in 2010, when she joined her father on the main stage for a magical performance that sadly, will not be seen again. Since then she has released four albums, received three more Grammy nominations and defined herself as an artist and activist in her own right. She has taken the sitar and classical Indian music to new levels and new audiences with artistic collaborations as diverse as Sting, Herbie Hancock, Karsh Kale, Rodrigo y Gabriela, and Joshua Bell.
In her return performance, Shankar performs instrumental pieces from her latest album, Land of Gold, co-written by Manu Delago and featuring extraordinary works with MIA, Vanessa Redgrave and German-Turkish singer/songwriter Alev Lenz.
Shankar brings the complex music to a live stage brilliantly armed with her sitar and an accompaniment of supporting musicians on double bass, keyboards, Indian shehnai and percussion. The more traditional pieces are raw and emotive, the soaring shehnai combined with the sitar evoke a deeply primal and meditative response. These sit surprisingly well next to Shankar's experimental works, which are edgy, electronic tracks with sharp beats and high-pitched strings. The latter matched with equally intense light shows that maximise the impact of the music.
It is a spellbinding set that showcases Shankar's talent as a composer, musician and thinker; more than an artist, she will be a mark of her generation for a long time to come.
Nicole Russo
Selby & Friends. Elder Hall. 11 Mar 2018
Beethoven by Ballot is the first in Kathryn Selby’s chamber music series, Selby & Friends, in 2018. Last year’s subscribers voted as to what they would like to hear in today’s all-Beethoven concert, and they chose Allegretto for Piano Trio in B-flat, WoO. 39, the joyful and melodic Violin Sonata No.5 in F Spring, Op.24, the passionate Cello Sonata in A, Op.69, and the ever-popular Piano Trio in B flat Archduke, Op.97. (Actually, Selby chose the Allegretto, not the subscribers, because she wanted to start the concert with something for the entire trio.)
Kathryn Selby is a consummate musician, and her right hand is pure gold. In the Allegretto she extracts clarion-clear bell sounds from the Steinway with almost imperceptible effort, and this exquisite delicateness is echoed by Grace Clifford on violin. All the while Clancy Newman keeps sentinel-like watch over the performance space with a sideways glance towards Clifford while keeping Selby in his peripheral vision. The communication between the three is palpable.
Clancy retires temporarily from the stage leaving Selby and Clifford to play the Spring Sonata. Again, Selby’s command over the gentle right hand melody line is almost transcendent and Clifford responds with beguiling refinement that radiates youthful innocence. Clifford’s phrasing is exquisite, with gently singing melodic lines almost rising out of nothing.
The Cello Sonata, to my ear, is one of the high points of the chamber repertoire, and today’s performance is world class. Newman is aggressive in the first movement and he circles the second as a wrangler does a spirited horse in the process of breaking it in. His body language is fiery and poetic and his cello sings with articulated passion. Selby controls the pace and the syncopation and works with Newman, hand in glove, with each having their turn in the limelight in a true partnership. Their performance is as much an outstanding visual experience as it is aural.
The concert rounds out with a fine performance of the famed Archduke trio. The relative tempos of the four movements need to be well controlled, and when they are the contrasting moods and rhythmic and tonal complexities come to the fore. Selby establishes a well-considered allegro tempo from the outset that allows the violin and cello in the second movement to be well articulated and have a lightness that sometimes is missed.
“Chamber music at its best” says the advertising promo, and that is not far from the truth. This is an outstanding concert at every level, but for my taste the bravura performance of the Cello Sonata is the standout.
Kym Clayton
When: 11 Mar
Where: Elder Hall
Bookings: Closed