Arts

The Adelaide Festival Centre presents ‘A Mini Festival of New Performances’

The Adelaide Festival Centre and Mobile States present the best new work from Australia’s hottest independent artists in A Mini Festival of New Performances from 23 – 28 August in the Space Theatre and Adelaide CBD.

Incorporating four shows over five days, Adelaide Festival Centre’s inSPACE Mini Festival of New Performances combines video installation, theatre and dance for curious minds and adventurous souls. The design of the festival enables you to enjoy all four shows in one day, or set your own pace over the week. A festival package enables you to see all four shows at a discounted price.

The four shows are listed below.

The Harry Harlow Project – SA PREMIERE
Insite Arts

“Love is a wondrous state. Deep, tender and rewarding…”

In 1958 Harry Harlow did what had never been done before: he used the word ‘love’ in a scientific paper.

In doing so, he single-handedly changed everything we know about raising children. In a time when parents were told not to comfort a crying baby, Harlow legitimised an infant’s need for love and affection.

But love has a darker side, and in his desire to understand it Harlow’s experiments with baby monkeys became sadistically cruel.

Featuring live video and sound, a unique narrative style and a bravura performance by James Saunders, this award-winning theatrical exploration invites audiences into the laboratory of Harlow’s mind – a place where his extraordinary life and work unravel and illuminate one of the most troubled and controversial scientists of the 20th century.

Can the ends ever justify the means?

“Dazzling indie theatre…this is comedy at its blackest and most sly, disturbing and ultimately tragic” The Australian

Written and performed by James Saunders
Directed and Designed by Brian Lipson
Composer: Kelly Ryall
Video Artist: Martyn Coutts

What: The Harry Harlow Project

Venue: Space Theatre

When: Wednesday 24 – Saturday 27 August; Wed & Fri 8:30pm, Thurs & Sat 6pm

Cost: Adult $30, Concession $26. Full festival package available.

Bookings: BASS on 131 246 or online at www.bass.net.au

I Left My Shoes On Warm Concrete And Stood In The Rain – SA PREMIERE
Gabrielle Nankivell

I Left My Shoes On Warm Concrete And Stood In The Rain is a visual poem for anyone who has taken the enchanting qualities of their broken world and built a fairytale as inspiration to survive. The performance considers ‘struggle’ as an inherent quality of being human.

Inspired by the beauty, power and complexity of the world in which we live I Left My Shoes On Warm Concrete And Stood In The Rain uses movement to express and reinforce the exhilaration for life that exists in every individual.

The evocative collaboration between movement, text, sound and light is accentuated by simple staging and encourages space for the imagination of the audience. The instinctive connection between performer and audience is driven by a distinctly powerful physicality where every movement is realised in the moment as if it is being played for the first time. The resulting performance is a ride for the senses of performer and audience alike, embracing fear, laughter, tears and irony as the story of each unfolds. With a film-like score by Luke Smiles presented in 5.1 surround sound.

What: I Left My Shoes On The Concrete And Stood In The Rain

Venue: Space Theatre

When: Wednesday 24 – Saturday 28 August; Wed & Fri 6pm, Thurs & Sat 8:30pm

Cost: Adul t $30, Concession $26. Full festival package available.

Bookings: BASS on 131 246 or online at www.bass.net.au

En Route
one step at a time like this & Richard Jordan Productions

En route is a mobile event for pedestrians incorporating audio, mobile phone communication, urban streetscapes, walking, and communicating with general public. Participants are invited on a journey, inward and outward, through the thoroughfares and back-alleys of both the city and what they make of it. Directions, instructions and audio – snatches of narrative, musings, sound, and song – intertwine with the wanderings, observations and (found) experiences of the participant, opening up a field for multiple ways of seeing the city, themselves, and others.

En route is an experience in which private and public, imagined and concrete intersect and overlap. Participants – part traveler, witness, and voyeur – view a world in the process of making itself simultaneously emerging and dissolving as perceptions, insights and recollections make and remake the city we inhabit.

En route poses questions about where and how the creative act may be sited and what form it may take. It invites participants to be co-creators of the piece, writers and re-writers of the cityscape. The spontaneous choreography of passers-by, streets, alleys, and buildings, becomes the site onto which the participant projects their own narrative and meaning.

“ * * * * a wonderfully atmospheric sojourn.” Herald Sun (UK)

What: En Route

Venue: Adelaide CBD (starting-point to be advised on booking)

When: Tuesday 23 – Sunday 28 August, 10:30am, 1pm & 4pm

Cost: Adult/Concession $30. Full festival package available.

Bookings: BASS on 131 246 or online at www.bass.net.au

Vivaria (Place Of Life) – SA PREMIERE
Samuel James

Vivaria, the Latin plural for ‘place of life’, is a dance video installation that draws on the unique talents of independent dancers and movement artists to create a simulated ecosystem for particular species. These artists operate outside the conventions of mainstream dance and in this installation, use the disciplines of Body Weather and improvisation to remotely attach their image to the digital environments that have been created for them.

Martin del Amo, Linda Luke, Peter Fraser, Lizzie Thomson and Georgie Read explore the complex relationship between the body and digital urban space, transposing each of their ‘urban’ based choreographic works onto video spaces from the streets of Sydney, Melbourne, Berlin and Tokyo.

“The work is richly textured, at turns elegantly pensive and playful, a meditation on the competing presence of bodies and the built environment.” RealTime

Director: Samuel James
Dancers: Martin Del Amo, Linda Luke, Peter Fraser, Lizzie Thomson and Georgie Read
Sound: Gail Priest
Consultation: Paul Gazzola
Commissioned by Reeldance Inc.

What: Vivaria (Place of Life)

Venue: Space Theatre Foyer

When: Wednesday 24 – Sunday 28 August

Cost: FREE, with any ticket from the inSPACE mini festival. Full festival package available.

Bookings: BASS on 131 246 or online at www.bass.net.au

Adelaide Festival Centre’s inSPACE program presents pioneering performances with attitude featuring the best new work from Australia’s independent artists and companies.

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