#BF10 Day 8 Part 1: Pointe to Pointe, Douglas Kirkland: A Life In Pictures, Nostalgia, Smudged

September 11 was the first Festival Conversations event, Pointe to Pointe, with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui (choreographer of Sutra) and Rafael Bonachela (choreographer of Danza Contemporanea de Cuba). Here we delve into the minds of the two choreographers – what is the landscape like for their pieces (socio-political), what inspires them personally and artistically, what was their personal journey in the creation of their works?

To read the rest of my thoughts please go to Brisbane Creative Industries “Brisbane Festival: Pointe to Pointe // Festival Conversations” http://t.co/DWjD5Nz

It is interesting to delve into the minds of choreographers. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and stories to us – we look forward to seeing Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s work again and we look forward to witnessing the work of choreographer Rafael Bonachela in Danza Contemporanea de Cuba.

Tonight is the last night of Sutra however next week, keep an eye out for Danza Contemporanea de Cuba as part of Brisbane Festival! www.brisbanefestival.com.au

After Pointe to Pointe, I made my way to the Gallery of Modern Art to check out “Douglas Kirkland: A Life In Pictures “which is on Level 3. It is a retrospective of his work – celebrity portraitures, behind the scenes photography of Michael Jackson’s Thriller video and photographs that I recognize from elsewhere. The stories behind the photographs provides an insight into them so if you have a tendency to skim over those descriptions, you should! Douglas Kirkland would also be interesting to hear from so definitely catch Shutter Speed (see here tomorrow at 11am in Cinema A, Gallery of Modern Art. He was 26 when he spent some time photographing Coco Chanel (79) doing her work.

I was planning to see The Raven Project at Metro Arts but ended up missing them, however one of the Critical Mass bloggers have seen it today. I, instead, caught the work of Nostalgia by fellow QUT Creative Industries (grad?) folk Matthew O’Neill. There was also another actor who I have seen perform a few times, Keiran Law. It is a very physical piece (in terms of movement) – I was watching the performance of the actors intently. There were some aspects which reminded me of certain situations – for example, the hectic leap all over the stage as numbers were recited (to me, jumping from schedule to schedule), the physical release after the actors remain still for some time (am sure we’ve been in those situations).

I was planning to see Opera Under The Stars and Cantina but ended up missing them and went to another UNDER THE RADAR production by Melbourne based group called Smudged. They integrated mobile in the performance by encouraging attendees to text in their thoughts. I ended up tweeting and texting some parts (had to use my iPad though) and saw at least a few more participating. It was one of those performances where, the next thing you know, a scary clown is sitting down or one of the performers (away from your line of sight as everyone sat in a circle) is slowly getting dressed into another odd costume. I think that there is plenty of opportunities to integrate some of the performance beyond the rook in real time – for example, one of the performers could have tweeted out a photo of herself in really time and have the Twitter feed connected to the screen while the ‘virtual audience’ participates (however, they don’t know that they are participating because they don’t expect to see this pop up in their feed aka not scheduled). Good food for thought on how mobile can interact with a performance with this piece. If you head over to the @briscreative Twitter account and search for “#BF10 #Smudged” in the feed you will know what I mean!

Tonight was also the last night for Sutra. Having chatted to Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui briefly, I love his spirit and his passion and definitely looking forward to another work by this great choreographer.