Tag: 2025 OzAsia Festival
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OzAsia Festival review: Ryuichi Fujimura – HERE NOW Trilogy
Ryuichi Fujimura’s works have a strong storytelling focus. In each section of HERE NOW – performed as a trilogy for the first time as part of this year’s OzAsia lineup – the Sydney-based dancer and choreographer speaks directly to the audience. Together, the works form a compelling narrative arc encompassing reflections on the beginning and…
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OzAsia Festival review: Searching Blue
T.H.E Dance Company’s site-adaptive work, Searching Blue, is a tactile exploration of the human condition. Daring, emotive and genre-bending, this contemporary dance piece beckons you to dissolve into the movement with a shared ferocity and vulnerability as the artists gesture for audiences to seek connection. Searching Blue is informed by the ‘extended mind thesis’ and…
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OzAsia Festival review: William Yang – Milestone
Occasioned by his 80th birthday in 2023, Milestone is William Yang’s most complete retrospective to date. First presented at this year’s Sydney Festival and, after Adelaide, immediately headed for a major arts festival in Seoul, this work is Yang’s most extensive, inclusive, and, perhaps, most personal. It is the William Omnibus – bigger in scope…
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OzAsia Festival review: Hiromi featuring PUBLIQuartet
Pianist Hiromi’s performance with US string quartet PUBLIQuartet at the Adelaide Town Hall Tuesday night was riveting. As all five members of the quintet have either won a Grammy (Hiromi) or been nominated for Grammys (PUBLIQuartet), it’s not surprising that they produced musical fireworks. The quintet (piano, two violins, viola and cello) began with ‘Jumpstart’…
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OzAsia Festival review: Two Blood
Two Blood is an ode to the centuries-long relationship between Australia’s First Peoples and the migrant communities who, like First Nations people, have endured violence and discrimination under colonial rule. This sweeping historic arc is embodied in a gold rush-era love story set on Tagalaka Country in Northwest Queensland. Its central characters – a Tagalaka…
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‘It feels surreal’: Behind the News reporter Kushi Venkatesh on stand-up and storytelling
After performing a speech that made the entire school laugh and successfully saw her elected as school captain at Marryatville High School, Kushi Venkatesh decided to give comedy a crack. Since then, the 20-year-old has been a two-time RAW Comedy State Finalist, and was named South Australia’s Funniest Teenager in 2023 through the Class Clowns…
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‘We’ve had these relationships for hundreds of years’: Two Blood weaves ancestral history into essential Australian storytelling
Leafing through fragmentary records from the 1800s, an image of Jasmin Sheppard’s great grandparents began to emerge: a Tagalaka woman and a Chinese migrant seeking gold in Northern Queensland. This discovery would inform the story of Two Blood, a work that sees Sheppard tie explosive physicality with unwavering truth-telling of First Nations stories, national identity,…
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Death opera and a Female Pope: OzAsia Festival 2025 program unveiled
“One of the big themes or visions for me, is about bringing people together,” OzAsia Festival director Joon-Yee Kwok tells InReview. “What brings people together? How do we come together? Who do we like to come together with?” When Kwok was assembling her second OzAsia Festival program, revealed today, that vision comes with an additional…