FROM THE
ARTISTIC
DIRECTOR
From circus arts to high arts,
the 2014 Melbourne Festival
covered an enormous range of
shows and artists. We turned
up the volume and heightened
the engagement the Festival
had with audiences who have
a love for the arts in all forms
and combinations.
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There were shows aimed at disrupting our
thinking with visual arts as performance,
theatre as a choral experience, and
classical music getting together with the
coolest of techno DJs. We offered the
purity of tradition with the exquisite guqin
from China as well as the boldness of
contemporary work with Germany’s newest
star theatre director, Falk Richter, as well
as one of Europe’s most respected theatre
makers, Heiner Goebbels.
Importantly too, when the Festival
concluded on 26 October after 17 days
of amazing events, the ripples of its
legacy continued. The impact of the six
international and Australian commissioned
works and a host of other world premieres
continues to be felt by the artists whom we
supported.
As befits an international festival, we
created opportunities such as the
workshops held by the Trisha Brown Dance
Company at the Victorian College of the Arts
and the Aurora Orchestra at the Australian
National Academy of Music, for some of the
world’s most important companies to offer
professional development and inspiration to
the next generation of Melbourne artists.
Melbourne Festival contributes meaningfully
to the cultural life of this city in other
ways too, with partnerships such as those
with the Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne
Theatre Company, Chunky Move, Melbourne
Symphony Orchestra, Australian Centre
for Contemporary Art, National Gallery of
Victoria and the Centre for Contemporary
Photography ensuring that together two
plus two really does equal five.
There were so many examples of this to
be found in the 2014 program, but one of
the best is the focus on the fast-changing
world of circus, an art form in which
Melbourne excels. In partnership with the
National Institute of Circus Arts, the Flying
Fruit Fly Circus, the Australian Circus Arts
and Physical Theatre Association and the
Jiangsu Acrobatic Association, Melbourne
Festival presented an exhilarating showcase
of circus and an investigation into its future
including performances by companies from
Canada, Belgium, Brisbane and, of course,
Melbourne.
All this added up to a Melbourne Festival
program that was curated specifically for