IN 2016, Sydney Festival celebrates its 40th anniversary and the final year for esteemed Festival Director Lieven Bertels with a spectacular program bursting with free and ticketed events across theatre, dance, circus, opera and contemporary and classical music.
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Sydney Festival 2016 comprises 157 events of which 89 are free. There will be 383 performances across 34 indoor and outdoor venues featuring 902 artists from 22 countries.
Festival goers can attend 11 world premieres, 20 Australian premieres and eight Australian exclusives featuring some of the world’s greatest artists.
Exclusive performances headline the Festival with Germany’s famous Thalia Theater Hamburg and director Jette Steckel who will make their Australian debut with Woyzeck, a stage adaptation by Robert Wilson, Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan.
Acclaimed choreographer Anne Teresa de Kaesmaeker returns to Australia with her company Rosas to present her earliest choreography Fase Four Moments to the Music of Steve Reich, a seminal piece in the evolution of contemporary dance, and major dance concert work Vortex Temporum, a thrilling and extraordinary collaboration across art forms by Rosas and contemporary music ensemble Ictus.
Sydney loves a good party, and what better way to celebrate 40 years than with The Flaming Lips in The Domain, for free!
Headlining the famous free concert Summer Sounds in The Domain, The Flaming Lips are a musical force to be reckoned with offering cult favourites like ‘She Don’t Use Jelly’ alongside chart hits as ‘Do You Realize??’
From Barangaroo Reserve to Vaucluse House, Sydney Festival will take over several new venues and unusual spaces in 2016. Sydney’s new creative playground, the Cutaway at Barangaroo Reserve, will be home to one of the largest community participation events presented in Sydney Festival’s history, with French artist Olivier Grossetête’s fantastically epic The Ephemeral City, and another pop-up installation titled The People’s Tower at Darling Harbour.
In the Cutaway at Barangaroo Reserve, Shaun Gladwell’s newest video work, Skateboarders vs Minimalism will premiere in a large projection along the western wall in a commission by Catriona and Simon Mordant. Both works can be enjoyed from a bird’s eye view on a free Flying Fox - zipping between the cardboard buildings and video installation on a giant 165m zip line.
The story of Desdemona from Shakespeare's Othello is re-imagined by Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison, Malian singer songwriter Rokia Traoré and acclaimed stage director Peter Sellars, featuring actress Tina Benko as Shakespeare’s doomed heroine. Desdemona, the most fiery angel in Shakespeare's creation, is a radiant and radical woman of independence, courage, and love. Toni Morrison creates an astonishing and provocative voice for Desdemona from the grave, revealing secrets in Othello that will forever change our reading of the play.
Opening the Festival with a hauntingly beautiful encounter between voice and visuals, baritone superstar Matthias Goerne and visual artist William Kentridge perform Schubert’s song cycle Winterreise whilst on the closing weekend of the Festival, Anima Eterna Brugge will perform Australia’s first ever Beethoven symphonic marathon on period instruments in Anima Eterna Brugge Beethoven’s Symphonies.
Taking place over five consecutive evenings, Beethoven’s exuberant Ninth Symphony will raise the roof of the Sydney Opera House in a grand finale performance with Sydney’s own Australian Brandenburg Choir.
