The Arts
Check out this month’s Arts Feature for current exhibitions and gallery openings and our Artist In Focus.
Blue Love
Award-winning Australian choreographer Shaun Parker presents Blue Love. Infused with intense physical theatre, film and dance, Shaun Parker’s Blue Love is a poetic and satirical take on the clichés of pop culture, romance, coupledom and suburbia. From a fantastic place where TV soap meets art-house film, Glenn and Rhonda Flune take the audience on an expedition in search of the perfect relationship. Blue Love is inspired by famous works of art, theatre, music and film, all of which deal with the concept of love. Glenn and Rhonda draw on and reference all of these art forms, parodying the lip-service given to love and its incarnations. This quirky, character-based work is a multimedia physical theatre comedy: accessible, challenging and enormously entertaining.
Parker wanted to create a work about romantic love. ‘I was inspired by how romantic love runs rampant through all art forms, both popular and high art, and provides such juicy thematic fodder for artists and audiences alike. It’s a topic that everyone knows only too well. In romantic love the cliché becomes the poignant and vice versa. Enter our characters, Glenn and Rhonda Flune. They believe that they are the perfect couple, and in believing so become the tenuous, sometimes fabricated, sometimes real storytellers of Blue Love. They and their ‘sketched-out’ living room become the canvas for our story as they reference film, dance, text and song in playing out their relationship.’
Originally created as a short film, Blue Love has screened in Athens, London, Berlin, Melbourne, San Francisco, Krakow and at the Verona Film Festival, Italy. Awards include Best Dance Film, Australian Dance Awards.
Blue Love was then developed into a full-length physical theatre and dance work funded by Arts South Australia and the Sophiensaele Theatre in Berlin. Seasons have now been performed internationally at Sophiensaele Theatre, the Podweil Summerfestival and Tanzfabric’s Test um6 series (Germany), the Nelson Arts Festival (New Zealand) and the Singapore Festival.
One of Australia’s youngest and most exciting dance companies, Shaun Parker & Company has exploded onto the international dance scene. The company creates critically acclaimed dance productions.
Byron Theatre, Byron Community Centre on Thursday at 8pm. Tix: 6685 6807 or byroncentre.com.au.
Fundraiser for Nepal
Help raise money to support those in need in Nepal following the devastating earthquake that’s affected the lives of millions. Organisers are presenting a rare screening of When the Iron Bird Flies. This beautiful feature-length documentary explores the dynamic point of exposure between Tibetan Buddhism and contemporary western culture. Taking its name from an 8th-century prediction about the eventual meeting of these two cultures, this film eloquently and sensitively explores what has shaped the arrival of Buddhism in the West, and what the future looks like at this exiting juncture. All proceeds will go directly to Karuna Shechen – a humanitarian aid organisation associated with Shechen Monastery, Nepal, whose monks and nuns are at the forefront of the relief effort on the ground. Under the guidance of Shechen Rabjam Rinpoche and Matthieu Richard, this organisation has a far-reaching, immediate and direct impact in the Himalayan region. Saturday 23 May at the Byron Community Centre. Q&A with Buddhist teacher Jakob Leshcly. Tickets $25; $20 concession. For enquiries call 0412 003 404. For tickets go to byroncentre.com.au.
More Help for Nepal
The Brookfarm Byron Lighthouse run founded and run by locals Lisa Parkes, and Greg and Brigid Kramer is asking for our help. The lighthouse run has in the past few years been donating its funds to local charities as well as donating to an Australian charity, Langtang Valley Health, which our funds helped build, establish, and set up a primary health clinic in the remote region of Langtang in 2012. And in the more recent years to cover a nurse’s wages at the clinic. The news from beautiful Langtang is not good. The village has been destroyed, as has the clinic.
Langtang village is an 8-hour drive and 3-day walk from Kathmandu. It is very remote, and unfortunately this earthquake has occurred right in the middle of the trekking season.
An Australian doctor, Erin Carroll (from Victoria), had been volunteering at the clinic for the past month. Fortunately she and her husband Ben were leaving the clinic when the earthquake hit. The good news is that she and her husband are alive and currently awaiting rescue from Syabru Besi. However, there are grave concerns for other staff, particularly local Nepali nurses.
Donations can be made on www.langtangvalleyhealth.org.
Lisa will be holding The Full Monty fundraising event on Saturday 30 May with an evening of Indian/Nepalese food, film, music, entertainment, and dancing.
Lisa is looking for event sponsors (venue, produce, staff, entertainment) as well as prizes, and donations for a silent auction, so to help with this event or for more information please contact Lisa on 0429 878 902.
Call me Bello Mellow…
The inaugural Bello Winter Music, taking place in the beautiful NSW mid north coast town of Bellingen over 2–5 July, has partnered with 10 local ecological organisations (BSLA) to present Bello LeaF Learning Festival, a mini environmental festival within a music festival.
Festival patrons can take guided walking tours along the stunning Bellinger River, learn about backyard permaculture, propagating native plants, growing a food forest, winter bee-keeping, learn from local Aboriginal elders, tour the Northbank Community Garden, as well as take part in a wide range of workshops and forums throughout the 4-day festival.
Bello Winter Music is also presenting a one-off concert on Sunday 5 July called River Songs, featuring Ash Grunwald, Sara Tindley, Emily Lubitz (Tinpan Orange), The mid north’s Cath Cooper and many others for an afternoon exploring river themes in music. On Friday morning (3 July) there’ll be a free concert at the local Bellopy Farmers Market featuring master percussionist Greg Sheehan and guests from the festival.
With workshops on winter bee-keeping, deep ecology by the river, backyard permaculture, clean energy, how to shift consciousness, healthy rivers, native plant identification and more.
Bello LeaF events are free to Bello Winter Music festival ticketholders and are available to non-ticketholders by donation at the event on the day.
BELLO WINTER MUSIC is a new, family-friendly music festival (Thursday 2–5 July) taking place in the pubs, halls, churches and streets of the beautiful, picturesque town of Bellingen on the NSW mid north coast. The Milk Carton Kids (US), Ash Grunwald, Ainslie Wills, Tinpan Orange and Bobby Singh will join more than 60 other international, national and local acts providing the perfect getaway to shake off the winter blues.
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