GEORGE TOWN: Dialogues with gravity, walking installations, and a paddy field in the middle of town are among the offerings of George Town Festival 2016 (GTF2016) this year.
Scheduled from July 28 till Aug 28, the festival will open with 'Svara Bhumi' (Songs of the Earth), together with the A+SEAN showcase, which has been touted by the event's organisers as a colossal public display of trending talents from Southeast Asian nations and Australia.
"Highlighting at A+SEAN will be none other than Theo Jansen’s Strandbeests, Snuff Puppets from Australia, a concert featuring the hottest local and regional bands and more," the festival's director Joe Sidek told a press conference today.
"We wanted to have an opening that everyone could come to,” he added, saying that premiering on the opening weekend is also Pearl of the Eastern & Oriental, a GTF-commissioned play.
Directed by Singaporeans Lim Yu-Beng and Tan Kheng Hua, the team that brought the GTF 2014’s sold-out play 2 Houses, the production is set to be another site-specific play staged at the E&O Hotel itself.
"GTF is also proudly presenting a project called Moved by Padi," said Joe.
"It is by none other than our home-grown choreographer and dancer Aida Redza, and this multi-arts collaborative project will be staged in the heart of George Town, at Macallum Street where it will be transformed into a real paddy field."
International performances during the month-long festival will include several Southeast Asian premieres such as 'Kaash', the revived production of multi award-winning dancer and choreographer Akram Khan’s first major production with the set design by internationally-renowned artist Anish Kapoor.
Another offering at the festival will be 'Smashed', a mix of circus and theatre by the world-renowned jugglers of Gandini Juggling, and Missing, the internationally-acclaimed play that is told through a series of extraordinary images, jaw-dropping choreography and a tantalising multilingual vocal landscape.
Premiering in Asia during GTF2016 will be Triptyque, an ingenious spectacle where circus acrobatics meet contemporary dance.
The group 'Les 7 doigts de la main' that created Triptyque has directed shows for the Sochi Olympic games as well as the 2012 Academy Awards.