Sydney Festival promises a smorgasbord of delights for dance lovers.
Headlining the dance program is Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Damien Jalet's Babel, described by the Festival as "a swirling maelstrom of identity, ethnicity and culture". Dance Australia's Malcolm Rock met with Jalet recently in Antwerp to talk about Babel. Below is an extract from the interview, which will be published in the Dec/Jan issue of Dance Australia.
Babel is about communication and the doubleness of language. Care of a series of spoken and choreographed vignettes it aims to reveal the world’s continuing sense of tribal identity. The theme is expanded by British sculptor Antony Gormley, who provides mobile aluminium frames that represent the five continents, ensnaring performers like the cubes of a Francis Bacon canvas. As the title implies, the principal dramaturgical source is the biblical story that tells how God punished mankind’s arrogance by splitting the population into different groups with different languages that he scattered across the globe.
Jalet sees the act of old testament vengeance as a blessing in disguise. Without the divine schism, he says, there wouldn’t be the spectrum of opinions that have resulted in what we now call 'culture'. “Determining an identity is a strong human need,” he reasons. “The question is, do you have to define yourself in opposition to others, or can you use different tools for that? Here in Belgium it goes to extremes: we have forests divided into Flemish and French territories, and playgrounds where you can’t speak a certain language. It’s not so dissimilar from Jerusalem in some ways.”
The Festival line-up also includes four Australian dance/physical theatre works, which include:
Anatomy of an Afternoon Martin del Amo
Assembly Chunky Move and Victorian Opera
I Am Eora Wesley Enoch
Never Did Me Any Harm Force Majeure and Sydney Theatre Company
Babel. Photo by Koen Broos
