In January, the Festival will again take over the city and Parramatta (“Sydney’s second
CBD”), with around 80 events and more than 500 artists from Australia and
around the globe. One of the expected highlights of the 2012 program, and a
first for Sydney Festival, is Black Capital. That section of the program refers
to Redfern, “a place of many stories” and “an urban meeting place for
Aboriginal Australians everywhere”, said Sydney Festival Director Lindy Hume at
the program launch.
Carriage
Works will host a number of exhibitions, talks and shows, such as “I am Eora”,
hailed as Sydney Festival’s “most ambitious project ever”, featuring many
Indigenous artists, performers and musicians in an effort to “reflect the
diversity of contemporary Aboriginal practice”.
Alongside
“I am Eora” will be featured “Walk a Mile in my Shoes”, a live act interweaving
storytelling, singing and spoken word, performed by The Barefoot Divas, six
female singers who are all from an Indigenous background: Ursula Yovich
(Serbia/ Burarra) and Black Arm Band’s Emma Donovan (Gumbaynggirr) are both
from an Aboriginal background, while Whirimako Black, Maisey Rika and Merenia
have a Maori background, and Ngaiire comes from Papua New Guinea.
New
Zealand-born creator/producer/ director Vicki Gordon has worked for more than
25 years in the music industry, taking on many different roles: musician,
festival director, label manager, ARIA board director and more recently artist
manager, working tirelessly to introduce Australian Aboriginal and Women
artists to the mainstream.
“Lindy Hume
has had an extraordinary vision in bringing Black Capital to fruition, but also
in supporting Barefoot Divas, and the vision that I had in relation to bringing
Aboriginal artists, women artists, and Maori artists and women from the Pacific
together,” she says. “It is a fantastic opportunity to provide a platform for
these women to be seen and heard in the mainstream, which is so often not available
to them.”
The six
women singers are also backed by six male musicians, who all come from
different backgrounds like Greece, Peru, Sicily, New Zealand, Chile, adding to
the cultural richness of the show.
Working
with Vicki on the project is award-winning playwright, Alana Valentine, whose
2007 play, Parramatta Girls, about the infamous institution, won her critical
acclaim. Like Vicki, a long-term Redfern resident, she also welcomes the Black
Capital initiative: “Redfern is such a fantastically vibrant area, such a great
Indigenous homeland, it’s great for Sydney Festival to have recognised that
it’s a good way to connect with the community.”
As part of
the writing process for “Walk a Mile in My Shoes”, Alana interviewed each of
the Divas to then weave their stories into the show. “It’s been a great
privilege to me to actually have the trust and confidence of a lot of
Indigenous women artists and Indigenous women, who are connected with their
culture,” she says. “Parramatta Girls had a lot of connection to Indigenous
elders. I learnt a lot from them about how to respect cultural protocols and
how to engage with what was important to them about their culture … Every
person you interview teaches you something.”
Alana says
audiences want to get more involved in the person’s life and journey and the
usual format where a singer gets up on stage and just says a few words between
each song is not enough. Vicki says that a show like “Walk a Mile in my Shoes”
gives “an opportunity for the audience to engage with these women as
individuals, both culturally and spiritually, through storytelling and through
music.”
“Alana
brings a real depth to their stories and their storytelling,” says Vicki.
“We’re trying to create something that is unique and different, and offer a
little bit more substance to what would ordinarily be just a series of songs on
stage.”
The
storytelling also brought a greater dynamic between the women on stage and
helped them relate to each other. Vicki feels that a big part of her life’s
work has been to build bridges between Aboriginal, Maori and Papua New Guinea
Indigenous people, and Barefoot Divas is a perfect representation of it: “You
know, women are great at building bridges, that’s what we do, we do that really
well!”
Vicki says
she’s always felt a real, spiritual connection to Redfern, even though she
couldn’t quite say until later what had drawn her to this place. “But certainly
a big part of my work over the last 25 years has been with Indigenous music and
I continue to do a lot of work in that area, and I believe it is directly
connected to my Maori ancestry.”
Parramatta
Opening Party (Free) on January 14; Carriage Works: January 8-11 www.sydneyfestival.org.au
Source: South Sydney Herald December 2011 www.southsydneyherald.com.au