Explosive start sets up carnival culture month
Perth's carnival of culture was to launch with a bang last night.
The free outdoor Spanish fireworks theatre spectacle Veles e Vents was expected to attract thousands to the first of three performances at Langley Park as the WA Ballet opened its season at the Quarry Amphitheatre to start the 23-day Perth International Arts Festival.
Theatres will stage Australian exclusive performances from South Africa, Israel, Germany and Belgium at the weekend.
The Nalaga'at Deaf-Blind Theatre Ensemble will knead and bake bread at the Regal Theatre while telling stories of life, love and loss.
At their nearby pop-up Blackout Restaurant, diners will get a course in sense-deprivation by eating meals in utter darkness.
As with several PIAF shows, immersion also comes in the form of the walk-through video-game maze Situation Rooms from the Rimini Protokoll company.
Other acts cranking up this weekend include Batsheva Dance Company, sizzling South African play Mies Julie, Italian pianist Ludovico Einaudi and Gotye's gig with his band the Basics.
At the WA Museum, people can play with the ultimate model train set in the free installation I Think I Can.
Toy trains also inspired Japanese duo Paramodel, who made a surreal pop art landscape from hundreds of metres of plastic track at John Curtin Gallery.
The gallery also hosts Ryota Kawakubo's The Tenth Sentiment, a shadow dance using the headlights of one model train.
The regular outdoor film season will be suspended for one night at the Somerville tomorrow for the Coast, the world premiere screening of beachside memories documentary Girt by Sea.
Perth ARIA winners the Panics will perform the score to the film live at the Somerville after filling in at the Chevron Festival Gardens tonight for last-minute dropout Dee Dee Bridgewater.
Grammy-winning jazz singer Bridgewater was herself to replace hip-hop producer Ta-ku.
As music editor Simon Collins says in his Booker T Jones review today, the disrupted Saturday scheduling has compromised PIAF's capacity to make a strong statement on the first Saturday night of its concert program.
For the past two years, organisers have had to shut the Gardens on the opening weekend to make way for the St Jerome's Laneway Festival, which has shifted to Fremantle and is on today.
PIAF estimates 500,000 people will attend its theatre, music, film, exhibitions, literature and free events up to March 1.
