Sneak Peek at the Sydney Festival Line Up, 2012
The Sydney International Arts Festival doesn’t launch it’s full program until November 2, but we can reveal the first two in a series new Australian works which will feature in the Festival line-up.
The Sydney International Arts Festival doesn’t launch it’s full program until November 2, but we can reveal the first two in a series new Australian works which will feature in the Festival line-up: Gideon Obarzanek’s Assembly and Meow Meow’s Little Match Girl. Both works are premiering in Melbourne before coming to Sydney Festival in January 2012. 
The Little Match Girl
The new house-show in The Famous Spiegeltent, Little Match Girl, is cabaret on the edge – wild, exhilarating, tragic and always completely glamorous. Premiering at Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre in November, Little Match Girl has the perfect combination of the insatiable Meow Meow, the extraordinary Mitchell Butel and possibly a soothing fireman or two, all wrapped together in a 92 year old tent. The very luscious Meow Meow can defrost even the coldest of hearts. In the paws of this untameable storyteller, Hans Christian Andersen’s bittersweet fable of a woebegone match-seller is a springboard into the vast realms of theatrical possibility. Meow Meow has been named one of the top performers of 2010 by The New Yorker; Top 10 Best of Cabaret by Time Out New York; ‘cabaret diva of the highest order’ by The New York Post; ‘sensational’ by The Times; and ‘a phenomenon’ by The Age. Her work has been curated globally by David Bowie, Pina Bausch and Mikhail Baryshnikov, and she has collaborated with artists as diverse as John Cameron Mitchell (creator of Hedwig), Amanda Palmer and the National Academy of Music. Most recently she starred in Michel Legrand’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg on London’s West End and debuted Meow Meow in Concert at the legendary Apollo Theatre to sensational reviews. This show is not to be missed. See AussieTheatre.com’s previous review of Meow Meow:
Meow Meow at the Burlesque Hour LOVES Melbourne
Meow Meow’s Little Match GirlThe Famous Spiegeltent, January 5–29www.meowmeowrevolution.com
Assembly
In his final work as artistic director of one of Australia’s most exciting and innovative dance companies, choreographer Gideon Obarzanek created Assembly, an ambitious collaboration with the Opera Victoria’s Music Director, Richard Gill and featuring Sydney Philharmonia Choir. Assembly draws together dance, theatre and voice to explore the motion of crowds. With more than 60 performers on stage, this epic and ambitious production combines the force and agility of eight of Chunky Move’s most exceptional dancers with waves of medieval and contemporary choral music from six Principal Singers and Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, shifting the action between perfect order and the unpredictable clamour of the mob. AssemblyCity Recital Hall, January 11–14 www.chunkymove.com
The full program for Sydney Festival 2012 will be announced on November 2, 2011Tickets on sale from November 9 www.sydneyfestival.org.au Photo: International Cabaret Sensation, Meow MeowPhoto by: Mangus Hastings
