Festival casts new light on Sydney

Reuters

JUMPY: Members of the Brazilian dance group Bale de Rua perform on the steps of the Sydney Opera House, as part of the Sydney Festival 2010.

Reuters

SURPRISE: Australian singer iOTA performs during a media preview for the upcoming Sydney Festival show 'Smoke & Mirrors'.

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It takes staying in a hotel overlooking Circular Quay and the Opera House to make you really appreciate Sydney.

And to be there during the first weekend of the Sydney Festival is the icing on the cake.

You spend half your life cursing the city you live in, the traffic, the rudeness of its citizens, the bad radio, the rampant commercialism and ignorant shop attendants.

Christmas comes and as soon as you possibly can you head straight out of town – doing your best to avoid speed cameras, mobile speed guns and bad P-plate drivers who tailgate you before they can dangerously overtake.

But then once back home from holidays, Sydney turns on an almost perfect weekend and your whole point of view changes.

The 2010 Sydney Festival runs throughout January, a wonderful time to visit the harbour city and this month here has been re-titled Vivacity.

It started with the New Year's Eve fireworks, continuing with the Sydney Festival, including Festival First Night, the Olafur Eliasson exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Medibank International Sydney tennis and ending with Australia Day celebrations.

This year's festival is said to be the biggest yet, with music, dance and acrobatics, and family entertainment, as well as talks and theatre productions by artists hailing from Africa, India, Germany, Japan, Mexico and the US.

Sydney Festival artistic director Lindy Hume has expanded the free events programme, with 700,000 people taking advantage.

It's spread between venues in the city and out west, including Parramatta where on Saturday January 16, a free outdoor concert at Parramatta Park by A R Rahman, the Oscar-winning composer of Slumdog Millionaire, and a cast of Bollywood dancers and musicians will be held.

While not a free event (tickets are $145 and $135) certainly one of the highlights is the Rogue's Gallery concert at the Opera House forecourt on January 28 with a host of singers including Marianne Faithfull and actor/director Tim Robbins. Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett is also joining the lineup for the pirate-themed night.

Thousands poured into the city for the opening night with its free events but some left disappointed with police stopping them getting into the Domain where Soul legend Al Green finally performed between repeated comments that he wanted to play longer but wasn't allowed.

Still, the numbers of people there, picnicking on the grass and patiently queuing for food and drinks shows how much Sydneysiders and visitors want to enjoy this city's not-so-frequent free events.

The festival's theatre centrepiece is the Sydney debut of one of the world's great theatre houses, Berlin's Schaubuhne.

We were amused and mesmerised by this German production of Hamlet, with Lars Eldinger wearing a fat suit as the Danish prince and Judith Rosmair doubling as Queen Gertrude and Ophelia – and a great deal of mud. The company will perform their version of the play using surtitles at the Sydney Theatre until January 16.

That evening we popped over to Jones Bay Wharf in Pyrmont for dinner at Alira, where the share-plate dining trend in Sydney has reinvented itself – Moorish-influenced tapas and classic cocktails. Manager Mikee Collins believes this part of Sydney will one day rival Macleay Street, Potts Point as a sophisticated eating and entertainment hub.

On Saturday in 30-degree temperatures we joined the tourists milling around Circular Quay enjoying the buskers and then headed to the Opera House for a performance of Bale de Rua from Brazil.

This literally means street dance and their show on until January 17 is a high energy celebration mixing hip-hop, African dance, samba and capoeira.

Later it was kind of odd to see a group of adults sitting around a table playing with white lego pieces but then this was the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Olafur Eliasson exhibition known as Take your time.

Eliasson was involved in the Weather Project installation in London's Tate Modern, and the New York City Waterfalls project. This is the first large-scale exhibition by the Danish-Icelandic artist in Australia.

Including walk-in kaleidoscopes, Eliasson's works explore the intersection between nature and science, organic and artificial, drawing upon elements such as light, water, ice, fog, arctic moss and lava rock.

On the Sunday we caught a ferry to Darling Harbour and wandered down to the big tent for Circus Oz's production, Barely Contained.

While we've been spoilt over the years with visits by Canadian company Cirque du Soleil, Circus Oz has been going since 1977 and is as Aussie as they come – and just as brilliant.

The Arrival at the CarriageWorks at what's now known as Eveleigh (behind Redfern) is much more low key. It's an almost wordless (except for words in a madeup language) theatre piece by the New Zealand company, Red Leap Theatre, based on Shaun Tan's book, The Arrival, about what it's like to be an immigrant. It's on until January 17.

We then made it up to Darlinghurst for dinner at Omerta. The restaurant's perfect for a pre-dinner aperitif with a range of Italian share plates from prosciutto to salt-cod fritters and the most amazing panacotta (made with sheep's yoghurt, white peaches and lemon cream) for dessert.

On a balmy Sydney night it was bliss to walk down an almost empty William Street to the Hyde Park Barracks Museum, which during the festival is transformed into the Beck's Festival Bar.

For the late night show, girls dressed in their best 40s and 50s dance dresses whirled to music by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy.

Now known as one of the new style "pop-up" venues, Beck's Bar will run an eclectic line-up of live bands and DJs during the festival.

IF YOU GO

For more information on Vivacity visit Sydney.com.

For the full Sydney Festival 2010 program visit Sydneyfestival.org.au.

Tix for Next to Nix booth at the bottom of Martin Place near George Street is open from 8am to 12noon or until tickets sell out.

Four Seasons Hotel Sydney: 199 George Street, Sydney. Call: (02) 9238-0000. The hotel, which is right at Circular Quay and within walking distance to many festival venues, has a Sydney Festival package from $375 including overnight accommodation, breakfast for two and valet car parking available until January 30.

Alira: Shop 120, Jones Bay Wharf, 26-32 Pirrama Road, Pyrmont. Call (02) 9518-4884.

Omerta: 235 Victoria Street, Darlinghurst. Call: (02) 9360-1011.

Beck's Festival Bar: Hyde Park Barracks Museum Queens Square, Macquarie Street, Sydney.