2021 Adelaide Festival reveals The Pulse and Jessica Mauboy concert
The fine balancing act of delivering an Adelaide Festival program for 2021 during the COVID pandemic will finally be revealed today by artistic directors Neil Armfield and Rachel Healy.
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Acrobats from three international touring troupes will unite to create a towering new show for next year’s Adelaide Festival, which will release its full program today.
Chart-topping Australian singer Jessica Mauboy will also perform the Festival’s free opening weekend concert at Adelaide Oval on February 27 for a COVID-safe audience of just 3800 people, who will need to register on a waitlist for tickets.
Artistic directors Rachel Healy and Neil Armfield will deliver their 2021 program, featuring The Pulse by Adelaide physical theatre company Gravity & Other Myths (GOM), online at noon.
“The Pulse is one of our really big new commissions,” Ms Healy said.
“Every second year in the Festivals that we have done, we’ve had a major premiere of a GOM work, so we’re thrilled to continue that,” added Mr Armfield.
Started in 2009 by former Cirkidz acrobats, GOM has grown to include three ensembles which usually perform its previous works A Simple Space, Backbone and Out of Chaos around the world.
“When they were all grounded by COVID, they saw it as an opportunity to get those three companies together – which means 30 acrobats – working with a local choir, which brings another 30 bodies into the space,” Ms Healy said.
“So you will have 60 people on stage at Her Majesty’s Theatre on our opening weekend, creating this new work The Pulse.”
The Pulse director Darcy Grant said all three GOM ensembles met to rework their respective shows in the Czech Republic last year.
“We just carved off a little bit of creative time then to put everybody together, just a couple of quick tastes of what it would be like to make a 30-person work,” he said.
“It became a bit of a pipedream … the scale is pretty unprecedented for physical theatre and circus, in Australia particularly.”
Mr Grant said The Pulse, which will also be part of the Sydney Festival, explored cycles of nature “which create these anomalies”.
“With 30 bodies, this ability to mimic big natural cycles becomes really possible,” he said.
“In COVID times, touch and community are our most precious commodities … the miracle of being able to band together and do incredible things.”
Like other dance and physical theatre companies, GOM has been given permission by SA Health for its performers to work in contact with each other.
Mauboy’s concert will feature her full R&B band, backing singers and dancers, performing past hits and tracks from her most recent album Hilda, which debuted at number one on the ARIA charts.
Other shows already announced for the Adelaide Festival, which runs from February 26 to March 14, include Armfield’s opera production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Slingsby and State Theatre’s co-presentation The Boy Who Talked to Dogs, Australian Dance Theatre’s Supernature and the Art Gallery’s exhibition Clarice Beckett: The Present Moment.
The Pulse is at Her Majesty’s Theatre from February 25 to March 3. Full program and booking details from noon on December 3 at adelaidefestival.com.au
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