Sydney Festival: Flurry of blanket coverage for dancing Brazilians
Brazilian dancers in Encantado land in Sydney with a promise to enchant audiences at the Sydney Festival.
There are few actual costumes in Encantado, a performance where the company of 11 dancers instead wrap themselves in colourful fabrics in an atmosphere of joyous play and enchantment.
The dancers in the show, by renowned Brazilian choreographer Lia Rodrigues, spend much of the show naked as they wrap themselves and animate the 140 blankets used in the piece.
“The show is about the relationship between the dancers and the blankets,” said dancer Valentina Fittipaldi.
“We create an atmosphere of the forest and fantastic beings. The most beautiful thing is that we create a relationship between the audience and the piece.”
Encantado is the opening-night attraction of the Sydney Festival, a 24-day program that officially begins on Friday.
Highlights include the Sydney premiere of Bananaland, a musical by husband-and-wife team Keir Nuttall and Kate Miller-Heidke, an outdoor performance of Puccini’s one-act opera Il Tabarro, and performances by musical luminaries including Anoushka Shankar, Judith Hill and William Barton with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.
In keeping with the blankets theme is a new musical called Big Name, No Blankets, about legendary Aboriginal rock group Warumpi Band.
Recent cultural events have been targeted by pro-Palestinian protesters. The Sydney Festival was boycotted by some artists in 2022 because of a sponsorship from the Israeli government.
Festival director Olivia Ansell said the festival had been “pro-active” in having conversations with community groups in an attempt to forestall any possible action at festival events this month.
She said she was proud to include in the festival program a performance by Melbourne-based Palestinian artist and activist Aseel Tayah. Tickets are fully sold for Tayah’s performance, called A’amar, in which she offers food, music and stories from her family’s homeland.
“I am really proud of Aseel and this beautiful work that she has created, and to do that through adversity,” Ansell said. “It’s such an incredibly tough time for Aseel as it is for many artists impacted (by the Israel-Gaza conflict).”
A notice on the festival website acknowledges the suffering caused by the conflict, and calls on all festival participants to build an “atmosphere of safety and inclusivity, characterised by mutual respect and tolerance”.
“We will address any protest or action on a case-by-case basis,” Ansell said. “We are not here to curb freedom of speech or freedom of expression.”
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