Perth International Arts Festival 2017 program unveiled

More than 700 artists performing in 180 events will converge on Western Australia's capital city next year for the 65th Perth International Arts Festival (PIAF).

PIAF Artistic Director Wendy Martin has unveiled a world-class program that will include 11 Australian exclusives, five world premieres and an array of artistic experiences.

The $17 million program embraces the themes of migration, reconciliation, accessibility and empathy and will present more than 700 of the planet’s most visionary artists, more than 180 events.

PIAF is the longest running annual multi-arts celebration in the Southern Hemisphere, and the jewel in the crown of Western Australia’s cultural life.

The 65th annual Festival is the second of four under Martin’s artistic leadership. Her first Festival in 2016 was inspired by a sense of place and PIAF 2017 will embed all of us even deeper into Western Australia; its beauty, fragility and connection to a complex world.

She explains "PIAF in 2017 is the most wonderful adventure around the world.

"We will take a head-trip deep into the Amazon, experience Vietnamese village life through astonishing circus feats and enter the ritual world of South African song and dance.

"We start with a celebration over the opening weekend in Kings Park with Boorna Waanginy: The Trees Speak, an amazing outdoor spectacular exploring the incredible biodiversity of the South West of Western Australia."

The Festival, which runs from 10th February to 5th March will be staged in established Perth venues but will also take advantage of summer outdoor settings, including Elizabeth Quay and Kings Park.

The 2017 Theatre program will also feature the Australian exclusive of Tony Award-winning playwright and director Richard Nelson’s strikingly relevant and fiercely human trilogy, The Public Theater’s The Gabriels: Election Year in the Life of One Family, comes to Perth, where guests experience the three plays as one unforgettable, eight-hour marathon event.

Further international highlights include Opus No. 7, a visceral and visually majestic production, exclusive to PIAF, by one of Russia’s most influential directorial voices, Dmitry Krymov Laboratory, which imaginatively depicts the oppression of Soviet Jews and the censorship of the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich under Stalin. From the UK, Complicite’sThe Encounter is a mind-bending performance of technical prowess that ventures on a hallucinogenic trip into the depths of the Amazon. Using groundbreaking binaural technology, The Encounter builds an evocative, 3D world of live and recorded sound, resulting in a profoundly immersive theatrical experience. In another Australian exclusive, Argentinian director Lola Arias explores a nation’s complex history through the eyes of a resilient Chilean generation in The Year I Was Born; a playful and political docudrama full of recollected delight and devastation.

In 2017, the Festival’s Dance program invites the world’s most sought-after choreographers and dancers to Australian shores. From two of Canada’s most adventurous artists, award-winning choreographer Crystal Pite and playwright/performer Jonathon Young, Betroffenheit is a dance work of raw human emotion and heroic theatrical brilliance that places audiences in the wake of a disaster, accompanied by a crisis-management team. Bodies talk with heart-wrenching eloquence in this thrillingly imaginative Australian premiere.

Over 21 nights, the Chevron Festival Gardens will be a the destination for festival-goers to experience extraordinary live music - spanning from Columbian salsa to avant-pop, Americana and South Korean experimental rock. Highlights include the blazing Birmingham-born rapper Lady Leshurr; charismatic musical chameleon Toro Y Moi; LA-based art rock quartet Warpaint; awe-inspiring post-rockersExplosions in the Sky; world-feted Cuban jazz fusion from Omar Sosa Quarteto Afrocubano; Pitchfork-endorsed, indie rocker Kurt Vile; Spain’s tropicalia partystarter El Guincho; South Korea’s ferocious post-rock experimentalists, Jambinai; one of the world’s hottest jazz ensembles direct from NYC, Evan Sherman Big Band; Morcheeba’s reimagined downtempo soul and trip-hop combo, Skye & Ross; Brooklyn’s newest indie darlings, Big Thief; and feisty rising Taiwanese rapper Aristophanes.

The 2017 Visual Arts programplaces hot international contemporary art alongside celebrated local talent, with a special focus on video art and VR technology that plumbs deep emotions and traditions. In an Australian exclusive, leading British artist and filmmaker John Akomfrah presents two film installations: Vertigo Sea, an immersive and poetic meditation on our relationship with the ocean, and Auto Da Fé, a fictional narrative that examines migration over four centuries.

Making its world premiere, is a free, large-scale public artwork that culminates in a huge party at Fremantle Oval,created by Melbourne artist Lara Thoms and Perth collaborative duo Snapcat and commissioned by PIAF.

For more information on the 2017 Perth International Arts Festival go to www.perthfestival.com.au

Images: Perth Festival performaces A O Lang Pho (top) and Betroffenheit (below).

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