Perth International Arts Festival to open with a bang

Set to run from 7th February to 1st March next year, the 2014 Perth International Arts Festival will open with the Lotterywest Festival Spectacular Veles e Vents, an extraordinary voyage marked by fireworks, music and light.

Introducing the event, a statement from the Festival organisers explains "from great Russian theatre to world-class Israeli dance; from Man Booker Prize winners to Tony Award winners, from multi-player video theatre to a life-size bouncy castle Stonehenge, the 2014 Perth International Arts Festival really does have something for absolutely everybody."

The 62nd Perth Festival's diverse program aims to offer a world-class cultural feast for arts lovers of all ages and persuasions which the organisers say will be a "quintessentially Western Australian experience" in which "more than 1,000 of the world's most exciting contemporary artists transform and disrupt Perth as the Festival spills across unique venues and glorious, outdoor spaces.

The Perth International Arts Festival is the longest-running annual multi-arts celebration in the Southern Hemisphere and is seen as the jewel in the crown of Western Australia's cultural life. Living up to its worldwide reputation for excellence, in 2014 the Festival delivers a program of unforgettable, enriching works, created by artists who are daring, thoughtful, and innovative.

Commenting on the program, Perth Festival Artistic Director Jonathan Holloway stated "the 2014 Perth Festival collaborates with the world's greatest artists and many of Western Australia's most creative and talented people to find new and exciting ways to create a Festival in and of Perth.

"Joining us in our exploration of what it is to be a 21st Century festival in the remotest and yet most connected capital city in the Southern Hemisphere are Robert Wilson, Dawn Upshaw, Martin Amis, The National, William Kentridge, Tod Machover and Public Enemy, to name just 20 of the 1000+ artistic collaborators."

The opening performance, supported by the Western Australian Government through Lotterywest and Eventscorp, will be an Australian exclusive be delivered by one of the world's biggest outdoor theatre companies, Xarxa Teatre, from Spain.

Veles e Vents, which translates as 'sails and wind', symbolises a ship and its relationship with the sea and nature and will feature amazing pyrotechnics and complex moving components.

For three nights over the opening weekend, the Spanish masters will recreateg a ship's grand and perilous voyage in a sublime visual display of fireworks and light. Suitable for the whole family, the exclusive Australian premiere promises to kick off the 2014 Festival with an explosion of music and movement.

The Festival's free program takes art to the people as the streets of Perth are playfully transformed and life re-imagined. Sam Routledge & Martyn Coutts' I Think I Can brings avatars to life in an enchanted model town.

The Lotterywest Festival Celebration, Jeremy Deller's Sacrilege, invites Festival goers to literally leap into ancient history,re-creating Stonehenge as a full-scale bouncy castle while the Chevron Festival Gardens will become the ambient Festival hub for guests togather, discuss and participate.

Further highlights include twoFestival co-commissions. Malthouse Theatre's The Shadow King is an explosive interpretation of Shakespeare's King Lear, melding contemporary Aboriginal storytelling in a blood-soaked interrogation of kinship, land and belonging. Co-commissioned by the Festival, Opus fuses the contemporary circus of Australia's finest, Circa, with dynamic music of Shostakovitch performed by France's Debussy String Quartet. You Once Said Yes is unforgettable one-on-one theatre. As part of our Vital Stages program, we bring Look Left Look Right together with Western Australian artists to create a thrilling theatrical experience for the people of Perth. One of the most exciting theatre collectives in the world, Germany's Rimini Protokoll presents the Australian exclusive of Situation Rooms. In this multi-dimensional, interactive documentary theatre experience, audiences explore a maze of stories from people whose lives have been touched by the weapons industry. This is theatre like you've never experienced it before.

Perth Festival creates extraordinary arts experiences for all audiences with many works dedicated to children and young people while the 2014 dance program is equal parts celebratory, political and sensual.

In addition, the West Australian Ballet delivers an Australian premiere as part of its beloved Ballet At The Quarry summer season with Radio and Juliet, the bold revision of Romeo and Juliet with the music of indie darlings Radiohead as its centrepiece.

In 2014, the Perth International Arts Festival thrills classical music lovers, as brilliant international ensembles team up with dazzling Australian talent to produce a number of very special collaborations. Staged in Perth for the first time, Verdi's stunning, final tragic opera, Otello, is performed by the West Australian Opera with guests from the Cape Town Opera Chorus.The breathtaking Cape Town Opera's Voice of the Nation Ensemble, winners of the 2013 International Opera Awards Chorus of the Year, showcase repertoire from the great romantic operas and spiritual songs from Africa and America. In an exquisite pairing, world-renowned soprano Dawn Upshaw joins the much-lauded Australian Chamber Orchestra to perform Maria Schneider's profoundly beautiful Winter Morning Walks. Delighting audiences for six decades with their free-spirited yet polished playing, the brilliant Academy of St Martin in the Fields orchestra is joined by exhilarating, young violinist Michael Barenboim. From Budapest, the Kelemen Quartet combine youthful brilliance with the finest Hungarian tradition, performing the world premiere of beloved Australian composer Ross Edwards' Summer Dance. Revel in the transporting virtuosity of critically acclaimed Italian composer and pianist Ludovico Einaudi, showcasing from the latest of his 11 record-breaking albums, weaving baroque, Italian folk and late Romantic string textures in his phenomenal and distinctive style.

Over 24 nights, Perth will rock throughout the Festival to an eclectic selection of sounds tracing soul to hip-hop, indie rock to electronica. Highlights include Brooklyn-based indie rock luminaries The National as theyreturn to Perth for one night only, showing why they are one of the most enigmatic bands in the world right now. Modern soul legend Booker T Jones celebrates a lifetime of soul. Bouncing in the Chevron Festival Gardens Mainstage come hip-hop royalty Public Enemy, ranked by Rolling Stone as one of the 50 greatest artists of all time. Soul-jazz pioneer Roy Ayers joins Grammy Award winner Robert Glasper onstage in an unforgettable, experimental fusion of hip-hop, jazz and R&B. American songstress Madeleine Peyroux's impeccable smoke-and-whisky vocals will captivate audiences. Ireland's Altan incorporate fiddles, guitar and bouzouki to imbue the music of their homeland with a fresh and bewitching charm. Canadian six-piece will Austra lead you straight to the dance floor with their wild, genre-bending jumble of moody electronica to operatic flair.

The 2014 Visual Arts program is studded with experiential, world-class contemporary art that reflects on modernity to the present day. In an Australian premiere, highly regarded South Korean artist Do Hu Suh's poetic work, Net-Work, is a vast net enmeshed with tiny human figures washing against the shoreline, evoking ideas of physical and cultural displacement. Compelling South African artist William Kentridge's The Refusal of Time is a multi-disciplinary installation that combines video, theatre, music and animation, as shadow dancers and the artist himself move around a sculptural 'breathing machine' situated at the work's heart. Collaborating under the name Paramodel, Yasuhiko Hayashi and Yusuke Nakano design rooms of fantastical, meticulously detailed landscapes from mass-produced toys and plastic train tracks in Paramodelic-Graffiti.Also from Japan,Ryota Kawakubo's The Tenth Sentiment is a mesmeric installation of dancing shadows and light that transforms everyday artefacts under the headlights of a single modern train. Stranger than Fiction: Art of our Time showcases a dynamic selection of international contemporary art from the 1980s to now from The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in the Art Gallery of Western Australia, featuring artists such as Cindy Sherman, Damien Hirst and Olafur Eliasson.

For more information go to www.perthfestival.com.au