Irina Kuzminsky is a phenomenon, extraordinarily gifted in dance, music and language. Coming Through, her one-woman performance, is a synthesis of those gifts and a continues the unfoldment of a favoured theme, the Dark Goddess. Poetry, song and elements of classical ballet combine to form multi-dimensional hymns.
Irina – or Irinushka as she is known on stage – as a classical artist in the sense that she has perfected classical forms that come to us from the nineteenth century and beyond, to the likes of Leonora Orsini (1560-1634). So many riches build a highly stylized drama, that at times relaxes into a refreshing naturalism, as when Irinushka puts on her pointe shoes, taking time to tie the glossy ribbons. Performer participates in the narrative, the plot of which is to give fresh form to centuries-old traditions of vocal, physical and literary expression.
Coming Through is out-of-the-ordinary performance art and runs until Saturday 26 October at the Butterfly Club.
The inaugural BIG Sculpture at Veg Out competition will be kicking off on the 2 November and running till the 1 December.
To be opened by Minister Martin Foley and Judged by Max Delany Artistic Director and CEO of ACCA.
19 BIG Sculptures on show: 2nd Nov – 1st Dec open 7 days a week. Open Day Sun 24th Nov. curated by Mariella Del Conte, Adrian Spurr and Rob Taylor OAM .
Images & text by Kerrie Pacholli and Simon Barnett
A Normal Child, presented by Darebin Arts Speakeasy, is a multi-layered and at times darkly comedic play within a play, within a play.
This extraordinary collaborative script has been workshopped over a four year period by the Disability Slapstick Plan, an ensemble of four Melbourne artists with different physical disabilities. along with co creators and Artistic Directors of Ridiculusmus, David Woods andJonathan Haynes.
The finely tuned dynamics and shifting senerios within the play are captivating, hard hitting, confronting and awaken resonating awareness of how our differences set us apart yet join us together at the same time.
A Normal Child is a captivating and epic narrative of vast and imperfect comedic proportions that navigates the intricacies of disability representation in a daring, funny, and complex work where there is a new normal.
Anton Rivette, Jonathan Haynes, Trevor Dunn and Betty Bobbitt
Cast member Eva Sifis
Eva Sifis
“Once upon a time I was a dancer working across Australia and performing cabaret shows in Japan,” said Eva Sifis. “When I sustained a serious Acquired Brain Injury in 1999 due to being hit by a car, that life ended.” After being in a coma, Eva’s new life began with learning to walk and talk again. She also had to relate with the world and most importantly, deal with a new Eva.
Eva applied herself to recovery; physically, mentally and spiritually with great dedication through a very difficult period. “My physical needs were attended to very effectively within the system, however, I experienced a gap when it came to re-joining society.”
Eva’s journey since then wasn’t easy because in 2009, she had to battle advanced Hodgkin’s Lymphoma which was a huge challenge but it didn’t hold her back. It gave her a chance to re-evaluate her life.
Lately Eva’s focus has shifted to that of advocacy and she has taken on a role at Arts Access Victoria coordinating their Scholarship programs. After gaining a training role with Women with Disabilities Victoria, she educates sector workers on the issue of violence against women with disabilities.
Living in St Kilda, Eva enjoys acting in community theatre, “I enjoyed a solo return to the stage at Carlton’s La Mama Theatre. My autobiographical story was developed using movement theatre. ‘Embryonic Zombie Butterfly’ played to packed houses.”
After Eva gained the Ethel Temby Scholarship, she developed “By Accident™” which is a training business. “Multiple tools have been used to assist my progression and, having interviewed many others with an Acquired Brain Injury, their stories contributed to its formation.”
CREATIVE TEAM
Co-Creators – David Woods, Jonathan Haynes, Jess Kapuscinski-Evans, Trevor Dunn, Eva Sifis, Betty Bobbitt, Jax Jacki Brown Performed by – Anton Rivette, Kerith Manderson-Galvin, Brian Lipson, David Woods, Jonathan Haynes, Jess Kapuscinski-Evans, Trevor Dunn, Eva Sifis, and Betty Bobbitt Facilitated by – David Woods and Jonathan Haynes (Ridiculusmus) Dramaturg – Anton Rivette Assistant facilitator – Kerith Manderson-Galvin Sound Design – Marco Cher-Gibard Lighting Design – Richard Vabre Set and Costume Design – Matilda Woodroofe Dresser – Wendy Woo Production Manager – Kirsty Baird Producer – Erin Milne, Bureau of Works Development collaborators – Kate Hood and Loki Rickus
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body, the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria, the Besen Family Foundation and City of Darebin. Developed with the support of the City of Yarra, Malthouse Theatre, Playwriting Australia and Arts Access Victoria.
A sophisticated and uniquely inspiring experience not to be missed.
VENUE
Northcote Town Hall Arts Centre, Main Hall
189 High St, Northcote
RUNTIME
Approx 75min, no interval
TICKETS
Preview $25
Full $34
Concession $28 (Must hold a valid Student or Health Care Card)
Tuesday, 22 October – Saturday, 2 November
No shows Monday and Thursday
Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday 8pm
Sunday 6pm
Tuesday, 22 October – Preview
Wednesday, 23 October – Opening
Friday, 25 October – Auslan Interpreted Performance
A never before published exclusive, intimate and very insightful interview with psychic medium John Edward produced by Open Media as a prelude to his 2019 appearances at the Alex Theatre on 25, 26 & 27 October, 25 & 30 November and 1 December.
The Evening will begin with Q & A, John will then connect with the other side delivering messages to the audience from loved ones who have crossed over.
VIP ticket holders get seats closest to the stage, they stay for a special Q & A and then meet and greet with a photo of them and John. In addition to that, they will receive a one-year membership to Evolve. (No welcome package is included)
Produced by Open Media
Interview by Lucy Gale
Sound by Alexander Stuart Black
Original music ‘Psychic Kiss’ by David Morris
Special thanks to John Edward and Dianna O’Neill Publicity
Coming Throughis a journey, a journey through loss and grief – and of coming through – into the light –
A one woman poetry and dance fusion show written and choreographed by Irina Kuzminsky (aka Irinushka) to her own original musical settings of her poetry, this is a piece of classical performance art, integrating dance movement and sung and spoken word.
Coming Through builds on her first one woman show, Dancing with Dark Goddesses, itself triggered by the publication of Irina’s first poetry collection by Awen in the UK, and seen in the UK, NY, Germany and here in Melbourne.
Drawing on all her skills and training Irina is continuing in a very real way the work begun in her doctoral thesis at Oxford on the ‘language of women’, as she embodies the space that poetic language open up and allows the words to dance. The ‘language of women’ has increasingly become her life’s work – from rediscovering the women of the past and giving them a new voice, to writing and creating her own art as a woman seeking her voice.
Much of her artistic expression has also become fully entangled with a developing sense of women’s spirituality and of the sacred feminine. Her current work, bringing words, voice, music and dance together, is part of that, creating a sense of feminine ritual and sacred space through a woman’s telling of her experience of life and of the sacred.
Irinushka is Irina Kuzminsky, a multi-talented artist who combines classical music and dance training with an academic background with degrees from Melbourne and a scholarship to Oxford. Her performances in Australia and overseas run the gamut from recitals and multidisciplinary work to dance and dance theatre. She has had several poetry collections published (most recently Artists and Lovers by Coventry Press 2018), and had her work included in two international anthologies, alongside articles, reviews and poems in publications such as the Esoteric Quarterly, Dance Australia, Acumen and others. She has written recently on Kali the Dark Goddess and on Mary Magdalene, both subjects she is passionate about.
Irinushka’s work with performing her poetry has led to the release of three albums of her poems set to music, with Roads Travelled attracting favourable reviews and reaching #46 on the Zone Music Reporter charts for New Age music.
Irina is excited and grateful to be able to present this next step in the development of her work in a world premiere of Coming Through at The Butterfly Club. The journey of the work has become her own journey. Her hope is to weave darkness and light together, as she weaves words, song, dance and music into one to lead both performer and audience through, and into the light.
Coming Through opens on October 21 and runs for 5 performances.
Bookings are recommended.
“Irina is absolutely a voice for our time, a voice in which the feminine is exquisitely and burningly present in rage, depth, eroticism and tenderness.”– Jay Ramsay, poet, editor, founder of Angels of Fire Collective in London
“A performance of complete commitment, passion and technical brilliance”– Bard on a Bike
“Irina Kuzminsky brought drama and lyricism together … proving yet again how much her gift has to offer.”– Zweibrücker Rundschau
“vibrant, mesmerizing and emotive”– musicmorsels.wordpress.com
Show Details: Coming Through
Dates: October 21, 23, 24, 25 and 26
Time: 7pm
Cost: $25-32
Venue: The Butterfly Club, 5 Carson Place, Melbourne
Acclaimed Italian composer and pianist Ludovico Einaudi will perform his extraordinary new work, Seven Days Walking, at Arts Centre Melbourne’s Sidney Myer Music Bowl on 25 January, 2020 as part of a national tour. This will be Einaudi’s first ever outdoor performance in Australia and in the Sidney Myer Music Bowl’s 60th anniversary year.
Seven Days Walking is a collection of seven albums released across seven months in 2019, all inspired by Einaudi’s winter walks through the Alps. The Italian maestro, joined by Redi Hasa on cello and Federico Mecozzi on violin and viola, takes audiences on a stroll with him and focuses on several main themes, which then recur in different forms on the albums – seven variations following the same imaginary itinerary. Or the same itinerary, retraced at seven different times.
“I remember that in January 2018 I often went for long walks in the mountains, always following more or less the same trail. It snowed heavily, and my thoughts roamed free inside the storm, where all shapes, stripped bare by the cold, lost their contours and colours. Perhaps that feeling of extreme essence was the origin of this album,’’ says Einaudi.
He said the idea for the Seven Days Walking project structure came to him as he was listening to the recordings of the first sessions.
“Each version seemed to me to have its own personality, with subtleties so distinct from one another that I was unable to choose which I preferred. I associated everything with walking, with the experience of following the same routes over and over, discovering new details each time,’’ says Einaudi.
“And so in the end I decided to thread them all together in a sort of musical labyrinth, a little like stepping inside the twists and turns of the creative process, to understand how a musical idea can develop in multiple directions, and changing once again at the moment in which it is heard.”
Einaudi, famed for his cinematic music and immersive experiences, returns to Australia following sell-out seasons in the UK and Europe, with a live show and repertoire regarded as “a grandiose hymn to nature and to the creative wandering of the mind which it facilitates” (The Upcoming UK) and “lovely, languorous and mesmeric” (The Telegraph).
An artist never shy to break new ground, in 2013 Ludovico Einaudi became the first classical artist to sell more digital downloads than physical copies in the UK and in 2015 he became the first classical composer to have reached the top 15 in the UK album charts in over 23 years.
One of his many career highlights came in 2016, when partnering with Greenpeace to raise awareness around the Arctic crisis, Einaudi performed on a floating platform in the Arctic Ocean, against the backdrop of the Wahlenbergbreen glacier (in Svalbard, Norway). The video of the performance has been viewed more than 11 million times.
He has regularly performed to audiences in extraordinary outdoor arenas including the 22,000 seat Waldbuhne Berlin, the 14,000 seat Verona Arena and the Roman Caracalla Baths.
Arts Centre Melbourne and Arts Projects Australia presents Ludovico Einaudi
Seven Days Walking 25 January, 2020
Sidney Myer Music Bowl, Arts Centre Melbourne
Bookings at artscentremelbourne.com.auor 1300 182 183
Singer-songwriter and former Smog frontmanBill Callahan and his four-piece band return to Arts Centre Melbourne’s Hamer Hall on 4 March, 2020 with songs from his profound new album Shepherd In a Sheepskin Vest.
Recording under the names Smog and Bill Callahan, he has produced 16 albums with Chicago indie label Drag City and garnered an impressive cult following. His 2013 release Dream River was critically acclaimed, cementing his already solid reputation as a brilliant songwriter and singer.
Shepherd In a Sheepskin Vest, his first record since 2013, continues his accomplished music career with 20 songs that trace different life lines. Major life changes including marriage and the birth of his child have informed the shape of this new album as well as the experience of suddenly finding it harder to find the place that his songs came from.
His songs have always been elusive, landing lightly between character study and autobiography. Characterised by his rich baritone voice, deadpan delivery, and dry observations, Callahan’s music is beautifully intense, understated and profound. But this was more than that. While sorting it all out, he worked on songs every day – which meant that for a while, there were lots of days simply confronting the void, as he measured this new life against the one he’d previously known.
Moving gradually from reflections upon the old days in ‘Ballad of The Hulk’ and ‘Young Icarus’ to the immediacy of the present moment in ‘Watching Me Get Married’ and ‘Son of the Sea’, Callahan traces the different life lines, casually unwinding knotty contradictions and ambiguities with an arresting stillness.
Callahan was last in Australia in 2017 with his guitarist Matt Kinsey for Vivid Festival and an exclusive residency at Melbourne venue, Howler. These intimate shows were a stark contrast to the grandeur of his 2015 visit with Australian performances at Arts Centre Melbourne’s Hamer Hall and Sydney Opera House’s Concert Hall.
Callahan will be supported by special guest Xylouris White, with Georgios Xylouris on Cretan laouto and vocals and Jim White on drum kit. Xylouris has been playing professionally since he was 12-years-old. White is an Australian drummer known for his music in the Dirty Three, Venom P Stinger and now Xylouris White. For the last four years the two men have been performing as Xylouris White, the culmination of 25 years of friendship forged through music and place.
Arts Centre Melbourne presents Bill Callahan Special guest Xylouris White 4 March, 2020
8pm
Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne
Bookings at artscentremelbourne.com.auor 1300 182 183
St Kilda, considered the jewel of Port Phillip, has always been synonymous with multi-layered cultures, music, theatre, art and artists.
However, along the way St Kilda lost its ability to attract and nurture its rising creatives.
St Kilda was cleaned up. Became gentrified. The toilet block at the well known indigenous meeting place ‘Koori Park’ was torn down and the the tribe was forced to scatter. Property prices skyrocketed and financial and property investors reigned supreme. The local council became one of the richest in Melbourne and the well-to-do believed they held the key to St Kilda’s rising prosperity and glory.
Today when one takes a stroll down the sunset side of Fitzroy Street you got to wonder WTF happened? Bucket loads of taxpayer’s money has been spent on road infrastructure to accommodate the projected masses flooding into St Kilda as a result of the clean up and gentrification and yes parking, car manoeuvrability and business has been severely impeded.
Regardless of its unique and beautiful seascape, St Kilda has became known as a bi-law trap, whether on the roads or in the venues where noise is policed to what many consider unreasonable and unrealistic proportions. Without doubt many performing artists and the businesses that accommodated them have little reason to feel confident in being facilitated to reach full potential.
Singer / songwriter Lisa Wood part of “Tribute to Women” at St Luja
A number of years ago local creatives with countercultural persuasions, living and working in St Kilda, started to look at ways to do their bit to save St Kilda’s diverse cultural expression and keep the streets alive and pumping. These guys were not property owners, nor did they have ties to local council or government. They battled along with their personal desires, inspirations and imaginations. Eventually a move was made to activate their collective visions and The St Kilda Arts Community was formed.
Espy and the St Kilda Comedy Club was reborn. Cj Fortuna, Andrew Goodone, Brad Oakes & Dave O’Neil.
Its founding members were remaining creatives working in isolated pockets throughout St Kilda who came together for the greater good. A new collective movement was ignited and the first St Kilda Art Crawl happened, followed by two more.
The Victorian Minister for the Arts was approached by representatives of this newly formed Arts Community and unquestioningly acknowledged the need and potential on offer and gave his official thumbs up. Local council also followed suit with some practical and moral support. The Alex Theatre and the not yet refurbished Espy opened its doors and rallied with moral and practical support, Slowly the local business owners, who were somewhat fiscally strained, started to take note although at first non-committal and wary. Many local artists and galleries on the other hand were given renewed enthusiasm, sensing the energy shift and the potential that comes with it.
Simon Barnett, Martin Foley & Mick Pacholli
A collective vibe throughout the arts community started to rise and ‘art happenings’ in the lesser known art hubs in St Kilda started to be acknowledged and illuminated by the Arts Community for their efforts.
The thing is, artists are workers who deserve a decent income. Their creative and artistic enterprises deserve to be held in high esteem and celebrated. History shows this is what nourishes community.
Robert Mate Mate performing at Theatreworks 1992 image by Russell Cooper.
To quote Robert Mate Mate, a much loved friend who passed on many years ago…
“Politics breeds combat ability whereas art and culture breeds compatibility.”
Some years back we had the opportunity to interview world renown Psychic Medium John Edward.
In this informative & compelling interview John has answered questions about what it means to be a psychic medium and how he shares this gift with the world.
As a prelude to his forthcoming 2019 tour at the Alex Theatre in St Kilda we decided to publish this interview in three parts in PODCAST format for your listening pleasure.
Sound by Alexander Stuart Black and original music by David Morris
The Evening will begin with Q & A, John will then connect with the other side delivering messages to the audience from loved ones who have crossed over.
VIP ticket holders get seats closest to the stage, they stay for a special Q & A and then meet and greet with a photo of them and John. In addition to that, they will receive a one-year membership to Evolve. (No welcome package is included)
Studio E is an exciting new program focused on the business of the arts. Through intimate interviews with a broad spectrum of people that make up the vast tapestry of the arts, Studio E will be exploring and sharing with you personal experiences on how to survive and thrive in the business of the arts. Studio E’s first instalment delivers a segment from Alex Theatre pioneer Aleksander Vass OAM. Stay tuned for more…
Review by Marian Webb
Promotion produced by Open Media
A never before published exclusive, intimate and very insightful interview with psychic medium John Edward produced by Open Media as a prelude to his 2019 appearances at the Alex Theatre on 25, 26 & 27 October, 25 & 30 November and 1 December.
A one woman poetry and dance fusion show written and choreographed by Irina Kuzminsky (aka Irinushka) to her own original musical settings of her poetry, this is a piece of classical performance art, integrating dance movement and sung and spoken word.
Acclaimed Italian composer and pianist 
Singer-songwriter and former Smog frontman 
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