THE THIRSTY MILE
Across one of the most knockout harbourside locations in the world, Sydney’s historic working wharf district will be reimagined anew with The Thirsty Mile: a knowing throwback to the original Hungry Mile docklands area of Walsh Bay. An expansive festival takeover, the pop-up precinct will encompass theatres, bars, exhibition spaces and a club, with the Thirsty Mile’s Moonshine Bar playing host to immersive music experiences and the festival’s dedicated late-night hang out. Come early, stay late.
Everyone’s favourite brunch crew is cruising back to the Wharf for a full season residency at The Thirsty Mile’s speakeasy – and this time they’re taking charge of the night in Smashed: The Nightcap. Host Victoria Falconer leads a world-class femme-fronted ensemble serving delicious cabaret, exquisite drag, jaw-dropping circus and a live-n-kickin’ dive band, plus a smuggled-in selection of Festival headliners as nightly special guests.
Art strangles architecture on a grand scale in Hi-Vis, the sinuous sculpture taking over a Walsh Bay wharf. British sculptor Michael Shaw – whose works have wound their way around international arts festivals, galleries and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London – uses the building like a mould to inform and form the geometry of his vibrant 46-metre-long installation. Designed specifically in response to the architectural features of the venue, Hi-Vis’ neon colours cast a luminous glow on the wood of the wharf, and after the sun sets, UV lights make the sculpture glow in the dark.
Weaving throughout Hi-Vis, SPIN is an interactive guided dance event with three Deaf hosts and a DJ, inspired by club culture and social dance scenes in San Francisco, Mexico, Cuba and Berlin. Created by Australian Deaf dance artist and performer Anna Seymour, it celebrates connection, escapism, hedonism and the power of dance ritual. SPIN is also a playful interrogation of who can belong and coexist in the rave realm – a challenge to assumptions that Deaf people cannot enjoy these spaces.
Art meets music and dance in Sculptured Riddims. Dance artists share their creative responses to Michael Shaw’s Hi-Vis installation, taking shape over three nights in the Moonshine Bar. Led by artist and educator Azzam Mohamed, each event showcases different communities, cultures, music genres and dance styles – from street to club to Afro dance styles – offering a totally immersive and inclusive experience.
Night owls can then dance the night away amidst wild art installations at the festival’s supercharged club nights. Late Nights at The Thirsty Mile delivers a vast range of electronic genres from across the world, with parties hosted by Astral People, Wavyland and Finely Tuned, plus a huge closing night with South African DJ Mo Laudi.
Then shake it all off the next morning with Sunrise Yoga at Wharf 4 / 5. Bask in the early-morning rays, soak in the ambient tunes and stretch out those nine-to-five aches and pains with an energising yoga session by the water. There’s no better way to start your Festival day.
On display at The Thirsty Mile is a selection of screen-printed artworks, textiles and calendars alongside materials from the renowned ‘Garage’ in Mt Druitt in western Sydney. Curated by Nadia Odlum, Talking Posters: Garage Graphix 1981-1998 reveals the role of artistic collaboration in giving voice to community concerns, expressed through the unique styles and typography from a pre-digital era of poster-making.
IMMERSIVE
Night Songs at Coney Island takes over the iconic Sydney Luna Park for an immersive nighttime experience featuring artists from the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, vocal soloists Peter Coleman Wright AO and Cheryl Barker AO, a children’s ensemble, and chamber orchestra performing music by Poulenc, Stravinsky and Mahler. This playground setting comes to life with Poulenc’s buoyant and jubilant Sextet for Piano and Winds, before the shadow of grief and loss takes over, set against a community’s lament for atonement sung to Stravinsky’s Mass. Woven throughout the evening is Mahler’s hauntingly personal Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children), performed by Coleman-Wright and Barker.
Created by the multi-disciplinary Māori artist Lisa Reihana, the majestic Te Wheke-a-Muturangi: The Adversary will take up residence in Watermans Cove, gently animated by harbour breezes and shifting currents, bathed in sunlight and moonglow. Made from more than 1,000 pieces, the giant female octopus sculpture tells another side of the story of the Polynesian navigator Kupe who, it is said, discovered Aotearoa New Zealand. In addition, Sydney-based Maori choir Te Aranganui will share stories of Te Moana Nui a Kiwa (Pacific Ocean) on the first day of the Festival. Festival-goers can also hit the harbour and get up close via a kayak tour from Sydney Harbour Kayaks.
Audiences can create the eco-friendly designer haute couture of their dreams at Fast Fashun’s workshop-performance hybrid space in Darling Harbour’s Tumbalong Park. Using old clothes and textile waste, artists will be on hand to help budding designers realise their creations with demonstrations, assistance and nimble thimbles, before they then take their wares to the runway. Lampooning the fashion industry while reclaiming the catwalk as a welcoming, celebratory space of creative expression, House of Fast Fashun melds art therapy, improvisational theatre and visual art making to create interactive and inclusive installations.
The festival will also invite hands-on participation and learning with a series of workshops and masterclasses, including dance expression with Dalisa Pigram and Rachael Swain of Marrugeku, choreographic methodologies from Dancenorth’s Amber Haines, an immersion in Torres Strait Islander storytelling with performers from GURR ERA OP and a Cambodian circus workshop hosted by members of the phenomenal Phare Circus (White Gold).
WESTERN SYDNEY
Year on year, Sydney Festival has been committed to bringing some of the festival’s best and brightest performers, artists and talents to audiences in Parramatta. Along with the sure-fire hit BANANALAND at Riverside Theatres, 2024 continues this connection with another packed program of events for festival-goers in the west.
Join Melbourne-based Palestinian artist, activist and theatre-maker Aseel Tayah at A’amar, a sensory evening of food, poetry, exquisite song and storytelling from her family’s homeland. Guests are immersed in a multi-course Arabic meal, as Tayah and fellow musicians take you on a journey that celebrates and honours friendship, love and new beginnings.
Intrepid explorers at Parrammatta’s Riverside Theatres discover a prehistoric world of astonishing (and remarkably life-like) dinosaurs, including every child’s favourite flesh-eating giant, the Tyrannosaurus Rex, a Triceratops, Giraffatitan, Microraptor and Segnosaurus! Now an international smash hit selling out venues across the UK and the USA, Dinosaur World Live makes its debut in Australia in 2024.
The Multicultural Comedy Gala returns to take the mickey out of everything that makes us different, but also so much the same, with an acclaimed line-up of award-winning stand-up stars. Whether First Nations, first generation, tenth generation or a new Australian, there is plenty to laugh at with appearances from Nazeem Hussain (Legally Brown); George Kapiniaris (Fat Pizza); He Huang (Australia’s Got Talent); Cameron Duggan (At Home Alone Together); Gavin Sempel (Black Comedy); and triple j’s Amelia Navascues.
And the starlit summer concert that audiences love is back at Parramatta Park with a soaring new program to lift this evening picnic into the stratosphere. This year, Sydney Symphony Under the Stars: Pictures in the Sky will showcase the didgeridoo magic of William Barton, joined by Aunty Delmae Barton, Véronique Serret and Iva Davies AM, and the transportive sitar playing of Anoushka Shankar. All in collaboration with Sydney Symphony Orchestra and guest conductor Benjamin Northey, who will bring it home with traditional classics and a big sparkly bang. |