Awesome Festival

The Awesome Festival (in full the Awesome International Arts Festival for Bright Young Things) is an arts event in Perth, Western Australia held each November since 1995.[1] The participation and interaction of younger visitors is encouraged by street theatre, interactive art, dance workshops, film screenings and musical performances. It is organised and run by Awesome Arts Australia, a not-for-profit company based in Perth.[2]

The company running the festival is also involved with separate programs, including a food art program in the remote mining town of Leonora and school community projects that create works to showcase at the festival.[3][4] Some of these are sponsored by its commercial partner, the multinational mining company BHP Billiton Nickel West.[5]

The festival has featured international acts including a contemporary dance group from Canada and Architects of Air, a United Kingdom-based group designing large inflatable sculptures;[6] minor acts have performed shows exclusive to Perth from France, Taiwan, New Zealand and around the country.[7] Kismet, the prominent[8] theatre company from Apulia, in southern Italy, performed a dance and acrobatics version of Beauty and the Beast in 2002, before touring elsewhere in Australia.[9]

The 2003 program included an interactive video by the Melbourne arts group Chunky Move, a migration and colonisation performance by Hong Kong's City Contemporary Dance Company and the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, and contemporary dance by the Canadian group Cas Public. Artists and groups from Belgium, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Slovenia, and France also performed or displayed their work.[10] A performance by Slovenian artist Matej Andraž Vogrinčič involved filling a building site with thousands of beach balls, as a tribute to childhood beach games,[11] and Belgian performance artist Caroline Amorous performed her character Rose, an eccentric old lady interacting with people on the street while walking a poster of a dog.[12] Architects of the Air, based on a design by Nottingham and Geneva-based artist Alan Parkinson, exhibited Ixilum following the similar Arcazzar exhibit in 2002. Ixilum was a small inflatable city, inspired by Iranian architecture and formerly displayed at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain.[13]

References
  1. "Awesome News Issue 1" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 20 July 2008. Retrieved 26 August 2008. (647 KiB), Awesome Arts Australia. Retrieved 2008-08-25.
  2. "About Awesome & the Awesome team". Awesome Arts Australia. Archived from the original on 19 July 2008. Retrieved 25 August 2008.
  3. "Art you can eat in Leonora". Golden Mail. Fairfax Media. 14 August 2008. Retrieved 25 August 2008.
  4. Alach, Felena (2004). "Awesome: out of the comfort zone". RealTime Arts (59): 28.
  5. "BHP Billiton Nickel West forms awesome partnership". Awesome Arts Australia. 9 July 2007. Archived from the original on 19 July 2008. Retrieved 26 August 2008.
  6. McNeill, Sarah (22 November 2003). "Festivals and family fun". Post Impressions. Post Newspapers. Archived from the original on 3 December 2003. Retrieved 25 August 2008.
  7. "The AWESOME arts festival begins November 16 in Perth". Perth Sunday Times. News Limited. 26 October 2007. Archived from the original on 31 October 2007. Retrieved 25 August 2008.
  8. Kelly, Veronica (1998). Our Australian Theatre in the 1990s. Rodopi. p. 253. ISBN 90-420-0289-1. p133
  9. Laurie, Victoria (14 November 2002). "Theatre troupe leaves tragedy behind". The Australian. News Limited. p. 4.
  10. Clarke, Rita (1 December 2003). "Thump, bump, look on: fun for everyone". The Australian. News Limited. pp. Features section (p. 15).
  11. Laurie, Victoria (11 November 2003). "Getting around to having a ball". The Australian. News Limited. pp. Local section (p. 6).
  12. "Rose by any name". The Perth Sunday Times. News Limited. 16 November 2003.
  13. Priest, Annika (10 August 2003). "Airborne city lands". The Perth Sunday Times. News Limited.

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