CHOSEN AND BELOVED
Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington
21/02/2020 - 21/02/2020
New Zealand Festival of the Arts 2020
Production Details
An unforgettable live orchestral art experience
When faced with an increasingly chaotic and fragmented world, how do we respond? Performance iconoclast Lemi Ponifasio, “currently one of the most aggressively humanist stage artists around, creates emotional iconoclasms comparable with Picasso’s ‘Guernica’” (Magazin im August) and has created a powerful Festival opener.
In an orchestrated ceremony featuring Henryk Górecki’s sorrowful Symphony No. 3, Chosen and Beloved will stir up emotions – and inspire us to choose love over lament. Symphony No. 3, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, which the Polish composer wrote in 1976, explores themes of motherhood and separation through war. It was phenomenally successful, selling more than a million copies, which vastly exceeded the expected lifetime sales of a typical symphonic recording by a 20th Century composer.
This isn’t just an evening of music, dance and theatre. It’s best described as a ceremony. Górecki’s symphony has special reverence for Lemi Ponifasio – both as a piece of music that fueled his early creation as a dancer and choreographer and as a work that has taken on new meaning for him since 15 March 2019, when New Zealand changed forever.
Guest curator Lemi Ponifasio:
“The Festival will open with an orchestral ceremony called Chosen and Beloved. The title is taken from the first line of the work by Henryk Górecki the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. It’s deep in the bone unforgettable music. The terrible tragedy in Christchurch destroyed lives and wounded the country. But the days after I found very inspiring. I felt New Zealand has found a common purpose. There is a feeling of care, expressed by communities gathering throughout the country. That’s the part that’s important and that’s the part we have to over and over say ‘that matters’. With that spirit how do we speak to children and mothers and fathers who take their own lives every year, how do we address the homeless, the changing planet and to welcome new leaders, creators and new communities.”
Creative director Marnie Karmelita:
“In a very special opening event, Lemi and his company MAU join the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra performing the hugely popular Symphony No. 3 by Górecki. Taking a moment to welcome, reflect and celebrate together as the 2020 Festival opens, the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs becomes a symbol for both Lemi’s early career as a dancer as well as his reflection on Aotearoa after 15 March 2019, when our world changed forever.”
“A keen theatrical intelligence at work … with moving intimations of the solitude of human existence and moments of dream-like intensity”. The Guardian on Requiem
“A hypnotic, time-stretching performance … Transport[s] us to another world to deliver an important message” The New Zealand Listener on Birds with Skymirrors
Michael Fowler Centre
Fri 21 Feb 2020
7.30pm
Tickets$49-$99 (excluding booking fees).
Visit www.festival.co.nz
Partner: Stuff
Thanks to Creative New Zealand
Lemi Ponifasio
Lemi Ponifasio is acclaimed internationally for his radical work as a choreographer, stage director and designer and for his collaborations with many communities. He has presented his creations at the Lincoln Center New York, Avignon Festival, BAM New York, Ruhr triennale, LIFT Festival London, Edinburgh International Festival, Theater der Welt, Festival de Marseille, Theatre de la Ville Paris, Onassis Cultural Centre Athens, Holland Festival, Luminato Festival Toronto, Vienna Festival, Santiago a MilChile, the Venice Biennale and in the Pacific region.
Lemi Ponifasio founded MAU in 1995, working with diverse cultures and communities around the world. His collaborators are people from all walks of life, performing in factories, remote villages, opera houses, schools, marae, castles, galleries, and stadiums. The projects have included fully staged operas, theatre, dance, exhibitions, community forums and festivals in more than 30countries.
Kristjan Järvi
From conductor, to producer, composer and arranger, Kristjan Järvi embraces everything with an indomitable spirit of fresh and creative entrepreneurship. Kristjan Järvi has ‘earned a reputation as one of the canniest, and most innovative, programmers on the classical scene’ (Reuter). As a conductor, he directs the great classics from Wagner to Radiohead and is at home on the big international stages.
Kristjan Järvi defies musical orthodoxy and pursues his pioneering ideas and concepts with three bands and orchestras: Together with Gene Pritsker he co-founded the New York-based classical-hip-hop-jazz group “Absolute Ensemble”. Järvi is founder-conductor and artistic director of the “Baltic Sea Philharmonic” and he is the leader of the “Sunbeam Production” in-house band “Nordic Pulse”.
Musical , Dance-theatre , Dance ,
Affecting festival opener a study in contrasts
Review by John Button 24th Feb 2020
The 2020 Festival opened with a concert curated by Lemi Ponifasio in which the theme was the suffering of women.
It opened with the MAU Wahine, a group of young women who, over nearly half the concert, gave us an extremely polished (some might say too polished) vision of the plight of women everywhere.
Although as a non-Māori speaker I did not understand the words, the message was clear, and the drama was palpable. [More]
Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer
A thoughtful, sorrowful art experience of overwhelming beauty
Review by Ines Maria Almeida 22nd Feb 2020
The 2020 New Zealand Festival of the Arts opened last night with an unforgettable live orchestral art experience. Henryk Górecki’s popular Symphony No. 3, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, has special reverence for Lemi Ponifasio, the Samoan and New Zealand director, artist, dancer, designer and choreographer who founded MAU in Auckland, in 1995. This piece of music fuelled his early creation as a dancer and choreographer and has taken on new meaning for him since 15 March 2019, when New Zealand changed forever with the Christchurch mosque shootings.
You might be wondering how this piece does that for Ponifasio. Gorecki’s symphony is in three movements, with the third using the text of a Silesian folk song that describes the pain of a mother searching for her lost son killed in an uprising.
In this moving performance, Ponifasio has choreographed MAU Wāhine, the Māori women members of MAU, to deliver a thoughtful, sorrowful art experience of overwhelming beauty. The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and Syrian soprano Racha Rizk are conducted by Kristjan Järvi where the living, breathing audience is invited to greet and embrace those who have gone before us and prepare to welcome those who are about to join us.
Unfamiliar with Goreki, and unashamed to admit it, I feel the MAU Wāhine performance is more moving than the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. The women’s singing stirs deep feelings of grief that I tend to bury, which I guess is what Ponifasio intends. The performers, dressed in mourning black and ethereal white dresses, pour blood from buckets onto the stage, symbolising the blood that was spilled that fateful day last year where 51 innocent people were murdered. The purpose of this performance is to deepen our understanding of death, the spiritual world, and the human world.
Where we are sitting, you can’t really see the blood in the crafted rocked-lined river on stage, but the people in the overhead seats will experience the full effect. My only critique is that it would have been nice to have these karanga and waiata printed in the programme as they have done with the song text and translation for Gorecki’s work.
Actually, that might be a lie. Another critique I have is that this could have really been two events as the MAU component is so powerful that it in fact overpowers the NZSO’s part in the performance. My date, a Maori woman herself, says that the MAU performance feels like the organisers didn’t know what to do with it, so they threw it in with the orchestra. Well, I wouldn’t go that far, but I see where she’s coming from. I wonder if others would agree.
Ultimately, we leave feeling what Ponifasio intends us to feel: a muted sadness that comes from acknowledging the suffering and trauma that so many of us carry in our hearts, but with a hope that the world we wish for ourselves is within our grasp.
Afterwards, my date and I join the living in a bustling restaurant in town, watching people drink and celebrate loudly. It is the perfect ending to a night of introspection.
Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer
Comments
david Trubridge February 22nd, 2020
I am really disappointed that the reviewer, neither knows anything about the main symphony, nor seems to have the slightest interest in it. This is one of the most important pieces of music of the second half of the last century and we were so privileged to have it here in Wellington. Järvi produced a wonderfully caressing and muted performance, far more sensitive and balanced than the common version with Dawn Upshaw. Racha Rizk's singing from behind the orchestra at first seemed diminishing, but we could still hear and I realised that it emphasised her fragility and the pathos of the music. I was entranced from beginning to end. I agree with much of Ines' writing about Mau, but it is common in NZ to have Māori waiata and performance to open events. The pacing of both performances was very similar. Please do your homework before writing reviews!
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