Sydney Festival is a major

arts festival An arts festival is a festival that can encompass a wide range of art forms including music, dance, film, fine art, literature, poetry and isn't solely focused on visual arts. Arts festivals may feature a mixed program that include music, lit ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...

's largest city,

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mounta ...

that runs for three weeks every January, since it was established in 1977. The festival program features in excess of 100 events from local and international artists and includes contemporary and classical music,

dance Dance is a performing art form consisting of sequences of movement, either improvised or purposefully selected. This movement has aesthetic and often symbolic value. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoire ...

circus A circus is a company of performers who put on diverse entertainment shows that may include clowns, acrobats, trained animals, trapeze acts, musicians, dancers, hoopers, tightrope walkers, jugglers, magicians, ventriloquists, and unicyclis ...

drama Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has b ...

visual arts The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, filmmaking, design, crafts and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as performing arts, conceptual art, and textile art ...

and artist talks. The festival attracts approximately 500,000 people to its large-scale free outdoor events and 150,000 to its ticketed events, and contributes more than A$55 million to the economy of

New South Wales ) , nickname = , image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , es ...

History

The origins of the Sydney Festival are in the Waratah Festival which was established in 1956 by the Sydney Committee and took place from late October to early November, coinciding with the blooming of the NSW emblematic flower the Waratah. It was an important cultural event which included a parade, a popular art competition, beauty contests, exhibitions, performances and the Lord Mayor's reception at the Sydney Town Hall. Sydney Festival was established by the Sydney Committee, the

NSW State Government The Government of New South Wales, also known as the NSW Government, is the States and territories of Australia, Australian state democratic administrative authority of New South Wales. It is currently held by a coalition of the Liberal Party o ...

and the City of Sydney with a view to attracting people into the city centre during the summer holiday month of January. In many ways it is probably still best understood as a celebration of Sydney and what the city has to offer. In the festival's early years, its program offered everything from vintage car rallies, face-painting and kite-flying to bocce, dog obedience trials and Chinese scarf dancing. For three weeks, the festival offers a program of more than 330 performances and 100 events involving 900 artists from 17 countries, covering dance, theatre, music, visual arts, cross media and forums. In any given year, the program's diversity might include burlesque circus to New York rap to Russian theatre; from contemporary dance to family programs to traditional Indigenous arts practice. The festival uses at least 30 venues including the city's main theatre venues such as Sydney Theatre, Carriageworks, City Recital Hall and venues at

Sydney Opera House The Sydney Opera House is a multi-venue performing arts centre in Sydney. Located on the foreshore of Sydney Harbour, it is widely regarded as one of the world's most famous and distinctive buildings and a masterpiece of 20th-century architec ...

and in Parramatta, as well as community halls, parks and the city streets themselves. André de Ridder at Sydney Festival

Sydney Festival presents a number of large-scale free outdoor events including the long-running Concerts in The Domain with, each attracting up to 60,000 people, a decrease from peaks of 80,000 people during earlier years. At its peak, it is estimated that the festival attracted 1.5 million people. The Festival has a history of presenting Australian premieres and many of Australia's most memorable productions such as '' Cloudstreet'' have resulted from Sydney Festival's commitment to nurture local artists. It has brought many of the world's great artists to Sydney for the first time including: Ariane Mnouchkine and Thèâtre du Soleil (''Flood Drummers''), Robert Wilson (''The Black Rider''), Robert Lepage (''Far Side of the Moon'', ''The Andersen Project'', ''Lipsynch''), George Piper Dances, Netherlands Dance Theatre, James Thiérrée (''Junebug Symphony'', ''Au Revoir Parapluie''), Philip Glass, Ian McKellen (''Dance of Death''), Batsheva Dance Company,

National Theatre of Scotland The National Theatre of Scotland, established in 2006, is the national theatre company of Scotland. The company has no theatre building of its own; instead it tours work to theatres, village halls, schools and site-specific locations, both at h ...

('' Black Watch'', ''Aalst''), Christopher Wheeldon Company, All Tomorrow's Parties, Al Green, Katona Jozsef Theatre, Bon Iver, Grizzly Bear, The National, Sufjan Stevens and Joanna Newsom. A survey of 1,500 attendees conducted during the 2011 festival revealed that patrons mainly live in Greater Sydney (83%), with approximately 11,500 visitors from interstate and overseas attending festival events. Not without controversy, the festival has faced challenges with profitability in its early years and was subject to a riot at a New Year's Eve concert at Sydney Opera House in 1980, when 68 people were arrested and 150 were taken to hospital; and criticism about the festival's artistic credibility.

Sydney Festival Program

The Festival's inclusive programming, broad range of free events and accessible pricing policies for the ticketed shows means that Sydney Festival is open to all. Within the program there is always a group of shows - all about an hour long - with $35 tickets. Tickets to all performances are available on the day for only $25 at the Tix for Next to Nix booth in Martin Place in the heart of Sydney's CBD. From 2008-2012, the Festival's free opening event was Festival First Night, attracting approximately 200,000 people into the city centre. Sydney Festival program highlights include Schaubuhne Berlin's ''Hamlet'', Headlong's ''Six Characters in Search of an Author'', Peter Sellars' ''Oedipus Rex & Symphony of Psalms'', 43 Rajastani musicians in ''The Manganiyar Seduction'', Al Green, Fabulous Beast's ''Giselle'' and ''Rian'', John Cale, Grizzly Bear, Grace Jones, Laura Marling, James Thiérrée, Björk, Patrick Watson, Manu Chao, David Byrne, Herrenhausen's fashion opera ''Semele Walk'' with costumes by Vivienne Westwood, Sasha Waltz' ''Dido and Aeneas'', Antony; and many more. Sydney Festival has a strong tradition of creating opportunities for Australian artists, with 23 world premières of new Australian work across the 2013 and 2014 Festivals. The free program for Sydney Festival includes concerts in The Domain or Parramatta, such as the outdoor concert by Indian superstar AR Rahman (with an audience of 50,000 people) in 2010, and the much-loved annual Ferrython with four Sydney ferries racing around Sydney Harbour. The Festival's late night venues, both presenting contemporary music, are the Festival Paradiso Bar and Festival Village in Hyde Park with the latter hosting The Famous Spiegeltent, a traditional European wooden dance hall. As a part of corporate responsibility, the festival has a Reconciliation Action Plan which envisages engaging with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists and communities to positively contribute towards closing the gap between Indigenous and other Australians.

Boycott

In May 2020, Sydney Festival received $20,000 sponsorship from the Israeli Embassy to support Sydney Dance Company production of Decadence, created by Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin and Tel Aviv's Batsheva Dance Company. The Sydney Festival listed Israel as a "star partner" on the festival website. A coalition of anti-apartheid advocates and organisations met with Sydney Festival in late 2021 to request the removal of Israel as a star partner of the event, which the festival refused. In December 2021, the Palestine Justice Movement Sydney announced a boycott of the 2022 Sydney Festival, urging "artists who oppose apartheid to withdraw their participation from the festival", for "all members of the public who oppose apartheid to not attend Festival events" and for "Festival board members who oppose apartheid to resign from the board". The boycott is consistent with global movement Boycott Divestment and Sanctions that aims to use economic sanctions to end Israel's oppression of Palestinians. By the start of the festival, more than 25 acts had pulled out, including comedian Tom Ballard, Nazeem Hussain, the Belvoir Theatre production of Black Brass, First Nations dance company Marrugeku, Arab Theatre Studio, and Bankstown Poetry Slam.

Festival Directors

References

External links

*
Sydney Festival
' – Official Website (News, updates, features, and "Interact" online community

Blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in Reverse ...