FESTIVAL FIRST NIGHT REVIEW

Here is an excerpt of Lisa the Festival Blogger’s first review, documenting her experiences and thoughts on two events on the first day of Sydney Festival 2009 - Dawn Chorus and Festival First Night:

“Festivals are often designed to thrust you out of your rituals and distort time. When imaginatively, cleverly and generously programmed they can also offer us a sense of community.

The alarm went off at 4.30am on Saturday and sleep rather than community bonding was top of mind but we clambered, bleary eyed, into the car and made the pilgrimage to Balmoral Beach for Dawn Chorus. In our time-warped, semi-somnambulant states, the world seemed somehow different and new.

As we snaked towards the beach it became apparent that we weren’t the only people looking to start their Festival waking up to ethereal voices of the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs drifting across the sea as the day unfurled.

There were thousands of people there, some half-asleep, some looking like they’d been up for hours preparing the picnic breakfasts they held onto. Kids in their dressing gowns being tugged along by their parents, dogs cocking their heads in curiosity and canoeists and swimmers bobbing on the water, enjoying the best vantage point: there was a sense of collective joy about the experience. It was the perfect beginning to the Festival (until it dawned on me that I’d still be up 15 hours from now watching Grace Jones at The Domain).

I read somewhere that happiness is best pursued indirectly and often thinking like this makes way for surprises. To me that was what Festival First Night is all about, engaging openly and taking your chances. I sometimes think that Festival directors are like cultural farmers, they provide conditions for growth and understand the dynamic elements required for people and their experiences to blossom. If the conditions are right, then people grow in synergy with those around them and the environment they help to create. Saturday night felt like this as crowds swirled around the city, not always knowing what would greet them on each corner.

For me it finished with Grace Jones, who as always gave more than I bargained for with her slashing cheekbones and legs at least twice the length of mine. She strode theatrically through old and new material - Pull up to the Bumper, My Jamaican Guy, Slave to the Rhythm – she hurled them at the crowd, between numbers shouting for her celebrity milliner Philip Treacy to line up her next hat, more aptly called sculptures for the head. I turned to the man I’d been dancing with next to me and said, ‘you know she’s almost 60?’, exuding disbelief that this diva panther was exuding quite so much sexuality and stealth. He was French, put his arm on my back and said ‘darling, life - it begins at 60’.

I discovered a term recently in a book called Dancing in the Streets, by Barbara Eherenreich – ‘collective effervenscence’ -the ritually induced passion or ecstasy that cements social bonds- over 300 000 breathed in the effervenscent bubbles of Sydney Festival on Saturday night.”