Melbourne Festival
Melbourne Festival
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About
The Melbourne International Arts Festival is a just over two weeks of jam-packed entertainment in both indoor and outdoor venues around the city. The already creative Melbourne vibe becomes ever more vibrant with visual art displays, music and dance performances and a host of different shows to attend. Do your research beforehand to pick the best of the best shows, or just turn up and be surprised… you never know what you might encounter!
Suggested duration
2-3 hours
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Jeffry b
Essendon, Australia13,783 contributions
Aug. 2020
The Melbourne Festival evolved from the Melbourne International Arts Festival. Its first outing will be in 2021, no-ne knows what to expect yet. The expected date has yet to be publcised. The corona virus pandemic has played havoc with the public arts. The festival will not be held in 2020, but if we are lucky the Melbourne Festival will get its first outing in 2021.
Written 19 August 2020
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
beantony15
Kyneton, Australia199 contributions
Oct. 2018
William Forsythe makes surprising revelations about ballet in "A Quiet Evening of Dance" at the State Theatre (from 17-20 October). If you think ballet is only about dancing formal steps in time to music then you're in for a lot of surprises. The stage is bare to begin. Two performers glide silently onto centre stage. They move in rhythm with each other, each seeming to copy or trying to anticipate the other's moves. There is no music. The rhythm comes from their bodies, in perfect co-ordination with each other's moves. Another two dancers come on. They start something that looks like a game children play when they try to rub their stomachs and pat their heads at the same time without losing concentration. But this quickly gets more complicated. Hands, heads, arms, shoulders all move in a succession of ever-changing patterns, then hips, legs, knees and feet come into play. From a limited number of movements the dancers construct a seemingly endless number of patterns and variations. It's as though they've made visible a set of musical variations by J S Bach with a limited number of notes combined and rearranged into countless musical patterns. Then, with a wave of their arms, the dancers take flight into a wider range of movements and variations, before returning to something like their original positions. Five dancers then take the stage with a spare musical score and moves that combine traditional dance with hip-hop and surprising original steps. There's a lot of humour in the unexpected moves. The first part of the show ends with two men dancing without music: you can hear their breathing and the patter of their feet, moving vigorously with rapid, intricate steps around each other, combining classical moves with original steps in patterns that seem to make the dancers both separate and entangled at the same time. Interval provides twenty minutes to recover from the high-energy performance before starting again. All seven members of the troupe come onstage for act 2, danced to the music of Jean-Philippe Rameau, perhaps the most influential composer of ballet music in the 18th century. This is Forsythe's biggest surprise for us. Now the dancers move with the music, combining the same steps and movements that they used without music in the first part of the program. The modern steps appear to emerge naturally from classical positions, and combine with them to take ballet in new directions. Forsythe's choreography has produced new movements and patterns that refresh and revive the art of classical ballet. Forsythe finishes the show with another, witty, little surprise. While the last notes of Rameau's music are playing, the dancers suddenly and unexpectedly hold hands in a straight line and step forward to take a bow. Forsythe's final surprise is to catch the audience off guard and make the bow part of the dance.
Written 18 October 2018
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Tweety F
Melbourne, Australia57 contributions
Oct. 2017 • Solo
The mirror maze is located at the forecourt of the arts centre. It is trippy as you have the mirrors playing tricks on you.( like thinking you can walk that direction when you can’t. Website says allow 30mins but you need to allow more than that. ( it took me 50mins). Also take water with you and go when it’s cooler if you can.
Written 17 October 2017
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
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Claim your listingMelbourne Festival: All You Need to Know BEFORE You Go (with Photos)
Frequently Asked Questions about Melbourne Festival
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