A gigantic, bright yellow rubber duck floated into Sydney’s Darling Harbour yesterday as part of the Australian city’s annual arts festival, a celebration where high art meets popular entertainment.
Each January hundreds of thousands of people attend theater, music, dance, film, talks and other events for three weeks, often braving sweltering summer temperatures and thunderstorms for their dose of culture.
This year’s festival, which will present 92 events from some 750 artists from 17 countries, kicked off yesterday under bright sunshine, with thousands lining Darling Harbour for the entry of artist Florentijn Hofman’s inflatable duck.
Photo: AFP
“What makes Sydney Festival unique I think is this amazing blend of serious art and quirky and playful entertainment,” festival director Lieven Bertels told reporters. “And what better to celebrate that than with a really, lovely public art work such as the rubber duck.”
Bertels said the duck — a 15m high creation by Dutchman Hofman, models of which have appeared in other cities — appealed to the young and old, bringing back childhood memories for some.
“This is the Sydney duck and for him [Hofman] what’s important about it is that it is not just a playful thing, but also one that connects,” Bertels said.
“Because his whole theory around this, which is quite beautiful, is that all these harbors are connected to the local seas, and all these seas are part of one big ocean. So he says, well, really the whole world is one big bathtub. And what better way to celebrate summer than to have a giant bathtub party,” he added.
Many Sydney Festival events, such as the duck’s arrival, are free and family-oriented to showcase the personality of Australia’s biggest city.
This year the big attractions will be a sexy Latino circus show from Circolombia and soul singer Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings, but the Jan. 5 to 27 festival will also present an interpretation of Handel’s opera Semele and encompass an exhibition of works by painter Francis Bacon.
Quirky events include a performance by an actor who will run a full marathon on a treadmill in front of spectators at Sydney’s Hyde Park while wearing gold sneakers and recounting an ancient Greek tale.
Sydney Festival was designed to bring life back into the city during the slow summer months.
It first took place in 1977 and has since then grown to become one of the country’s largest annual cultural celebrations.
“For me, from my European perspective, what made it really unique is this amazing way where you can combine high art and entertainment and very popular stuff all in one festival which is something you don’t often do in European arts festivals,” Belgium-born Bertels said.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
China has built a land-based prototype nuclear reactor for a large surface warship, in the clearest sign yet Beijing is advancing toward producing the nation’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, according to a new analysis of satellite imagery and Chinese government documents provided to The Associated Press. There have long been rumors that China is planning to build a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, but the research by the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California is the first to confirm it is working on a nuclear-powered propulsion system for a carrier-sized surface warship. Why is China’s pursuit of nuclear-powered carriers significant? China’s navy is already
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) launched a week-long diplomatic blitz of South America on Thursday by inaugurating a massive deep-water port in Peru, a US$1.3 billion investment by Beijing as it seeks to expand trade and influence on the continent. With China’s demand for agricultural goods and metals from Latin America growing, Xi will participate in the APEC summit in Lima then head to the Group of 20 summit in Rio de Janeiro next week, where he will also make a state visit to Brazil. Xi and Peruvian President Dina Boluarte participated on Thursday by video link in the opening
IT’S A DEAL? Including the phrase ‘overlapping claims’ in a Chinese-Indonesian joint statement over the weekend puts Jakarta’s national interests at risk, critics say Indonesia yesterday said it does not recognize China’s claims over the South China Sea, despite signing a maritime development deal with Beijing, as some analysts warned the pact risked compromising its sovereign rights. Beijing has long clashed with Southeast Asian neighbors over the South China Sea, which it claims almost in its entirety, based on a “nine-dash line” on its maps that cuts into the exclusive economic zones (EEZ) of several countries. Joint agreements with China in the strategic waterway have been sensitive for years, with some nations wary of deals they fear could be interpreted as legitimizing Beijing’s vast claims. In 2016,
RSS