MIAF 2009

Brett Sheehy, the artistic director of the Melbourne Festival, freely admits that he's nervous about announcing his first program. "I know I've done it before," says Sheehy, who has directed both the Sydney and Adelaide festivals. "But you don't get any less nervous. Melbourne's status as the cultural capital is an additional pressure. But obviously, that's also why I wanted the job."

Certainly, Sheehy has reasons for feeling a little flighty. This time last year, he took over from Kristy Edmunds, whose four-year stint from 2005 produced much critical adulation, especially among younger audiences, and an unprecedented load of vitriolic commentary from the more conservative constituency of our cultural capital.


Sheehy was widely perceived to be a director who wouldn't frighten the horses, a steady pair of hands who would steer the ship into less stormy waters. On the other hand, Edmunds' tenure has generated a strong expectation among Melbourne arts fans that the festival will be challenging, exciting and full of the shock of the new. The depth and range of her festivals brought out stars like Ariane Mnouchkine and Peter Brook, created mini-events within the festival such as Merce Cunningham's 2007 residency and mixed the highbrow and the lowbrow in an intoxicating whirl.

Coming hard on her heels, Sheehy faces a tricky task: to generate a program that doesn't disappoint the keen audience built up through Edmunds' tenure, but which also doesn't bring down the wrath of those who think the main stage belongs to the MSO and the MSO alone. Certainly, Sheehy is anxious to differentiate his program from those which went before; but it looks to me more of an evolution than a revolution. And I think he's pulled it off: MIAF 2009 promises to be a really interesting festival, and will attract a wide range of people.

The feature of this festival is probably the visual arts program. "I've always been enamoured of the Melbourne pride in its built environment," says Sheehy. "And so from the beginning I was thinking of something structured around this great feature of this city." To this end, he galvanised the local boutique galleries, who have each curated their own exhibition around the theme. The centrepiece is Callum Morton's 2007 Venice Biennale piece Valhalla, a monumental sculpture that seems to be part biography, part reflection on modernity. There's also a free large scale video installation at Federation Square, The Living Room, which will intriguingly dress the square as an actual living room.


The performing arts are various, with an emphasis on exclusive international events. 90 per cent of the festival works are exclusive to Melbourne, so those interstaters who want to see them will have to come here. The centrepiece is Sasha Waltz, whom Sheehy describes as the most influential choreographer in Europe after Pina Bausch. Waltz is bringing out her production of Medea, with a score by Pascal Dusapin set to the play Medeamaterial by Heiner Müller, and also her her dance masterwork Körper. If I were you I'd be booking tickets now: these look to me like must-sees.

Other theatrical highlights include Deutsches Schaulspielhaus Hamburg's production of the British playwright Simon Stephens' (Motortown) play Pornography and a dance theatre piece, Le Salon by Belgian group Peeping Tom. And Ireland's Abbey Theatre is bringing a verse play called Terminus, a work on the darker aspects of Ireland written and directed by Mark O'Rowe, which was a hit at last year's Edinburgh Festival.


The Store Room Theatre is part of the local talent, with a new piece by theatre designer Anna Tregloan, The Dictionary of Imaginary Places. The MTC, which has been absent from the program for some time, is presenting two shows - Andrew Bovell's When the Rain Stops Falling, which Sheehy premiered at last year's Adelaide Festival, and Lally Katz's Apocalypse Bear Trilogy, which is sure to attract much interest in the Katz demographic.

As well as Sasha Waltz, the dance program includes British Israeli Hofesh Shechter, who is bringing two pieces - Uprising and In your rooms, and a new piece from Chunky Move which is not choreographed by Gideon Obarzanek but by two stars of the European scene - Erna Ómarsdóttir and Damien Jalet.

Film maker Peter Greenaway is the subject of several events, including an intriguing installation at North Melbourne Town Hall, Leonardo's Last Supper, a video exploration of the famous mural. He'll be giving a lecture about nine classic paintings and contemporary visual illiteracy, as well as showing two films he's made about Old Masters. And there's some Andy Warhol as well.

And I haven't even got to the music. Orchestra fans, who have been somewhat disgruntled over the past few years, won't be disappointed: the MSO will be performing a concert of music by Brenton Broadstock and Julian Yu, and the London Philharmonic will be playing pieces from Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Ravel and Beethoven. The Melbourne Town Hall's organ is a feature of one of the more impressive free events - a 16 hour marathon of the whole of Bach's repertoire, to be played by Calvin Bowman. And, in a clear sign of continuity with Edmunds' festivals, the Black Arm Band is back.


Another innovation is Beck's Rumpus Room at the Forum Theatre, a larger version of Beck's Bar at the Meat Market. It's basically a club where for $15 you can hear the hippest music from all corners of the globe - from a crowded program that includes a lot of Australian acts, you can hear the West Bank group Ramallah Underground (who recently did a piece for Kronos Quartet), the Cuban Brothers from Havana, Brain Failure from China, Fischerspooner from New York, and the noise band Melt Banana from Japan.

There's lots more, but I'm running out of puff. I'll leave you to trawl through the rest of it yourself. Sadly, I'm going to miss this year's festival - in October, I'm off to the northern hemisphere for a month, being an Ambassador for Australian poetry with Robert Gray. I think every poet in Australia applied for this one, which was offered by the Australian Poetry Centre, and I was pleased to be chosen; but there's enough in this festival program to make the prize of an overseas trip a mixed blessing.