a three day festival of art at the Royal Opera House

UK (SANEPR.com) July 27, 2009 -- Time Out will curate the Deloitte-sponsored festival filling the Royal Opera House with gigs, video art, exuberant fashion, site-specific theatre, comedy, cabaret, dance, film and surprise events. Featuring specially commissioned work from artist Kathleen Herbert, theatre company Dreamthinkspeak, interactive work from choreographic and dance artists Angela Woodhouse and Ben Wright, Cabaret performers Jonny Woo and Bourgeois & Maurice, with surprise events from theatre makers Chris Goode, Will Tuckett and Adrian Lee plus guest appearances from comedians and new magic rising stars including Chris Cox. These are just a few of the artists in a programme that will unfold throughout the summer.

The Royal Opera House has invited Time Out and its Editors to explore the traditions and heritage of the building and its art forms and create a festival of work that explodes preconceptions and delivers an alternative view of opera and ballet.

In curating the festival the Time Out critics have welcomed the chance to step out from behind the printed page and do something more creative with their observations than simply write them down. Over the past year they have collaborated with many artists to reinvent the extraordinary structure that is the Royal Opera House. They have chosen a theme which will sum up the Royal Opera House both as a public and private place, a place which creates illusions on an industrial scale, yet also touches both audiences and those who perform there more personally. The mirror seems to embrace all that, not least because its presence dominates the building - whether it’s in the shimmering glamour of the Paul Hamlyn Hall and the Crush Room, in the studios where the dancers perfect their poses, in the dressing rooms, or even in the Royal Box where Queen Victoria once sat. It is something that has inspired artists ranging from Shakespeare to Lewis Carroll, from Jan van Eyk to Damien Hirst, a part of everyday life and a conduit for dreams beyond it.

Taking their cue from the up-coming season, the Editors have each drawn upon their knowledge of the Royal Opera House and the art world beyond to bring an eclectic group of performance artists, installations, film and much more to this free festival. Time Out, the Royal Opera House and Deloitte all feel it is key to Deloitte Ignite to bring new audiences into the building, as well as to ensure that they are encouraged to come back during the rest of the year. The mirror theme therefore ties in with the forthcoming season, since the mirror can be a metaphor for illusion, disguise, surface appearance as opposed to reality, perceptions of beauty, concealment and revelation – all common opera leitmotifs. Disguise and cross-dressing feature in forthcoming productions including La Fille mal gardée, Cinderella, The Rake’s Progress and Cosi fan tutte, concealment in L’Heure Espagnole, The Nutcracker, The Sleeping Beauty and The Tsarina’s Slippers, varying perspectives on feminine beauty in Der Rosenkavalier and Powder Her Face, and revelation in pretty much every denouement.

Rachel Halliburton, Deputy Editor of Time Out says: ‘Critics are a despised breed. Deflators of artistic dreams, able - on occasion - to kill a production or exhibition overnight, we are seen by some as the parasites of the art world. But there's another argument that says that critics nurture rather than murder talent - and that by cutting down bad art we allow truly good art to flourish. This is Time Out's chance to prove it.’

Deborah Bull, Royal Opera House Creative Director says: ‘Since its very first edition in 1968, Time Out has played a vital role in shaping the artistic experience of Londoners with its sharp-eyed recommendations and its previews and reviews of performances and events which should, on no account, be missed. So it seemed entirely logical to invite Time Out to extend their role as ‘recommender of choice’ by inviting them to curate Deloitte Ignite 09. I’m delighted and intrigued by the programme they have brought together and by the theme they have chosen. Critics, after all, hold up a mirror to art, allowing the creative artist to see their work through other people’s eyes and audiences to reflect on art they may never actually get to see for themselves.’

Heather Hancock, head of innovation and brand at Deloitte, commented: ‘Innovation is key to our business success, and has an instrumental role in this year's festival with a unique role reversal. The critic becomes the creative. The choice of Time Out as curator of Deloitte Ignite heralds the launch of a truly original event. The innovative collaboration between the organisations involved and some inspirational twists on classic themes from the artists and performers promise to challenge the preconceptions of the audience. The festival has captured the imagination within our firm to the extent that over 1,700 of our people have registered to be part of a Deloitte Ignite network and over 50 worked alongside Royal Opera House staff as volunteers at the festival itself last year. We look forward to even greater participation this year.’


Deloitte Ignite and the Artists
The Deloitte Ignite 09 line-up has been curated by Deputy Editor Rachel Halliburton, Comedy Editor Tim Arthur, Art Editor Ossian Ward, Dance Editor Lyndsey Winship, Film Editor Dave Calhoun, Rock Folk & Jazz Editor Eddy Lawrence, Classical & Opera Editor Jonathan Lennie, Theatre Editor Caroline McGinn and Cabaret Editor Simone Baird.

There will be three big evening events taking place on 4, 5, 6 September and a host of daytime performances and experiences.

Friday 4 September - LYING DOWN CONCERT
Despite the fact that Britain is constantly producing brilliant young classical artists, in many circles classical music is so unpopular, it's almost seen as unnatural to like it. The atmosphere of the classical music concert especially puts off a lot of young people, so here the aim is to subvert the formality of listening to classical music in public by creating an atmosphere that puts everyone at their ease. Audience members will therefore be invited to lie down in the Paul Hamlyn Hall to listen to the performers. Performing will be St. Paul’s Cathedral Choir, who in recent years have established itself as one of the major forces in British church music, Radio 3's New Generation Artists including violinist Tai Murray and pianist Ashley Wass and ex Jette Parker Young Artists Kishani Jayasinghe and Catriona Beveridge.

Saturday 5 September - GIG NIGHT
The bands booked for the gig night are a unique addition to the already varied list of artists who have performed at the Royal Opera House. This will be a concert unlike any other witnessed at the Royal Opera House. To find out what the line-up is register for updates at www.roh.org.uk/deloitteignite

Sunday 6 September – JONNY WOO’S BALLO IN MASCARA
Sunday’s grand finale is inspired by the predominance of cross-dressing within opera. London’s Jonny Woo has long featured in the Gay and Cabaret pages of Time Out and remains one of London’s most important alternative performers. Since his legendary Radio Egypt nights at the George & Dragon boozer in Hackney back in 2003 and subsequent Tranny Talent try-out nights, Woo has helped launch the performance careers of dozens. In the last two years he has sold out the Soho Theatre, toured the East End with his Gay Bingo, appeared at the ICA and most recently at Selfridges. Such is the cross-over appeal of cross-dressing. For Deloitte Ignite he is going to host a transvestite fashion show, directly inspired by characters from opera, and this will lead into a vogue ball (inspired by the NYC scene in the early ’90s), where people will be invited to don elaborate costumes and vogue the final night away.

BOURGEOIS AND MAURICE
Since they debuted in July 2007, Time Out has championed this caustic neo-cabaret duo as they've lit up London's late night underground performance scene. Bourgeois & Maurice sharpened their teeth and their talents with residencies at CellarDoor, Bistrotheque, the Royal Academy of Arts and the Soho Theatre. With Georgeois Bourgeois on vocals and Maurice Maurice on piano and backing vocals, they're a modern-day Kiki & Herb spawned in the backstreets of Hoxton, with original, often comedic, multi-media material covering pharmaceutical drugs, the perils of art school and, the subject closest to their heart, celebrity. Their outfits and numerous costume changes are every bit as important to them as their songs, a riot of charity shop sparkly tat, '80s power dressing, eyelashes that need their own scaffolding and glossy red lipstick. The duo will play the Crush Room on the night of the Vogue Ball.


Throughout 5 and 6 September

NEW ART COMMISSION - KATHLEEN HERBERT
One of the stipulations for the festival is to create a work of art which can be exhibited in The Box Office Link throughout the year, and Time Out art editor Ossian Ward is bringing Kathleen Herbert to the Royal Opera House. Herbert's work has embraced sculpture, video, and installation and seeks constantly to illuminate historical and social politics through focusing on individual experience. She has received several awards from Arts Council England South West, the British Council and Bristol O'Porto Association and has exhibited nationally and internationally. Herbert caught Time Out's attention because of her year in residence at Gloucester Cathedral, where - after a guide's casual comment about Cromwell's men keeping livestock in the cathedral - she released horses at night and filmed them as they explored the space. Time Out were very struck by the beauty and poeticism of her reinvention of the way people could look at the cathedral, so she has been invited to find a similarly inventive way of exploring the Royal Opera House. Herbert has been studying its history and is planning a new work based on the discovery of limelight, which was first used in the first theatre on this site, the Theatre Royal.

VIDEO ART EXHIBITS
The video installation by the artist Yinka Shonibare, Odile and Odette, was originally commissioned by the Royal Opera House. The film shows two ballerinas, one black one white, who explore the Swan Lake roles of Odile and Odette through a baroque mirror in a piece that plays with ideas of reality and reflection, the conscious and unconscious. The dancers wear classical tutus made of African textiles instead of the usual tulle, raising playful questions about the differences in perception between Western 'high' art and traditional categorisations of ‘African art.’

NEW MAGIC
Since illusion is a strong mirror-relate themed, we're calling in comedians from the New Magic scene. Pete Firman has been described as the MySpace generation's Tommy Cooper - Time Out's comedy editor Tim Arthur has heralded him as being 'funnier than most comedians and more magical than Dumbledore on a day out'. With tricks that include hammering nails up his nostrils, and doing unspeakable acts involving mice and magimixes, his anarchic style of magic has startled and entertained people on shows ranging from Sky One's The Secret World of Magic to ITV1's Saturday Live Again. Barry and Stuart, like Pete, are great Edinburgh Festival favourites for shows in which they act out scenes in character while performing magical tricks. In 2005 their show The Magic of Jesus controversially drew inspiration for their illusions from New Testament miracles, and in 2006 their Tricks from the Bible show took in episodes including the ten plagues of Egypt as inspiration for everything from turning water to blood to producing live frogs on the tongue. Chris Cox is known as a mind reader who can't read minds, using magic, psychology, NLP, reading body language and guess work. His show Control Freak transferred from Edinburgh to the West End, and he was nominated for a BAFTA for creating the magic for the BBC1's Merlin. The svelte and stylish Ali Cook, who appeared with Firman in The Secret World of Magic, started out as a sketch actor on Jerry Sadowitz's TV show, before heading the line-up (which included Firman) in Monkey Magic, a pioneering show for the alternative scene. Commenting on his fascination with psychic work, he has commented 'Is it trickery or paranormal? Personally, I am neither a believer nor a sceptic, but people who really do believe in psychic phenomena will at least be made aware of the tricks used.'

BEN WRIGHT
In 2008’s Place Prize competition there was a wealth of works that explored what dance can do, but only Ben Wright’s This Moment is Your Life reminded Time Out dance editor Lyndsey Winship why she loved dance in the first place. This is a piece that evokes how people's first connections with dance are joyful, physical ones: twirling around a living room pretending to be a ballerina, copying Michael Jackson’s moonwalk, or jerking their bodies in time to a pounding dance floor beat. Where does that joy go? Wright’s piece, essentially a mass disco dancing class, gives participants a chance to rediscover those instincts. But will they embrace that challenge? The idea of audience participation so often has people curling up in their seats, trying to make themselves invisible. And yet when they have the guts to get up and take part, the adrenaline makes it exhilarating. Wright teaches the audience a series of moves, before allowing them to give themselves up to the music. Freedom, order, dressing up and mirror balls – pretty much the ingredients to a happy life, definitely the ingredients for a joyous 15 minutes. If you ever needed evidence that dancing is good for the soul, here it is.

ANGELA WOODHOUSE
Angela Woodhouse is a dance artist who specialises in creating atmospheres that are in her words 'quiet and powerful, minimal and intense'. She was commissioned for the inaugural Place Prize in 2004 and currently tutors in choreography at the Laban Centre. One space she's presenting at the festival is already developed: it houses a carpet of mirrors from which light is reflected to create luminous shapes, which cascade down the walls. These reflections intensify a sense of enclosure. The performer Stine Nilsen performs discreet and delicate gestures with her eyes closed; only very occasionally opening her eyes to anchor the viewer(s). The aim is to create a tension between all that is seen and on view, and the apparent sightless closed experience of the performer. The second is to be made especially for the festival and is to be a twin to the first, establishing certain likenesses, but to be significantly different; it will have a carpet of black acrylic mirror not centrally placed, as in the light space, but falling round the edges. The space will be enclosed and dark. The only light source will be a torch given to a member of the audience to carve out the performance and the space. In contrast to the other, this space will be shadowy, mysterious, heightening a sense of apprehension and caution and, significantly, the ‘blindness’ of the audience.

DREAMTHINKSPEAK
Dreamthinkspeak were founded in 1999 by Tristan Sharps. An early successful work of theirs, Who Goes There, set up a series of installations based on Hamlet, in which audience members were invited to walk round the building and spy on different members of the cast before being brought together for the denouement: another of their pieces, Don't Look Back - which came to venues including Somerset House - brought the Orpheus and Eurydice myth compellingly alive as a darkly picturesque meditation on marriage and death. Last year they created One Step Forward, One Step Back for Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral, which was inspired by Dante's Paradiso, and nominated by both The Guardian and The Telegraph as highlights of the theatrical year. For this festival, they are taking over the Vaults and creating a piece which responds to Thomas Ades' Powder Her Face, the brilliant waspish opera based on the life of Margaret, Duchess of Argyll. Like their previous work, Dreamthinkspeak's piece will combine film and art installation.

SILENT DISCO
Silent Disco is a unique way to experience clubbing. Instead of entering a club full of thumping music, the partygoers enter their own quiet space, put on a pair of headphones and then dance away, choosing with the simple flick of a switch which of the two DJs battling out for their ears’ attention they prefer. To the casual observer or to anyone who just takes their headphones off the space looks awash with people moving, bumping and grinding and swaying to absolute silence. It's a whole new way to let your hair down, freak out and not disturb the neighbours.

FILM
Time Out's film editor Dave Calhoun presents his selection of film scenes inspired by mirrors, as well as film scenes set in the Royal Opera House.

EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED
The festival does not stop here. Time Out is also working on a multitude of projects with director Will Tuckett, Chris Goode, Jonny Woo and with the artist Adrian Lee. Festival goers should keep their eyes open as art erupts all around them at a moment's notice.

More artists and events will unfold throughout the summer. To keep fully informed register at www.roh.org.uk/deloitteignite



For more information and images:

Simon Magill / Sara Parsons / Press Office, Royal Opera House
Tel: 020 7212 9230 / 9504
Email: simon.magill@roh.org.uk / sara.parsons@roh.org.uk /

Notes to Editors:

Royal Opera House
The Deloitte partnership with the Royal Opera House brings together both organisations in their appetite for innovation and commitment to widening access to the arts. This five year relationship will allow the Royal Opera House to stage a broad range of ground-breaking work each year with a new vision from the chosen curator. Deloitte Ignite builds upon the continuing projects that the Royal Opera House has developed to engage and stimulate new audiences and communities across the UK including its innovative ROH2 programme, free live screenings of opera and ballet, family performances, cinema screenings, schools matinees and reduced ticket pricing on main stage performances and free daytime events.

Deloitte
With some 12,000 people across the UK and Switzerland, Deloitte is renowned for its innovation, collaboration, industry expertise, and outstanding quality of client service. Deloitte's depth of talent across many disciplines allows it to deliver a total solution to clients of all sizes through its four business divisions: Audit, Tax, Consulting and Corporate Finance. The Royal Opera House partnership appealed to Deloitte because it brings together its appetite for innovation and focus on young people with a commitment to widening access to the arts.

Deloitte Ignite 08
Deloitte and the Royal Opera House were awarded the Hollis Sponsorship Award 2009, Arts and Business category, for the first Deloitte Ignite in September 2008. The first Deloitte Ignite offered a range of contemporary art forms, curated by Wayne McGregor, Resident Choreographer for The Royal Ballet.