DROUGHT AND RAIN Opens at Arts Centre Melbourne Tonight, Sept 20

French-Vietnamese choreographer, Ea Sola, brings Drought and Rain (re-creation 2011) to Arts Centre Melbourne tonight, 20 – Saturday 22 September. Exploring "traditional Vietnamese song and dance in a contemporary framework, Drought and Rain will see twelve elderly Vietnamese women present their experiences of the Vietnam War through compelling movement, music and gesture."

Commissioned by the Edinburgh Festival, Napoli Teatro Festival Italia and Sadler's Wells in London, this production is a recreation of Sola's 1995 work of the same name that comes exclusively to Melbourne after critically acclaimed tours through Europe and Asia. This work features the women who sang to comfort the wounded soldiers on the frontline. An ensemble of non-professional performers, they will perform alongside virtuoso Vietnamese musicians, including traditional percussion and string instruments.

"These women did not fight, they had their voices alone as their weapon," says Sola of the women. "After bringing them together, I discover this: instead of killing to survive, they sang."

Born in Vietnam, the now Paris-based Sola left her homeland in the wake of war with her French-born mother. However, feeling displaced in a highly mechanised city, Sola returned to Vietnam in the early 1990s after receiving a grant from the French cultural ministry to research the lasting effects of war the Vietnamese people. The stories of her countrymen and women, as well as their traditional art forms with which they celebrated their experiences, were the inspiration behind Sola's iconic work Drought and Rain.

Drought and Rain (re-creation 2011) by Ea Sola (Vietnam)
Arts Centre Melbourne, Playhouse
8pm, Tonight, 20 – Saturday 22 September
Q & A following performance on Friday 21 September