Alan Ayckbourn, Julie Walters & More Among Stars of London 2012 Festival Week 5, Beg. July 18

Scissor Sisters, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, Alan Ayckbourn, Daniel Barenboim, Rokia Traoré, Toni Morrison, Peter Sellars, Paco Peña, Simon Russell Beale, Hugh Masekela, Angelique Kidjo, Gong Linna, Sung Hwan Kim, Tom Hiddleston, Julie Walters, John Hurt, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Tracey Emin, and Bridget Riley are among the stars of London 2012 Festival's fifth week.

On the weekend before the opening of the London 2012 Olympic Games major London 2012 Festival events are set to showcase London as a world leader for cultural tourism. The celebrations for the London 2012 Festival’s fifth week feature music, art, carnival, dance, theatre and performance programmes bringing together leading artists from across the world with the very best from the UK.

Among the key highlights are: 160,000 free tickets to see International Artists perform at BT River of Music; Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra performing at BBC Proms 2012; newly commissioned installations and a performance programme to mark the unveiling of The Tanks at Tate Modern; the largest and most spectacular carnival art piece ever seen in the UK at One Hackney Festival; BMW Art Cars transformed by the world’s leading artists; and Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller’s life-size inflatable replica of Stonehenge arriving in London.

Festival events launching in London in the lead-up to the London 2012 Olympic Games:

BT River of Music, a spectacular global summit of rhythm and song, presents 160,000 free opportunities for people to experience one of the most ambitious musical events ever staged in the capital. Taking place at six landmark venues along the River Thames, it features more than 1,500 artists from all Olympic and Paralympic nations, and acts as a curtain-raiser for the sporting celebrations that will follow during the Olympic Games. Star performers include: Scissor Sisters, Noisettes, South African legend Hugh Masekela, Grammy-award winning Angelique Kidjo, former Buena Vista Social Club pianist Roberto Fonseca, Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Chinese superstar Gong Linna, the world's greatest living tabla player Zakir Hussain, and Senegalese singer and guitarist Baaba Maal. Free tickets are available via www.btriverofmusic.com (21 – 22 July 2012).

BBC Proms, the world’s biggest classical music festival, this year forms part of the London 2012 Festival. The eight-week season of concert and events launched on 13 July and features the world’s leading artists and orchestras, the largest number of new commissions for a Proms season, record youth participation and a celebration of London and composers and pieces considered to have changed the world, such as Beethoven, Boulez, and Cage. A major highlight of this year’s Proms is a series inspired by the theme of Olympic Truce featuring Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, an organisation that famously brings together Arab and Israeli players to form 'an orchestra against ignorance'. Barenboim directs his first complete Beethoven symphony cycle in London, culminating with a performance of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony on the opening day of the Olympics on July 27. The orchestra will also perform significant works by another revolutionary composer, Pierre Boulez, one of the most influential figures in contemporary music of the past 60 years (20 – 27 July 2012).

The Tanks: Art in Action sees a new commission by Korean artist Sung Hwan Kim and a star line up of artists and performers including Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, and Anthony McCall among the highlights of the fifteen-week series celebrating performance, film and installation to mark the opening of The Tanks at Tate Modern. Launching this week, the programme includes: the first specially commissioned installation to be unveiled in The Tanks, by Sung Hwan Kim (18 July – 28 October 2012); Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, one of the most important choreographers of the late 20th century, brings an adaption of her widely acclaimed 1982 performance, Fase: Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich (18 – 20 July 2012); and the presentation of Anthony McCall’s groundbreaking ‘solid light’ works from 1974, the complete cone films, which are rarely seen together (22 July 2012).

World Shakespeare Festival continues to celebrate the global appeal of William Shakespeare. Highlights for the fifth week of the London 2012 Festival include:

Desdemona is an exciting new collaboration by Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison, acclaimed opera director Peter Sellars and Malian singer songwriter Rokia Traoré. Morrison's response to Sellars' 2009 production of Othello is an intimate dialogue of words and music between Desdemona and her African nurse Barbary. The UK premiere at the Barbican is directed by Sellars, with Traoré performing the role of Barbary and actress Tina Benko performing the part of Desdemona (19 and 20 July 2012).Shakespeare: Staging the World – the BP Exhibition, a major exhibition at the British Museum on the world and works of William Shakespeare, providing an insight into the emerging role of London as a world city four hundred years ago interpreted through the perspective of Shakespeare’s plays (19 July – 25 November 2012).Timon of Athens, Shakespeare’s strange fable of conspicuous consumption, debt and ruin directed by Nicholas Hytner with Simon Russell Beale in the title role, at The National Theatre (10 July – 31 October 2012).BBC Shakespeare Unlocked season, which brings together four adaptations of Shakespeare's History Plays on BBC Two, forming a continuous story of monarchy and political power struggle. The Hollow Crown ends with Henry V, which airs on BBC Two on 21 July and stars Tom Hiddleston, Julie Walters, and John Hurt.

Art Drive! BMW Art Car Collection 1975-2010 sees the BMW collection of Art Cars on show for the first time in the UK at a landmark car park in Shoreditch for two weeks. The collection, initiated over 35 years ago, features BMW cars transformed by some of the world’s leading artists including: David Hockney, Jenny Holzer, Jeff Koons, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol. The exhibition of cars by 16 International Artists will be on view at the NCP Car Park on Great Eastern Street (21 July – 4 August 2012).

Frieze Projects East features a series of new contemporary art commissions in East London’s public spaces across six Host Boroughs for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Two commissions are being unveiled this week: Squeaky Clean, Gary Webb’s permanent and interactive public sculpture in Charlton Park, Greenwich, and LOVE, Anthea Hamilton and Nicholas Byrne’s anthropomorphic inflatable sculptures which fill Poplar Baths in Tower Hamlets (18 July – 31 August 2012).

Secrets: Hidden London offers the opportunity to discover some of London's amazing hidden gems as leading artists and cultural institutions transform the city's lesser-known landscapes including canals, lidos and parkland, with dance, opera and specially created installations. Launching on the week of 16 July is The Owl and The Pussycat, a water-bound operatic spectacle featuring the words of ex-Monty Python Terry Jones and a specially commissioned score from Oscar-winning composer Anne Dudley (20 - 31 July 2012). Also on show is Nothing is Set in Stone, a monolithic installation set in Fairlop Waters by award winning artist-composer Mira Calix (until 9 September 2012).

Showtime is London’s largest ever free outdoor arts festival, presented by the Mayor of London. Running for seven weeks, Showtime aims to bring the magic of hosting the Games to every corner of the capital, and will feature a mixture of the best street arts, including circus, carnival, theatre, dance, music and opera all presented by artists from the UK and abroad. The 30 acts selected include a man spurting water choreographed to Ravel's Bolero, gladiators wrestling 4 million volts of electricity, a hip hop bungee dance show about love, a female percussion group last seen at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, and a large-scale Bollywood dance troupe with floating angels suspended by cranes. www.molpresents.com/showtime (21 July – 9 September 2012).

You Me Bum Bum Train, the cult participatory show, returns with a new incarnation presented in Stratford town centre in the heart of the Olympic Host Borough. In an exhilarating and participatory adventure, the sole audience member becomes a passenger who journeys through a maze of live scenes. You Me Bum Bum Train is a continuously evolving work, first shown in 2004, and has been created by award-winning artists Kate Bond and Morgan Lloyd. You Me Bum Bum Train is co-commissioned by the Barbican and CREATE and presented in association with Theatre Royal Stratford East (19 July – 19 September 2012).

BT Road to 2012, a three-year project and the National Portrait Gallery’s largest commission, reaches its conclusion on 19 July with the opening of the final exhibition in the cycle, BT Road to 2012: Aiming High. Forty new portraits of some of the key players in London 2012 by photographers Anderson & Low, Jillian Edelstein and Nadav Kander will be on show. Celebrating the people who will collectively make the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games happen, each annual exhibition has been displayed free to the public at the Gallery (19 July – 23 September 2012).

Africa Utopia is a month-long festival of music, theatre, film, literature, dance, fashion, talks and debates at the Southbank Centre presented in conjunction with the renowned Senegalese singer and human rights campaigner Baaba Maal. An invited group of young delegates – guided by ‘elders’ including Baaba Maal, Ben Okri, Lemn Sissay and Wole Soyinka – engages with leading African arts organisations and cultural leaders to explore how art projects can be mobilised to bring about social change. Events on the fifth week of the London 2012 Festival include Exit/Exist, a dance piece by award-winning South African choreographer Gregory Maqoma on 17 July; a concert by American banjo player Bela Fleck and the great Malian singer Oumou Sangare, on 18 and 19 July; and on 20 July, a concert by Spanish master of flamenco guitar Paco Peña, who will perform a radical new interpretation of his classic mass, Misa Flamenca Africa. During the weekend there is also a programme of talks and debates curated by Eritrean-born journalist and author Hannah Pool, workshops and classes, and an Afrobeats club night on 21 July.

Casa Brasil presentsFrom the Margin to The Edge: Brazilian art and design in the 21st century, a free exhibition featuring works created over the last decade by a selection of Brazilian artists and designers. Bringing together over thirty practitioners – some internationally established; others relatively unknown – the exhibition aims to provide a cross-section of contemporary visual culture in Brazil at its most daring and sophisticated. Somerset House will be home to Casa Brasil, the official Brazilian house during the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games (21 July – 8 September 2012).

Sacrilege is Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller’s life-size inflatable replica of Stonehenge, an interactive outdoor installation and fully operational bouncy castle for adults and children alike. Deller’s playful artwork is popping up at venues around the country including Milton Keynes on 20 July, before heading to London, with its first appearance in the capital on 21 and 22 July at Central Park, Greenwich (until 9 September 2012).

Works inspired by Olympic and Paralympic values:

As well as the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra participation at BBC Proms 2012, additional highlights inspired by Olympic and Paralympic values in the fifth week of London 2012 Festival include:

Rio London Collaboration sees over 2,000 Brazilian and British performers and the UK’s largest ever piece of carnival art welcome the Olympic Flame to the London 2012 Host Borough of Hackney on Saturday. Rio de Janeiro’s elite carnival arts organisations have collaborated with their artistic counterparts in the UK to bring a taste of Rio to London. A carnival parade comprising eleven floats, six sound systems, walking music band members and costumed groups will take to the streets for One Hackney Festival. The centrepiece is the largest and most spectacular carnival art piece ever seen in the UK, inspired by the huge carnival floats in Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival tradition forms, created by British designer and sculptor Paul McLaren and Brazilian designer and ‘carnavalesco’ Renato Lage (21 July 2012).

Peace Camp is director Deborah Warner's commission for the London 2012 Festival, created in collaboration with actor Fiona Shaw and composer Mel Mercier. Actors, writers, poets and the public have lent their voices for the commission, which weaves poetry, spoken words, signals and noises with the ambient sounds of the natural environment to create a soundscape of love poetry. The installation will appear at eight beautiful and remote coastal locations in England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, including five National Trust sites. It features glowing encampments of some 2,000 tents in total from which the love poetry emanates. The project is inspired by the theme of Olympic Truce. Those whose voices were recorded for the project include Seamus Heaney, Eileen Atkins, Ioan Gruffudd, and Bill Paterson (19 - 22 July 2012).

London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games Posters have been created by twelve leading contemporary artists, and screen prints and lithographs of the works will be displayed at Tate Britain. The official posters for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games are by Fiona Banner, Michael Craig-Martin, Martin Creed, Tracey Emin, Anthea Hamilton, Howard Hodgkin, Gary Hume, Sarah Morris, Chris Ofili, Bridget Riley, Bob and Roberta Smith and Rachel Whiteread (21 June – 23 September 2012).

Draw Down the Walls presents a new commission by the internationally renowned Colombian artist Oscar Muñoz, to create a temporary public intervention within one of Belfast’s contested spaces. In a tribute to the theme of Olympic Truce, Muñoz’s site-specific installation, Ambulatorio Belfast, transforms the ‘no man’s land’ between the two barriers that separate Crumlin Road and Flax Street, with aerial maps of North Belfast sealed under a layer of cracked glass. The installation is the artist’s response to meetings with communities from both sides of the interface and explores the universal themes of memory, human loss and impermanence. Ambulatorio Belfast has been commissioned on behalf of Draw Down the Walls, an ongoing collaboration designed to create the conditions to imagine a city without barriers (9 July – 4 August 2012).

Torchbearers – Mzansi Cymru is a cross-cultural saga told by the people of the South African townships and the South Wales Valleys in a performance mixing drama, music, circus and dance. It tells the story of a young Welsh actor and an African dancer who in 1964 are given the chance of living the dream when they win parts in the film Zulu. The two young people find themselves falling in love, but their lives are ripped apart by the apartheid system and they never see each other again until forty years later. The story is brought to life by the massed ranks of Valley voices, musicians and performers with stellar groups from South Africa such as Zip Zap circus, Dance for All, Amampondo and the Fezeka. Torchbearers is presented by Wales Millennium Centre and Valleys Kids (20 – 21 July 2012).

UNLIMITED, involving deaf and disabled artists, is the UK’s largest programme of its kind, with 29 commissions. It encourages collaborations and partnerships between disability arts organisations, disabled and deaf artists, producers, and mainstream organisations. Highlights from the programme currently on show include: Niet Normaal a major international contemporary art exhibition that aims to celebrate difference in the Olympic and Paralympic year (13 July – 2 September 2012); Unlimited Global Academy, a collaborative exhibition of artworks and films by British artist Rachel Gadsden and the South Africian Bambanani artist-activist Group (23 June – 9 September 2012); and Throw Them Up and Let Them Sing, an exhibition by artist film-maker Helen Petts exploring the life and works of German artist Kurt Schwitters (28 June – 10 September 2012).

Forest Pitch by artist Craig Coulthard sees the creation of a full-size football pitch hidden deep within a commercial forest in the Scottish Borders, and is inspired by the artists childhood experiences of playing football in the middle of a forest. At the heart of Forest Pitch is a day of sporting and cultural events, with two amateur football matches and performances by local groups. A piece that explores issues of nationhood, community, landscape and memory, Forest Pitch proposes both a memorable sporting occasion and a place that can be revisited and re-experienced for years after the match day (21 July 2012).

Aldeburgh World Orchestra brings together conductor Sir Mark Elder and 124 emerging professional musicians from over 30 countries across the globe. The Aldeburgh World Orchestra will perform for the first time at Snape Maltings Concert Hall on 20 and 22 July, before travelling to Europe. Its final concert this year will be on 29 July at the Royal Albert Hall in London, as part of the BBC Proms (20 – 29 July 2012).

London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic medals exhibition at the British Museum tells the story of the production of the medals for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, from the mining of the metal by Rio Tinto through the creation of the designs and production by the Royal Mint. The display includes objects from the 19th-century Shropshire games alongside medals from the 1908 and 1948 Olympic Games held in London, and the 1960 and 1984 Paralympic Games (8 February – 9 September 2012).

Additional highlights taking place on the fifth week of the London 2012 Festival:

The London 2012 Festival features more than 25,000 artists from all 204 competing Olympic nations. Everyone is able to join in the celebration this summer with over 10 million free tickets and opportunities to take part in 12,000 events and performances at 900 venues all over the UK, including 130 world premieres and 85 UK premieres. Highlights of events taking place across the UK this week include:

Alan Ayckbourn Double Bill: Absurd Person Singular and Surprises -

The first play is a revival of Absurd Person Singular, one of Ayckbourn’s best loved and critically acclaimed works. This classic is in repertoire with the production of his 76th play, Surprises, which has its world premiere at Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough on 17 July, and a press night on 18 July (Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, 8 June –13 October 2012; Minerva Theatre, Chichester, 8 August – 8 September 2012). Coinciding with the Double Bill is the production of Ayckbourn’s fantasy adventure The Boy Who Fell Into a Book at Soho Theatre, London (18 – 29 July 2012).

Circa & I Fagiolini – How Like An Angel is an exciting fusion of Australia’s famous circus group Circa with one of the UK’s most celebrated Renaissance choral groups, I Fagiolini. Together they create a night of magical music, dance and acrobatics, performed inside the vaulted domes of four Cathedrals across the UK. The final performances takes place this week at Ripon Cathedral (19 – 20 July 2012).

Rouge, a thought-provoking and powerful Cambodian production, blends dramatic dance, live music and daring circus arts with physical choreography performed by a cast of young male performers accompanied by a gamelan band. This is the first time that the company - Phare Ponleu Selpak (meaning ‘the brightness of arts’) - have been to the UK. The international premiere at Milton Keynes International Festival is the result of a three-year collaboration with director Sarosi Nay of French dance company CompagnieUBI (20-23 July 2012).

The Tyntesfield Takeover will showcase contemporary graffiti art projected against the Gothic architecture of Tyntesfield, in a new live digital art light show developed for the London 2012 Festival. Developed by somewhereto_, Nexus Interactive Arts and the National Trust in collaboration with local young people from the South West region, the show begins at sundown on Sunday 22 July. The show is part of The Tyntesfield Takeover, an annual music festival showcasing some of the best young music talent in the south west (22 July 2012).

NEST, led by composer Brian Irvine and writer, director and film-maker John McIlduff is a celebration of the people of Northern Ireland, and the largest public art commission ever undertaken in the country. This participatory project is an art installation made from thousands of donated objects; an archive of photos, labels, stories and films; and a musical performance involving over 500 performers and the Ulster Youth Orchestra. The large-scale installation and performance are taking place at the T13 warehouse in the heart of the Titanic Quarter in Belfast (21 – 29 July 2012).

Boyd & Evans: Views is the first major survey of work by British artists Fionnuala Boyd and Les Evans, collecting painting and photography from their 40-year career. This exhibition is presented by Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, and tracks their artistic practice from painted scenes of everyday urban and suburban life in 1970s Britain to penetrating photographic landscapes of the American southwest (18 July – 2 September 2012).

The Boat Project is a floating collage of memories, a 30-ft sailing boat fashioned from hundreds of donated wooden objects, created by leading performance company Lone Twin. The boat includes some 1,200 donations, including a tiny piece of the Mary Rose, a sliver of Jimi Hendrix’s guitar, a salad server in the shape of a spanner, a plank from the new London 2012 Velodrome, several hockey sticks and a Victorian policeman’s truncheon. It was launched in May, and is travelling across the south of England (7 May – 11 August 2012).

Ruth Mackenzie, Director, Cultural Olympiad and London 2012 Festival, said: “With the Olympic Games only a week away we will use this opportunity to showcase London as a world leader for cultural tourism. Not only are there spectacular free events by leading International Artists happening across the capital, but across the UK too. People should visit the London 2012 Festival website to find out what events are taking place near them.”

Everyone will be able to join in the celebration with over 10 million free opportunities to take part in 12,000 events and performances at 900 venues all over the UK, including 130 world premieres and 85 UK premieres.

All the London 2012 Festival events can be found at www.london2012.com/festival. Follow us on Twitter @London2012Fest and find us on Facebook.

 

To post a comment, you must register and login.