This year’s Malta International Arts Festival is dominated by a mix of edgy, contemporary artists and more classical performers as the island gets ready to welcome over 30 Maltese and international acts who will be taking part in this year’s summer festival.
A definite puller and undoubtedly one of the biggest names at this year’s festival is Political Mother, created by the boundary-breaking choreographer and composer Hofesh Shechter, who was born in Israel.
The production, which has been described by critics as “a danced musical video for the MTV generation”, is a gritty denunciation of totalitarian political regimes through adrenalin-infused movements, pounding beats and an original score. Political Mother takes place on July 13 at 9pm at Fort St Elmo.
Opening the festival will be the Big Band Brothers on Friday. The 17-piece band returns under the direction of the energetic Daniel Cauchi, this time with the musicians housed in a detachable structure playing to an opening routine choreographed by Oded Ronen.
Ronen is known for replacing standard dance ideas with playful fantasies that bridge the worlds of imagination and physics. The show takes place in St George’s Square, Valletta, starting with Ronen’s Imagery in Motion dance performance at 9pm. Entrance is free.
Dance plays a strong part in the festival, with various other performances featuring on the festival calendar, including the now firmly established Dance Hybrid.
This year also sees visual arts returning to the festival, with a photographic exhibition by Reza Deghati running between Saturday and July 15.
A philanthropist, idealist, humanist and renowned photojournalist, Reza has spent the past 40 years sharing with the world his unique photographs capturing people, cultures and traditions, thereby enabling a deeper understanding between human beings.
Deghati is known for providing visual education to vulnerable communities in order to give them the means of becoming trained and able to express themselves through photography.
A watercolours exhibition by Kenneth Zammit Tabona is also taking place at the Malta Society of Arts, starting Saturday.
Theatre, literature and music come together thanks to Daqxejn ta’ Requiem lil Leli, being held on July 4 at 9pm at Fort St Elmo.
A gritty denunciation of totalitarian political regimes through adrenalin-infused movements
The work was written by Immanuel Mifsud when the writer was invited to present his work on the theme of death for All Souls Day in 2016, and has now been set to music by Kris Spiteri and adapted to theatre by Teatru Anon and Vince Briffa.
Other performance art pieces that are set to draw the crowds include From Hell to Paradise, bringing together light, music and special effects with dance, athletic circus and pantomime.
Dancers defy gravity and extraordinary images appear from the darkness in a non-stop parade of effects. The show takes place on July 9 at 9pm at Fort St Elmo.
Music – both in its classical form and in more contemporary format – is also on the bill, starting with Renzo Spiteri’s visual/ sound art piece, Sounding Dance, which presents audiences with audio-visual material captured through a series of encounters held across several countries between dancers and public spaces.
The event takes place on July 4 and 5 between 10am and noon at the Malta Society of Arts, Valletta. Entrance is free.
Sounding Dance sees dancers taking on the dual role of listeners and reactors to the sounds that they absorb, letting the found sounds resonate so as to let their bodies become resonating agents too.
The complex, ever-changing sonic textures that surround each body become the soundtrack with which each dancer moves within his or her space.
Other music dates on the programme include contemporary jazz outfit Lieko Quintet, based in Manchester; baroque music and dance outfit Aria By No Gravity; the Virtuosi series of events, featuring different classical musicians; the choir of Clare College; a Classical Jukebox; and Manchester’s Another Way Agbeko, dubbed an ‘Afro party monster’, among others.
As has become traditional, the festival comes to an end with a concert by the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra(MPO) at the Mediterranean Conference Centre, this year directed by Gergely Madaras.
The MPO will perform Claude Debussy’s symphonic suite La Mer, which gives the concert its name; this will be followed by a performance of Benjamin Britten’s Four Sea Suites, extracted from his opera Peter Grimes.
The concert also includes a rendition of Charles Camilleri’s Mediterranean Piano Concerto by 13-year-old prodigy Dmitry Ishkhanov, a Maltese pianist of Russo-Armenian origin.
The Malta International Arts Festival takes place in various locations around Malta between June 29 and July 15.
A full programme is available online.
www.maltaartsfestival.org