Requiem at SKYCITY Theatre

Requiem at SKYCITY Theatre

Lemi Ponifasio World Premiere in Vienna for Mozart 250th Anniversary

REQUIEM is a new work by Lemi Ponifasio and MAU, commissioned by New Crowned Hope, a specially created festival supported by the city of Vienna and produced by the Vienna Festival to celebrate the 250th Anniversary of Mozart within the Wiener Mozartjahr 2006.

REQUIEM will premiere in Vienna November 25 - 28 and will then be presented at the Royal Flemish Theatre (KVS) in Brussels, Belgium, December 2, 3.

Inspired by the profound humanity of Mozart’s work, the celebrated director Peter Sellars has conceived and curated the New Crowned Hope festival, inviting and commissioning contemporary international artists who creatively engage with the cultural, intellectual and social issues of today to create new work.

The uncompromising and controversial work of choreographer Lemi Ponifasio brings an overwhelming response to the visionary themes of Mozart’s last years: magic and transformation, truth and reconciliation, and ceremony for the dead.

Lemi Ponifasio refers to REQUIEM as a pilgrimage of hope, and echoes the march of Dame Whina Cooper and the history of social negotiations in New Zealand and the Pacific. With his company MAU, Ponifasio has chosen to collaborate with the smallest islands of the Pacific, Kiribati, as a cultural and symbolic act of hearing from everyone.

REQUIEM is created from Pacific rites of fare-welling the dead, of remembrance, and of greeting the ancestors. REQUIEM is composed of ancient ancestral chants, oratory, incantation, songs of love, songs of lamentation, songs of wandering, songs of joy, songs of the navigators, songs of the frigate bird…

Lemi Ponifasio: ‘The dead shall be at the surface of the world. We shall encounter the most horrible, the most beautiful and the most wondrous creatures that return to/within us. Requiem is to be alive more beautifully.’

Ponifasio presents his work throughout the Pacific region and in international events such as the Venice Biennale, Theatre Der Welt, Holland Festival and the Adelaide Festival.

Before the opening in Vienna, REQUIEM will preview in Auckland’s SKYCITY Theatre, September 15, 16, 17.

September 15, 16 and 17 at 8pm
Tickets $45.00 from Ticketek
Tel 309 5000 or www.ticketek.co.nz

ENDS

© Scoop Media