Melbourne Review Wrap: The Sex Pistols at Festival Hall; Cyndi Lauper at the Rod Lavener Arena; Matthew Ottignon

MUSIC
Cyndi Lauper: The Farewell Tour ★★★★
Rod Lavener Arena, April 2nd

Cyndi Lauper walks on stage with an explosion of rainbow confetti and dives directly She bopA hymn to masturbation. He is 71 years old, 160 centimeters tall and exuberant to death with blue-green hair, exploding through an adductor’s solo before leafing through the tool out of the stage.

The crowd is in tulle skirts, glitter and colored wigs, which is on sale in the atrium – the money goes to its beneficial organization, the girls only want to have fundamental rights.

Tonight is Presumably part of Lauper’s farewell tourAnd she comes out at the top. It still has a voice like a pastel box, bright, disordered and expressive. He uses everything, with a vibrated vibrate, sometimes heardly breathless, inaccurate and alive. The set is heavy of the 80s, leaning on for its debut in ’83 It’s so unusualWith some things of the 90s in the middle of the road and, with my great joy, the song he did The Goonies thrown inside.

It is a talking night. “It’s not just a Bang-Bang show,” says not apologetically in his irresistible Drawl of Brooklyn (“He is a paw-deee!”). He tells us about the family, the cousin who had a pigeon on his roof, the women who raised him and the way they had cut the old clothes and did something new with them.

He does the same with his art, of course. Many of his songs are written by others but makes them completely. Tells us he recorded I led all nightWritten for Roy Orbison, because there were no song on the radio on the guidance of women. “When you get in the car and you can drive wherever you want to go crazy, it’s a song of power.”

It changes through half a dozen costume changes, each with a different hair color: sparkling and mug jackets, asymmetrical clothes, underwear outside, a number of Desmond on the floor, a red jacket with a bright yellow wig. “I tried to dress you with faw,” he says. As the designer of this outfit Christian Syrian said to her: “Gays want glamorous”.

For the evergreen From time to timeMelbourne’s Tones and me It joins for a duet that is like every wedding dance floor that you have ever been: disordered and beautiful. And she delivers Real colors Impeccablely, standing on a small satellite stage in the middle of the arena with long meters of rainbow scarf in the air.

For the ending, The girls just want to have funIt is united to the Veronicaas, which they sink into the background in a stage designed in homage to Polka-Doet to the artist Yayoi Kusama.

This too, his signed melody, is a cover of a pop-punk number of the late 70s, sung by a man, but I challenge you to listen to that original and I consider it something less than a sketch for those whom Lauper can color and do something wonderful, challenging and fun.
Review from Will Cox

JAZZ
Matthew Ottignon’s Flying ★★★★
The JazzLab, April 4th

Matthew Ottignon’s latest album was conceived during a period of unusual calm for the composer-Saxophonist. Returning to Sydney after years of tour and performing in bands of other people, Ottignon has finally found time to leave the flight of his creativity. That idea of ​​flight – and the freedom that embodies – resonates throughout the album, entitled Fly.

His current quartet has now adopted Volant as a band name, and is the perfect moniker for an outfit that can slide and climb naturally as a flock of birds. One of the songs they played in Jazzlab on Friday evening (Murmur) was inspired by Storni’s flight, moving through the sky like an wavy cloud and capable of sudden and instinctive changes of direction. Swift, beating the pulsations from Lauren Tsamouras’ piano, Hannah James’s bass and Hayley Chan’s drum created a sense of propulsion and lifting while Ottignon’s sax hovered, then went up to a rapid movement landscape.

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Rolling and looking for He exuded a similar energy, although with a more open and expansive feeling. Ottignon’s full -bodied tenor brushed in a circle on the turbulent sea of ​​the rhythmic section, climbing with intensity full of feeling before the waves stabilized unexpectedly and the sea became calm.

Other melodies have shown the group’s ability to evoke the atmosphere through subtlety and shades. Circular breathing Open with a whisper of brushes on plates, low bow and spectral shades from the sax of Ottignon; Nature He evoked an air of mystery through the changes of meditabondo agreement and a undulating without haste and rolling.

But this is a band that also knows how to groove, even on strange meters and suitable rhythms. Rocky Lux saw the ensemble that committed himself to a 7/4 Latin shortly; Bilpin set up a exuberant Canter who gur -ging of vitality; and on the final melody (Joets).
Review from Jessica Nicholas

DANCE
Poesis and the Bastard ★★★
Dancehouse, Carlton, until April 5th

The last Double Bill Dancehouse presents two works that differ wildly in their commitments for technique and virtuosity, but which together make a corroborating and stimulating evening of the dance theater.

Sencilly entitled Gabriella Imricova The bastard It aims to challenge expectations with a surprising theater mixture, performance art and only small dance. It is a little punk and a little Mongrel, but constantly fun.

This is a performance in two halves. Firstly, we get a dry parody of non -dance, a form dated experimental dance in some way in which movement is retained: it is slow, repetitive and very low.

Both sides of this performance, IMICOVA turns to the public, simulating apprehension on its reception: if it adapts to the context and if it works as a dance. It is mischievous but not without charm.

Then follows a wild rant on art and novelty. There have been some strikes on the opening evening, but this is certainly a victory for an artist who declares that trolling is a creative practice.

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Prue Lang’s Poetry It is found in a safer way in the conventions of contemporary dance. It is a duet in which the two dancers generate surprising compositions from thin contrasts in shape, line and intention.

Both artists are extraordinary. Benjamin Hancock, with its strange elongations, projects a kind of alien grace. And Tara Jade Samaya – return to Melbourne after a long absence – is all strength and control.

Poetry They move through various phases, the dancers organize themselves in unexpected but visually satisfactory ways, mixing traditions and vocabularies, folding together and even suddenly with a follower game.

The costumes exaggerate the effects of the counterpoint in interesting ways. Samaya appears in boxing equipment while Hancock is in the tip shoes: there are units with long motifs, absurd heels, a lot of active clothing and some deluxe hairy boots.

It is a little cerebral but still attractive. Imricova has the freshness of a new voice, but Lang brings the most serious commitment with contemporary dance and its possibilities.
Review from Andrew Fuhrmann

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