Asia Pacific Triennial of Performing Arts (Asia TOPA)

After years in the planning, the Asia Pacific Triennial of Performing Arts (Asia TOPA) was for many a highlight in the region’s 2017 performance calendar.

Asia TOPA was initiated by Arts Centre Melbourne and Sidney Myer Fund to build capacity and confidence among the performing arts sector to engage with the cultures of the region – a ‘legacy project’ in the sense that priority was given to projects and activities that would have an impact well beyond the festival.

The Festival, which engaged a consortium of leading Victorian arts organisations also provided numerous industry and professional development opportunities and special events focused on networking and information exchange.

Satan Jawa, part of Asia TOPA. Photo credit: Mark Gambino

Asia TOPA demonstrated a new strategic approach to growing capacity for the Victorian cultural sector to feature contemporary Asian performing arts, to breaking down cultural barriers inhibiting diverse community participation in the arts and creating opportunities for broad-based public engagement with the cultural traditions of the region.

The four-month long event in Melbourne from Jan to Apr, showcased multi-artform work produced through guest productions and collaborations between artists and arts organisations in Victoria and from across Asia. Asia TOPA was a first for Melbourne in its ambitious scope, the range of countries and cultures with which it engaged, and the collaboration it expected between the arts sector and non-arts partners.

With objectives which included a chance to reflect the diversity of the Australian community on performance stages and to facilitate the skills exchange between artists, administration, production and technical teams, Asia TOPA was a triumph in many ways, featuring more than 70 programmes and 280 individual performances and events presented across 46 venues.

Importantly, more than half the programming was new work either commissioned or created for Asia TOPA, this included 39 world premieres and a further 15 performances which were Australian premiere seasons.

Asia Pop Fest, part of Asia TOPA. Photo credit: Mark Gambino

Highlights included:

• Satan Jawa, a partnership between Arts Centre Melbourne and Melbourne Symphony Orchestra – a commission involving a new silent film and live score with Indonesian and Australian artists. The work has been presented in Jakarta, Melbourne, Singapore’s Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay and Holland Festival, with others in discussion. Melbourne composer Iain Grandage, working in collaboration with Indonesian composer Rahayu Supanggah, won a Helpmann Award for best original composition.
• Asia POP Fest, a concert which coincided with the start of the academic year and welcomed 6,000 international students to Melbourne’s iconic Sidney Myer Music Bowl to celebrate the dynamic world of Asian Pop. The event attracted global attention on social media, and a national broadcast audience over 100,000 via event partner SBS Pop Asia.

Most notably, Asia TOPA reached out and invested substantially with purpose-raised funds in the small to medium arts sector to celebrate and profile those intercultural projects already in play and to seed new projects.

What characterised Asia TOPA was the hugely successful commissioning and new works programme which set the event apart from most international arts festivals.  This dedication to risk taking and repertoire development locally and among our neighbours (particularly in the ASEAN region) shifted the traditional festival relationship from one of ‘purchase and present’ to creation.  Likewise, Arts Centre Melbourne worked with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Australia Council, Creative Victoria and local government to develop a model of reciprocity. It was a model which recognised that a funding culture which focuses almost exclusively on Australian ‘export’ misses the opportunity to place Australian and Asian artists at the creative heart of inter-cultural dialogue and the deep foundations of people to people connection.

Plans are already underway to ensure that the momentum of Asia TOPA continues through to its return in 2020.

Visit Art Centre Melbourne’s website here.