OzAsia Festival 2023

OzAsia Festival 2023

Audiences can expect remarkable contemporary dance, powerful theatre, delicious cuisine, engaging conversations and brilliant musicians when OzAsia Festival, Australia’s leading contemporary arts festival engaging with Asia, returns to Adelaide Festival Centre from 19 October to 5 November.

This year’s dynamic programme features more than 300 national and international artists from 13 countries, and includes three world premieres, seven Australian premieres and nine Adelaide premieres.

On the opening weekend more than a dozen giant lanterns will light up the riverbank precinct for the much-loved Moon Lantern Trail. This year will feature three new lanterns, including one specially created to celebrate Adelaide Festival Centre’s 50^th anniversary. This free, family favourite event also offers roving performances, live music, interactive workshops, and delectable food.

Noriko Tadano – Lucky Dumpling Market 2023 (Photo Credit: Xplorer Studio)

Showcasing the best of Asian and Asian Australian performance, OzAsia Festival is curated by Artistic Director Annette Shun Wah: “It’s such a joy that for this, my third OzAsia Festival program, I’ve been able to re-connect with artists in our region. As a result, we’ve invited some stunning productions that are exciting audiences in Asia, while continuing to support new Asian Australian works and fertile artistic collaborations across Asia and Australia.

“Reflecting the times, the themes of freedom, survival of endangered cultures and resilience are occupying the thoughts of many artists right now, both locally and abroad, providing profound and provocative works for our 2023 program.”

After a stellar career creating works for Taiwan’s Cloud Gate Dance Theatre and New York’s Martha Graham Dance Company, tiaen tiamen Episode 1 is choreographer Bulareyaung Pagarlava’s bold statement about the survival of culture. Performed by Bulareyaung Dance Company, an Indigenous performing arts group from Taiwan, this Australian premiere is firmly rooted in tradition, yet brimming with radiant colour and psychedelic electronic beats.

tiaen tiamen Episode 1 photographer (Photo credit: Kim Lee)

In an intimate performance on the Festival Theatre stage, Infinitely Closer by Singapore’s T.H.E Dance Company will beckon audiences to step inside the work itself for an interactive and uniquely engaging experience that combines contemporary dance with enthralling holograms. Created with a team of international collaborators featuring Australian dancer Billy Keohavong led by director Kuik Swee Boon, this Australian premiere reflects upon freedom within the shifting realities of our modern times.

Adelaide Festival Centre CEO & Artistic Director Douglas Gautier AM: “We are proud to present three spectacular weeks of the best contemporary Asian and Asian Australian performance, art, literature, cuisine, and culture this spring, and look forward to welcoming audiences to our venues as OzAsia Festival lights up the riverbank precinct once again.

“What a wonderful way to round out our 50th anniversary year that has showcased all five of Adelaide Festival Centre’s diverse festivals.”

Theatre buffs can look forward to two returning international companies – including New Zealand’s Indian Ink Theatre Company with the South Australian premiere of Paradise or the Impermanence of Ice Cream. This powerful play melds a dash of Bollywood disco and playful puppetry with thought-provoking musings on impermanence – of life, love and ice cream delivered by the same company that dazzled audiences at the 2018 OzAsia Festival with Guru of Chai.

Malaysia’s Five Arts Centre will return to OzAsia Festival with their new work A Notional History, featuring a performer, a journalist, and an activist exploring the possible histories for a different Malaysia, intersecting the personal, the national, and the notional. This documentary performance calls for wider perspectives on history and is a companion piece to Punk Protest Propaganda: The Political Art of Fahmi Reza, exhibiting at Nexus Arts Gallery.

In another Australian premiere by a celebrated international performer, Canadian composer and performer Njo Kong Kie has transformed the poetry of worker-poet Xu Lizhi into song. In I Swallowed A Moon Made of Iron Njo’s score for solo voice and piano delivers a contemplative landscape combined with a rich tapestry of video imagery.

I Swallowed a Moon Made of Iron (Photo by: Dahlia Katz)

Music is used to explore the migrant experience in Dung Nguyen and Peter Knight’s 1988, taking the year Dung arrived in Australia as the starting point for an extraordinary musical and visual journey.

Fusing the traditional and contemporary is The Bridal Lament – a multi-disciplinary live performance by award-winning vocalist, producer and artist Rainbow Chan. Drawing on her Weitou ancestry (the first settlers of Hong Kong), the work reimagines a ritual known as the bridal lament, bringing to life an emotive and dynamic world of projection, movement and colour, in Rainbow’s theatrical debut.

Buried TeaBowl – OKUNI is a solo performance by Yumi Umiumare, Australia’s leading Butoh artist, unearthing sacred female power which has been buried throughout history. Combining dance, text, and song, underscored by dynamic visual elements, a compelling original musical score, and a tea ceremony, Yumi channels the multifaceted character of Okuni, a Japanese female dancer and shrine maiden who initiated Kabuki theatre in the early 1600s.

OzAsia Festival favourite, Lucky Dumpling Market, is once again at Elder Park serving up a vibrant range of delicious cuisine from the best local vendors. Enjoy free live entertainment on the outdoor Lucky Beats stage featuring a selection of local, national and international contemporary music acts including Emily Wurramara, festival favourites 1300, triple j’s Jade Zoe and friends, Jaguar Jonze, Singapore’s SAtheCollective, Hyoshi in Counterpoint and more!

Another treat for the final weekend is the return of OzAsia Festival’s Bubble Tea Garden at Festival Plaza; the perfect place to relax in the sunshine with friends and family, a great pit-stop between In Other Words sessions.

Bubble Tea Garden – OzAsia Festival 2022 (Photo credit: Xplorer Studio)

In Other Words at OzAsia Festival 2023

In Other Words, returns for another year of thought-provoking panels, discussions and conversations with novelists, journalists, poets, playwrights, performers, and creatives from around the world.

An inspiring three-day extravaganza of big ideas and literary masterpieces, In Other Words is OzAsia Festival’s forum for conversations about Australia’s engagement with Asia.

In Other Words (Photo credit: Daniel Purvis)

Including lively discussions on everything from race, power, community, gender, sexuality, family, to food and more! From the Opening Night Gala to the uproarious Closing Night Debate, In Other Words is the perfect way to spend the final weekend of OzAsia Festival. Held across Adelaide Festival Centre, In Other Words remains the largest gathering of Asian and Asian Australian writers and thinkers in the country.

This year, there will be international guests from Indonesia, South Korea and Malaysia’s George Town Literary Festival to mark the 50th anniversary of the sister city relationship between George Town, Penang and Adelaide. Writers joining In Other Words this year include local storytellers to Miles Franklin winners and nominees to international award-winners.

Curated by Jennifer Wong with special guest curators, South Australian luminary, Durhkanai Ayubi, and Australian media personality, Sami Shah.

Jennifer Wong: “It’s an incredibly exciting time to be a fan of writing by Asian Australians and Asian authors internationally. Distinctive new voices are making themselves heard alongside established writers, and I’m thrilled that you’ll encounter both up close at In Other Words. Whether you’re into fiction or non-fiction, memoir or politics, romance or food, pop culture or poetry, there’s something to delight, enlighten, and challenge you at our celebration of storytelling and big ideas. Join us for a weekend of thought-provoking and unforgettable conversations!”

Jennifer Wong (Photo credit: Lin Jie Kong)

Durkhanai Ayubi: “I’m delighted to be a Guest Curator for In Other Words! My involvement over the past couple of years has solidified for me just how unique and necessary a platform like In Other Words is – within OzAsia Festival, but also within the broader public discourse. By bringing in and elevating often negated but critical voices, it is a space that pierces and generates alternatives to the dominant narrative that sits at the core of much of our collective limitations. I’m looking forward to fostering dialogue and exchange that, through the multiplicity of representations it holds, creates room for us all and shifts us towards more expansive possibilities.”

Durkhanai Ayubi (Photo credit: Sia Duff)

Sami Shah: “Australia’s future is a future of migrants from all over Asia making this country home, and adding to its identity and culture in ways that will enrich it greatly. In Other Words is a celebration then, of not just the stories of Asian Australians who have been here for a generation or more, but those arriving newly to these shores, bringing with them their food, art, music, languages, and voices. This is a festival for anyone connected by a tradition of leaving their shoes outside the front door and bringing their joy and love inside with them.” 

Sami Shah