home-background-08
Tuesday, June 17, 2025
HomeCulturePerformance - Heard.Syd

Performance – Heard.Syd

 

The hypnotic susurrations of the horse-suits in Nick Cave’s Heard. Photo: Courtesy of the artist
The hypnotic susurrations of the horse-suits in Nick Cave’s Heard. Photo: Courtesy of the artist

I have experienced many beautiful and haunting moments in a long life and a few have been so intense that I have never revisited the events that gave rise to them. I have never looked again at The Russian Ark, the original The Red Balloon, or seen again the Cirque de Soleil or reread The Lost Domain, as each of them left me feeling that I had lost something unbearably important to me.

And this will be true for me of American artist Nick Cave’s Heard.Syd, a wonderfully imaginative performance set to live percussion and featuring 30 full-size horse-suits, each brought to life by two unseen dancers. The suits are fabulous creations, a mixture of African-style synthetic raffia and Tibetan textiles, in both vibrant and subtle shades, each softly, hypnotically susurrating as the dancers maintain constant movement.

In anticipation, I wait with many others behind the mainly percussive Matavai Pacific Cultural Arts musicians in the post-industrial sublimity of Carriageworks. In response to the sound of the conch the first horses appear shyly yet eagerly at the far end of the hall and as they move delicately forward, more and more throng the space. Each has its own character, expressed through bowing, nudging, trotting, circling, and together they make up a miraculous herd seemingly transported from a pastoral fantasy.

As a child I would not have been in the least surprised if my large dog had invited me to sit on his back and we had flown high across the treetops, and now here I was suddenly reconnected with this lost time, the lost edenic world. Before I knew it, the visionary herd was departing, leaving a single horse to exchange final glances with the mesmerised spectators, before it too departed leaving me near to tears.

So when Nick Cave brings his next project Until to Carriageworks in 2018, also free to the public, go and see it. I can promise you an experience that will take you into the realms of wish, wonder and surprise.

 

 

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

spot_img
- Advertisment -spot_img
- Advertisment -spot_img

Forum sparks dialogue on crime, cohesion and response

A public forum held at Alexandria Park Community School on June 9 drew more than 90 residents, many from the Asian migrant community, to address growing concerns about safety in Green Square, Zetland, and surrounding suburbs.

Aunty Millie Ingram recognised in King’s Birthday Honours List

Respected Wiradjuri Elder and long-time Redfern community leader Aunty Millie Ingram has been appointed as a Member (AM) of the Order of Australia in the 2025 King’s Birthday Honours ...

Volunteers’ News – June 2025

Volunteers’ News – June 2025.

Sydney Writers’ Festival 2025 – guest curator Nardi Simpson on storytelling, the body and First Nations voices

At this year’s Sydney Writers’ Festival, guest curator Nardi Simpson didn’t just help design the program, she created a space where relationships, connection, the body and the written word intersect.

Weaving a way to knowledge and healing 

I was born Karleen Green in Brisbane, even though my family lived at Fingal on the Tweed River in Bundjalung country, northern NSW.

Resilience, truth and faith – Jeffrey Samuels and the power of art

On Sunday May 25, ahead of National Sorry Day, a powerful moment of reflection and recognition unfolded at the Uniting Church in Ashfield.