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.
