Flying in my gondola

GORDANA ANDJELIC-DAVILA SUNDAY 3 OCTOBER, 2010 MELBOURNE FRINGE: ‘Monty & Melville’ is about a young guide dog’s adventure to find the stolen donation collecting plastic dog, and to overcome the Kransky temptation. How very apropos, a performance about a dog held at The Dog Theatre. I almost expected to see doggies jumping through fiery hoops and being rewarded with treats after each accomplished feat. Alas, this was not the case. This story begins with a representative from Guide Dogs Victoria addressing the audience as if they were trainers and canines attending a class; picking random ‘guide dogs hopefuls' and instructing them to perform tricks.  Interestingly, on the day I attended, the audience was evenly split 50/50 adults and children, among which there were a couple of little groups of people in their early 20s not accompanied by kids (having heaps of fun none the less), and they eagerly participated in the show when called upon by the performers who w...

Gordana Andjelic-Davila Friday 25 June, 2010 ACMI: The Director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Glenn D. Lowry is visiting Australia because of the Tim Burton: The Exhibition which is currently showing at ACMI. The Director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Glenn D. Lowry has presented a keynote address at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, (ACMI), this Thursday (24 June). Mr. Lowry is visiting Australia because of the Tim Burton: The Exhibition which is currently showing at ACMI. The exhibition is on its second leg of a world tour which began in New York, at the MoMA (Toronto, Los Angeles and Paris being other locations the exhibit will be going to). When asked how it came to be that Melbourne was chosen as the next city where audiences would be privy to Tim Burton’s amazing works. Mr. Lowry explained that ACM...

GORDANA ANDJELIC-DAVILA THURSDAY 19 NOVEMBER, 2009 The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls  is a documentary, piecing together a patchwork of vignettes from the lives of the Topp Twins past and present; two women, I can’t believe that I did NOT hear of earlier in my life… I truly have been living under a rock, having missed such amazing performers. Not familiar with the Topp Twins, I chose to review their film,  The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls  because of its poster. Pictured are New Zealand’s Jools and Lynda Topp, dressed in outfits which could easily be seen worn by a couple of country ladies from Nashville. The times I have visited the country music capital of the world, I have seen oodles of these kinds of ladies in shopping centres, banks, airports, etc. in their ‘uniforms’, the extremely colourful sweaters (or neon get ups), with adorning patches of Christmas trees, doggies and kittens. Yes, I was drawn to a film by a gaudy jumper. The poster ‘promised’ a...

GORDANA ANDJELIC-DAVILA WEDNESDAY 11 MARCH, 2009 At Natacha’s Melbourne show at the Arts Centre, the audience was treated to this ‘East meets West’ medley, of mesmerizing sounds of love declarations and lament. Among the songs were some old favourites like:  Whatever Lola Wants, Lola Gets  from the film of the same name which when performed brought the house to its feet, and people began to dance in the isles to it. Natacha Atlas was born in Brussels, Belgium to a father of Moroccan, Egyptian, and Palestinian ancestry and a British mother.  Atlas speaks Arabic, French, English, and Spanish, and she has uses them all to sing her songs. She was raised in Brussels, and in Northampton, England. During her performance at the Arts Centre in Melbourne, on the 10th of March, she mentioned that growing up she listened to music in her household, which was both Western and Eastern, and that she was most influenced by the Rahbani Brothers who combined both styles of ...