The full performance program for Asia TOPA (Asia-Pacific Triennial of Performing Arts) has been unveiled. Returning after a five-year hiatus and taking place from 20 February – 10 March 2025, Asia TOPA will bring the very best of Asia-Pacific arts, culture and ideas to Naarm/Melbourne.
A joint initiative of Arts Centre Melbourne and the Sidney Myer Fund, and supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria, Asia TOPA is a city-wide celebration taking place over three weeks. It includes collaborations and partnerships with cultural innovators from across the Asia-Pacific region including Taipei Performing Arts Center, Singapore’s The Esplanade and Japan’s Aichi Prefectural Art Theater.
Centred at Arts Centre Melbourne in the heart of the city, Asia TOPA will see many of Naarm/Melbourne’s leading community spaces and cultural institutions – including the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), Fed Square, Footscray Community Arts and Bunjil Place – host captivating events and incredible new performances.
The triennial is made up of three public programming streams: Performance, Nightlife and Knowledge. The headline program for Asia TOPA, the Performance stream features 33 performances, of which 18 are world premieres and 18 have been commissioned as new works by Asia TOPA and Arts Centre Melbourne. Performance is generously supported by Principal Partner Playking Foundation.
Highlights of the performance program include: Milestone, an unmissable triennial opening night performance at Hamer Hall celebrating the work of William Yang, one of Australia’s pioneering Asian-Australian creatives; U>N>I>T>E>D, a new international dance and music collaboration at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl; and Gapu Nupan (Chasing the Rainbow), a groundbreaking cross-cultural collaboration featuring First Nations artists from Arnhem Land and Taiwan.
Asia TOPA’s Nightlife program – a late-night collision of contemporary art and club culture – will be announced on 10 December. The triennial’s Knowledge program – artist-in-conversation and workshop events – will be announced on 14 January 2025.
Dance highlights
Chunky Move’s highly anticipated and ambitious spectacle U>N>I>T>E>D (27 February – 2 March 2025) will premiere on the iconic Sidney Myer Music Bowl stage. Set to gamelan-infused, Javanese trance-inspired techno beats and wearing upcycled exoskeleton costumes, six dancers are transformed into post-human tech-adorned mythological beings. This landmark work is a major international collaboration with Javanese experimental techno group Gabber Modus Operandi, Bali-based streetwear label Future Loundry and world leaders in animatronic design, Naarm/Melbourne based Creature Technology Co.
SAUNIGA (6 – 8 March 2025) is a new work in development from critically acclaimed Queer Indigenous arts collective FAFSWAG at Arts Centre Melbourne’s The Show Room. Recalling the sacred connections between spirits (Aitu) or the old world and the lives of their Samoan descendants, SAUNIGA poses curious reflections on our relationship with animals and the environment, told through a Samoan world view. The presentation at Asia TOPA shares excerpts from early development of the work and is presented in partnership with Creative New Zealand and Factory International, Manchester. The finished work will have its world premiere in Manchester in summer 2025.
Pulau (Island) (22 – 23 February 2025) is a site-specific response to Yayoi Kusama’s iconic body of work by Australian/Javanese choreographer and performer Melanie Lane. Commissioned for Asia TOPA and the NGV’s landmark Yayoi Kusama exhibition, Pulau (Island) will be performed in the NGV’s Great Hall beneath Kusama’s seminal installation, Dots Obsession 1996/2024. The dance piece is a reflection on Lane’s encounter with the work of Kusama, whose obsession with the obliteration of the body and immersive worldbuilding echo that of Lane’s own choreographic work.
Acclaimed Indonesian artist Melati Suryodarmo will present the Australian premiere of Lapse (6 – 8 March 2025) a captivating dance and live music piece that responds to the increasing chaos of our times. Staged at The Martin Myer Arena, University of Melbourne (VCA), Suryodarmo collaborates with a remarkable group of artists from Indonesia, Singapore and Taiwan, including live music by Yuen Chee Wai. Internationally renowned as a performance art pioneer, Suryordarmo will also present two performance lectures at Dancehouse surveying her groundbreaking body of work during the triennial.
With dance, body percussion, syncopated rhythm and stunning visuals, Bunyi Bunyi Bumi (23 – 24 February 2025) reimagines Australian-Asian relationships, shifting between Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islands and Acehnese stories, woven from ancient songlines, mythological pasts and anticolonial perspectives. Legendary choreographer raymond d. blanco and celebrated performance maker Dr. Priya Srinivasan join forces with the celebrated visual artist Vernon Ah Kee to unite Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander, Tamil and Indonesian artists at Bunjil Place in a joyous rebuke of colonial amnesia.
For more information on the full program, visit asiatopa.com.au.
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