Ringling International Arts Festival opens Thursday in Sarasota
Last year's Ringling International Arts Festival saw record crowds, with close to twice as many tickets sold and about two-and-half times more money from ticket sales as the year before.
There were lots of factors involved, including some great shows. But one thing audiences seemed to respond to, a festival official said, was the concentrated schedule. There were a lot of performances every day, in venues around the Ringling campus, so audiences could treat the festival like a buffet. They'd start with something they knew they'd like, but then decide to sample something else, even if they weren't too sure what it was. Audiences leaving one show would give tips to people from another show.
"We'd have shows at 2, 5 and 8 o'clock, and I think each show energized people so that when they left the theater they'd be ready to try something else," said Dwight Currie, the curator of performance for the Ringling. "There was a feeling that every show was a part of a larger whole."
Currie hasn't tampered with the success of that formula this year. The festival features about two dozen performances in four days, each of them about an hour long, in the Historic Asolo Theatre and in the two theaters in the FSU Center for the Performing Arts.
But still, RIAF 2015 has a different look and feel.
All seven performers and companies who will offer shows at the festival are from Southeast Asia.
There have been plenty of other Asian companies in RIAF before, but this is first all-Asian RIAF event, with no American or European companies presenting work. This year's artists come from Taiwan, Japan, Indonesia, China, Cambodia and Thailand.
Still, Currie said, it's not a radical departure from RIAF's previous years. The festival is continuing to present the finest performing arts companies from around the world
"It's part of a continuum, he said. "People look at the schedule
and say 'You're going Asian.' But we're doing what we've always done. We're presenting contemporary performance from around the world."
And, of course, Asian cultures are as diverse as European ones -- Cambodia and Thailand are as different from each other as England and Spain -- so there's as much cultural variety this year as ever before. The acts are diverse too, with everything from circus to dance and music.
One of the acts Currie is most excited to have landed for RIAF is Phare, a Cambodian youth circus company. Even Cambodians are excited about Phare coming to RIAF.
"It's been all over the Cambodian press," Currie said. "This is their first time in the United States, and the first place they're performing in the United States is in Sarasota."
Phare combines traditional Cambodian artistry with a 21st-century sensibility, Currie said. They use circus arts, dance and music to tell a progressive story, titles "Khmer Metal," about what it's like to be a contemporary young person in Cambodia.
One of the biggest crowd-pleasers, he said, should be Orkes Sinten Remen, a lighthearted -- maybe even rowdy -- musical act from Indonesia. The name translates as "Orchestra for Whoever Lives."
"It's just about the sheer joy of music," Currie said. "It's the soul of Indonesia. For me it's impossible not to like it."
Other performances come from Jen Shyu, a Taiwanese dancer-actor-musician whose works has been compared to both ancient court music and to Joni Mitchell; Japanese puppetry artist Tom Lee; TAO Dance Theatre, one of China's most prominent contemporary dance companies' and Indonesian singer and instrumentalist Peni Candra Rini.
RIAF runs opens Thursday and runs through Oct. 18.
Here's the full schedule of performances:
Tom Lee: "Shank's Mare"
Historic Asolo Theater
7 p.m. Oct. 15, 8 p.m. Oct, 16, 5 p.m. Oct. 17, 2 p.m. Oct. 18
Orkes Sinten Remen
Historic Asolo Theater
5 p.m. Oct. 16, 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Oct. 17, 5 p.m. Oct. 18
Phare: The Cambodian Circus: "Khmer Metal"
Mertz Theatre at the FSU Center for the Performing Arts
7 p.m. Oct. 15, 2 p.m. Oct. 16, 8 p.m. Oct. 17, 2 p.m. Oct. 18
TAO Dance Theater
Mertz Theatre at the FSU Center for the Performing Arts
8 p.m. Oct. 16, 2 p.m. Oct., 17, 5 p.m. Oct. 18
Ronnarong Khampha
Cook Theatre at the FSU Center for the Performing Arts
7 p.m. Oct. 15, 5 p.m. Oct. 16, 2 p.m. Oct. 17
Jen Shyu: "Solo Rites: Seven Breaths"
Cook Theatre at the FSU Center for the Performing Arts
8 p.m. Oct. 16, 5 p.m. Oct., 17, 2 p.m. Oct. 18
Peni Candra Rini
Cook Theatre at the FSU Center for the Performing Arts
2 p.m. Oct. 16, 8 p.m. Oct. 17, 5 p.m. Oct. 18
Details: Oct. 15-18, The Ringling, 5401 Bay Shore Road, Sarasota. Tickets: $30-$35 for each production; $27-$31.50 for museum members. Information: 941-358-3180, ringling.org.
Marty Clear, features writer/columnist, can be reached at 941-708-7919. Follow twitter.com/martinclear.
This story was originally published October 9, 2015 at 6:24 PM with the headline "Ringling International Arts Festival opens Thursday in Sarasota ."