As the finale of the four-year Cultural Olympiad, next summer’s London 2012 Festival is the culmination of a programme that has infused music, theatre, dance, literature and the visual arts.
Opening on Midsummer’s Day, June 21, the event begins with a series of concerts throughout the country. In Londonderry, a pop concert inspired by the Olympic Truce will be fronted by Peace One Day founder Jeremy Gilley and its ambassador Jude Law. In Scotland, the Venezuelan Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra and conductor Gustavo Dudamel are joined by young people from the Raploch Estate for an open-air concert set against Stirling Castle. In Birmingham, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the CBSO Chorus, Youth Chorus and Children’s Chorus will all gather at the city’s Symphony Hall for the UK premiere of Weltethos by Jonathan Harvey.
If good weather holds, one of the most spectacular opening events should take place at Windermere, where On the Night Shift is being held. Created especially for the festival, the outdoor performance fuses music and fireworks in a display by French street arts company Les Commandos Percu. The event draws to a close on Sept 9, and in the interim the festival will provide 10 million opportunities to see events for free.
In London, tens of thousands are expected at the BBC Radio 1 Hackney Weekend 2012. Some 80 international and UK musicians and DJs are scheduled to perform, with confirmed acts so far including Leona Lewis and Plan B. Also in London, the BT River of Music festival is a weekend-long musical extravaganza, with a plethora of performances representing the 200 nations participating in the Games. Landmarks along the Thames will act as anchors for the six continents, with Trafalgar Square and Somerset House acting as the Europe stages and the Tower of London being the Americas stage.
Elsewhere, the World Shakespeare Festival is the most ambitious celebration of the Bard’s work to ever be staged. A collaborative effort between the Royal Shakespeare Company, Shakespeare’s Globe and the National Theatre, it combines the work of thousands of different artists and features contributions from more than 50 separate arts organisations. Large-scale, big budget productions of classic Shakespeare works will be staged, with theatre troupes from as far afield as Iraq, Moscow and China presenting works and confirming the enduring the international influence the writer continues to have centuries after his death. In tandem with the festival, the British Museum will stage the exhibition Shakespeare: Staging the World and an extensive number of amateur productions of Shakespeare classics are scheduled to take place in communities across the country.
Other highlights include:
In theatre, the inaugural Happy Days – Enniskillen International Beckett Festival, the world’s first festival dedicated to Samuel Beckett, is held at Enniskillen, while Academy Award winner Cate Blanchett returns to the London stage for the first time in 13 years, where she will perform in Botho Strauss’s Gross Und Klein.
In performance and dance, the Dr Dee opera, written by Damon Albarn of Blur and Gorillaz, has its London premiere at the London Coliseum following its critically acclaimed run at the Manchester International Festival. In Wales, singers, musicians and performers drawn from throughout the South Wales Vallesy join artists from South African townships to perform a tribute to freedom and democracy at Cardiff’s Millennium Centre; the forests of north Wales are the setting for performances from Argentinean choreographer and director Constanza Macras.
Some five million people are expected to participate in Big Dance, which will take place throughout the country. A focal point on July 14 will be Trafalgar Square, where Wayne McGregor will lead 2,000 dancers in a choreographed performance. The British Council will be encouraging school children throughout the world to join a record-breaking attempt to create the largest multi-location dance routine ever performed. One of the most notable events scheduled for Northern Ireland is Land of Giants. Combining acrobatics, aerial dance, carnival and circus, the fast-paced spectacle will be performed to an audience of 20,000 people in Belfast.
In music, the 2012 Proms season will see Daniel Barenboim lead the West Eastern Divan Orchestra in a complete Beethoven Symphony cycle – a performance of Beethoven 9 will take place to mark the opening of the Olympics on July 27. In Glasgow, Zaha Hadid’s new Museum of Transport will reverberate to the sounds of its occupants as an interactive installation allows them to make music using the building itself.
Every British vale and sleepy village is invited to ring in the Olympics and contribute to the latest work by a Turner Prize-winning artist during Martin Creed’s Work No. 1197: All the bells in a country rung as quickly and as loudly as possible for three minutes. At 8am on July 27, people throughout the UK are encouraged to ring bells of every tone and timbre to open the games and welcome visitors to Britain. For Martin Creed, the inspiration behind the initiative is straightforward: “It’s by people and for people. On the morning of the opening of the Games it’s a massive signal that something is happening.”