As an artist and performer, Rosie Dennis is not your typical door-to-door saleswoman. But over the past few months she has trawled suburban streets on the outskirts of south-western Sydney, gathering support for her latest project. She even set up in the local shopping centre, chatting with passing trade and recruiting helping hands.
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The upshot of all this shoe leather: to create a street stage in Minto and bring the Sydney Festival to residents' doorsteps.
Produced by Campbelltown Arts Centre, MINTO:LIVE will next week transform the suburb's streets into a huge performance work, bringing together artists and residents to perform, share stories and socialise. The event directly involves about 150 artists and locals, more than half of whom are volunteers, and aims to entice visitors and 3500-odd residents outside for three nights of theatre, dance, film and music.
"It's just a massive, massive job," says Dennis, who is curating the event. "But for some reason [drumming up enthusiasm] wasn't difficult. I don't know why, but each step of the way there's been a lot of support for this."
So does Dennis see the occasion as a kind of party? Well, no. A street festival then? Not quite. As the first event of its kind on this scale in NSW, she describes it as an artistic experiment. "If it gets people talking and having a conversation with each other, it's been a success."
Over three hours, each evening comprises at least eight separate performances, including long and short works that engage local students, weavers, singers and dancers. The procession begins in a car park, then winds through a one-kilometre route before finishing with a pyrotechnic performance.
"I loved that idea of placing work on a street stage and making it free," Dennis says. "You can happen upon it by opening your front door. As it moves through the streets it picks up different audiences and that's exciting."
Dennis introduced the concept to Minto after visiting a similar small-town festival in Finland. The suburb's diverse demographic and cultural mix make an intriguing backdrop, she says, as do the massive physical and cultural changes wrought by a controversial development project, aimed at creating about 1000 new private and public housing homes.
The procession will even pass by an urban panorama that reflects these shifts: older homes, manicured vacant lots for sale, and sparkling new houses.
"To come over this hill and have a vista of these three things happening encapsulates the change happening in this suburb," Dennis says. But the distinctly local flavour of the occasion is tempered by some big international names such as the English performance group Lone Twin, directed by Gregg Whelan and Gary Winters. They will host their work Street Dance for the first time outside Britain in what will also be their first public performance in Sydney, collaborating with residents who then dance out their lives in the street using gestures that reflect daily tasks.
Joining Lone Twin is a Sydney dance artist, Julie-Anne Long, who works with each household in their lounge rooms and kitchens, getting to know them, helping to choreograph moves and rehearsing each dance. They start with familiar, comfortable movements, then enlarge them and finesse them.
The result will be a kind of modern-day folk dance that honours everyday life in a social way, Whelan says.
"The pieces are a series of dance portraits of the people who work and live here. It's a snapshot of life in Minto. The dances are about the people who are dancing them - aspects of their life, where they live, who they are, their family, their past and aspirations."
Some of the volunteers who have had dance experience are Judi Carroll and her daughters Lisa Carroll, 19, and Rachel Hamilton, 6. The three are versed in genres such as jazz, tap, ballet, ballroom and hip-hop but are looking forward to trying new styles and performing in front of a large audience for the first time.
"We all dance, but never anything like this. This is extremely different to anything we've done before," Judi Carroll says. "It's also never been done in Australia before and sometimes it's nice to be part of something that's new."
Local embroiderers, knitters and weavers will also help the Sydney artist Nicole Barakat create a textile installation called Common Thread from about 400 metres of thick, hand-made string. The thread, made from donated domestic linen such as sheets, towels and tablecloths, will be crocheted into a huge doily. The aim, Barakat says, is to create something tangible while forging new social connections.
"It's amazing how many artists have come out of the woodwork," she says.
"We tend to think of art as city-centric, but we forget artists live everywhere."
MINTO: LIVE will run from 6-9pm in Minto's streets from Thursday to Saturday, starting in Minto Mall car park.
Phone 4645 4100 or visit mintolive2011.wordpress.comUp your streetStreet Dance: the British company Lone Twin and residents perform street dances that reflect everyday life and personal stories.Common Thread: the Australian artist Nicole Barakat works with embroiderers and weavers to create a textile installation from 400 metres of string made from donated domestic linen.TEN: Stand-up comedy meets spoken word and physical movement when the artist Hetain Patel performs with Pacific Islander drummers.Pyrotechnics: the Belgian artist Gwendoline Robin closes with a pyrotechnic performance.
