Sydney Festival First Night 2010

Every year, for three weeks in January, the city of Sydney holds a festival of around 80 events covering dance, music, visual art and theatre. For a little history of the festival: http://www.sydneyfestival.org.au/2010/About-Us/Festival-History/. There are also a number of free outdoor events, one of which is the Festival First Night; the city's streets and parks were transformed into a theatre of music and spectacle!

We were lucky because Saturday was such a beautiful day - it was perfect for sitting outside and enjoying some music and entertainment. We headed down to the Domain at 6ish where there was lots of free music, including a performance by Al Green (famous soul singer for those of you who don't know *Dave* cough cough). So famous in fact that we didn't even bother staying to see him....mistake? Yes, probably. Instead we headed over to Hyde Park where there circus performers doing various acrobatics and also DJs (Rach loved this because there were some black people there - can I write that?!). Here we were lucky enough to see the amazing Heliosphere lady. Quite self-explanatory, a lady attached to a heliosphere balloon doing acrobatics across the city - she was very, very cool.

We finished the evening with the "intoxicating sounds of India" on Hyde Park Lawns - Bobby Singh and Friends singing some Indian sounding music. They were surprisingly good! Dave then had to buy himself a Maxibon because he's addicted. After our heavy night out on Friday, it was good to have a chilled out and alcohol free evening. I'm planning to take Dave to the Schaubuhne Berlin's version of Hamlet, which is part of the festival - Shakespeare in German and subtitled; he's going to LOVE it!