Profile

A conversation about memory, memoir and bringing the spirit of punk to the piano.

At age 60, dancer and choreographer Yang Liping is still going strong, determined to keep the cultural traditions of China’s ethnic minorities alive. She speaks about her 50-year career and her striking new version of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. “I want to fill the movement with traditional culture and art to make it more solid, more relevant, and more how I think contemporary dance should be.”

The full life, troubled mind and untimely death of AFL icon Danny Frawley.

As the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s principal violin, Satu Vänskä teases astonishing music from her centuries-old instrument. But away from the stage, Vänskä’s musical tastes march to a very different beat.

Exiled from South Africa as a teenager, Lebo M made his way to the US with nothing but his talent. Eventually he escaped poverty and built a career, creating one of cinema’s most iconic and enduring musical moments. “You get driven and get motivated by the fact that where you come from opportunity was zero, and you have an indirect responsibility to be somebody.”

A visit to Arts Project, the studio of sketcher Adrian Lazzaro.

Throughout her career, artist Julie Gough has shone light on Tasmania’s colonial history and the genocidal war against Aboriginal people, including her ancestors. With a major solo exhibition at TMAG, Tense Past, she speaks about her remarkable work. “Art is not only a visual outcome; making each artwork is my way of proceeding through the quagmire of the past.”

A chat with Lamisse Hamouda about how she freed her father from an Egyptian prison.

With his bold, sumptuous paintings, Michael Armitage is intent on challenging colonial assumptions about East Africa and revealing the region’s complexities. “Sex, poverty and dictators: if you are talking about this part of the world, you always come up against those stereotypes and that’s been very difficult … For me, it’s been important to use an exotic language but show that it is also a form of dumbing down.”

Talking The Wife, The Female Persuasion and the female gaze with novelist Meg Wolitzer.