The opening night of the Dunedin Arts Festival 2025 was presented as "a taster for the festival, in February" and has certainly set the bar for the rest of the programme. The Night has a Thousand Eyes is a sensual and contemplative exploration into those darkest of hours before the dawn.
The performance and production team consists of dancers Michael Parmenter and Lucy Marinkovich (both previous Caroline Plummer community dance fellows), concert pianist Jeffrey Grice and lighting designer Martyn Roberts.
Collectively, they have created a beautifully nuanced piece set to Lucien Johnson’s melancholic and textured composition evoking all starry nocturnal wonderment.
The audience arrives and has to walk around the performance space, a large square encased in long white mesh fabric, to get their seats — I love this crossover between "spaces" as it brings the viewer right into the heart of the work.
It is performed in abstracted vignettes and encapsulates grace and ease along with a dreamlike quality.
The whole work is accompanied by very clever use of lighting, particularly when both Parmenter and Marinkovich were standing in front of the spotlight beams facing the audience and seeming to play with the light beams creating refractions and angles, bending the light to their will.
The white cloak costume scenes were stunning and ethereal — both Marinkovich and Parmenter were mesmerising. Parmenter covered in stars was transcendent and the perfect way to end this piece. And for someone who is 70 and still performing — he still has it!
Marinkovich has and will always be an absolute joy to watch. Her delicateness and grace is just something else.
Go and see this piece with starry eyes and a sense of reflection.
It will tide you over until the rest of the festival in March.
Review by Penny Neilson
