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Culture
Brought to you by: Monaco Life
Pictured dancer: Yuumi Yamada | The Australian Ballet[/caption]
Curated by costume designer Belinda Pieris, ‘Missed Nuance’ showcases the talents of leading Australian fashion designers and couturiers and features an original score by Melbourne-based composer Troy Rogan.
The dancers from the Ballet Monte Carlo were Ksenia Abbazova, Victoria Ananyan, Cristian Assis, Daniele Delvecchio, Katrin Schrader, Alessandra Tognoloni.
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Pictured dancer: Callum Linnane | The Australian Ballet[/caption]
Monaco Life Editor Cassandra Tanti asked Niv Novak to explain how he managed to achieve such an incredible work of art…
Monaco Life: What motivated you to create this film?
Niv Novak: As a passionate photographer of dance I realised that so much of the beauty is missed - lost to speed. I wanted to capture it all, lit as beautifully as a photograph. The precision, athleticism, beauty and the striving for higher ideals through ballet & dance is my motivation.
What techniques were needed to achieve the end result?
It’s very technical and lighting is really tough. This is why no one has achieved this on such a scale. I was set on lighting dancers as beautifully as a photographer lights a portraiture subject. It took me 18 full-time months to figure it out for high-speed photography.
There are significant technical challenges for high-speed studio photography at 1,000 frames per second. One needs 5x the light intensity when compared to shooting film/video at 24fps. Bright lights are traditionally very hot. New LED lights are run cooler but are not bright enough. Lights are huge, heavy, and hot and hard to modify. Everything about high-speed photography is challenging but lighting is the biggest challenge for sure.
The data requirements are also significant. The camera records 11GB per second and so we would record 4-6TB on most days.
[caption id="attachment_39448" align="alignnone" width="900"]
Pictured dancer: Jake Mangakahia | The Australian Ballet[/caption]
Why did you choose these ballet companies?
My studio is in Melbourne and the equipment weighs 700kg so I cannot travel easily. I realised that if I wanted to make an incredible international ballet film I would need to work with the best talent visiting Australia. I worked for eight months to arrange shoots with dancers from The Royal Ballet, Bolshoi Theatre and Les Ballets de Monte Carlo. I flew to Moscow and London to arrange some of the shoots at the start of the year.
Why did you ask Ballet Monte Carlo to take part?
Ballets de Monte-Carlo toured Melbourne and I managed to work with seven of their incredible dancers. I contacted the dancers on Instagram a few months before the tour and worked hard to co-ordinate a schedule around their very limited free time.
It was an incredible experience across 3 x 14-hour days for me - the dancers are so powerful, graceful and beautiful people.
Do you have any interesting stories to tell about the involvement of Ballet Monte Carlo?
The dancers were from Brazil, Italy, Russia, Korea, Belgium… It was super interesting and they had such sparks of character. Really special people and you could tell they supported each other like family.
Who is this film intended for?
Dancers for sure. But anyone who loves movement, dance and fashion. I’ve been to told the footage is completely mesmerising and meditative. I hope the fashion world will stop to take note. My big hope for the work was to be a meaningful contribution to dance. To create a record of elite dancers like no other - one that will be referenced in 20 years. Time will tell.
[embed]https://youtu.be/hh0emdRnKXk[/embed]
Do you have distribution in Europe?
The movie will be available worldwide on iTunes from 16th October, including Monaco!
Will it receive a special screening in Monaco?
I may visit for a promotional screening on a world tour shortly. The film is shot entirely in 4k and looks incredible in cinema!
Top photo: Pictured dancer is Zoe Cavedon | Projection Dance 
It is with a zen-like air of content that Boy George greets me with genuine warmth and I sit down to begin our interview. I don’t even get to ask the first question as George launches into a free-flowing conversation and I hurry to turn on my recorder.
Considering the last thing I read about Boy George was the fact that he stormed off the set of The Voice Australia, I am thinking to myself, “Well, this isn’t so hard.”
“There are only so many songs you can release,” George shares with me. “I feel like creativity is physical. I have to do get it out; I have to take the risk. Creative expression is about the reaction you get from other people. That has always been the thing that’s fuelled me from the beginning of my life really, when I discovered music at around 10 or 11 years old. That was the beginning of me sort of reacting to the world.”
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Boy George with his mum Dinah[/caption]
Boy George was born George Alan O’Dowd in Kent, England and is the second of six children. His father, Jerry, was a builder - a trade that his brothers followed willingly. “Not the most creative environment for a young visionary to grow up in?” I query.
“I actually always thought my father was a creative person who was completely frustrated. He could do calligraphy; he had the most amazing handwriting, and he was actually quite poetic and could sing, but that only ever came out at family weddings when there was whiskey around. My mum also wrote a book in her later life. They were creative, it was just circumstance – they had six children and didn’t have time to express it. My family were quite conservative, but surprisingly open minded when it mattered. When I came out at age 15 my dad was completely cool about it. In fact, they weren’t surprised at all,” he says laughing.
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Boy George and his father Jerry[/caption]
You would assume, then, that it was his only sister who educated the impressionable young George in the world of make-up and fashion, but that influence was gifted by another member of the family. “My sister is kind of a tomboy and my mum didn’t really have a lot of makeup either. But I had one aunty called Josie who was a drop-dead Hollywood beauty, men used to flock to her, and she had a big influence on me in terms of being glamorous and wanting to look beautiful. When I was 17, before I was famous and was just a club kid, I did a photoshoot and somebody had professionally done my makeup. When I came home and showed dad my face, he said “You look like your aunty Josie!” and I yelled, “Finally!”.
It was at that moment that faces became an integral element of Boy George’s creativity. Bright colours, splashes of glitter, bold expressions… it is how George has always expressed himself, only now the faces are on a canvas.
“I think faces are everything. I don’t know if it’s deliberate, I just think faces are so powerful and the sort of faces I draw are unusual, they are people with an attitude, they are people with a different sense of humour, they are provocative, and sometimes they are hiding things.”
Born in 1961, 
‘Yamamoto’ by Boy George[/caption]
“I was at that gig in 1972, when David Bowie came on stage with this incredible Yamamoto outfit and these two women came up to him and pulled it apart. It was really theatrical.”
He recreates that momentous experience with child-like interpretation, a technique that is replicated throughout all of his works. Not surprisingly, Boy George’s influence comes from Keith Haring, the American artist whose pop art and grafitti-like work grew out of the New York City street culture of the 1980s. More surprising is the fact that Boy George has never received any real training.
“I did get a bit of guidance but all that did was make me realise that I needed to find my own way of doing it. I have broken choreographers; I am not someone who can be told what to do.”
As George explains, each piece of art he creates begins as a small hand drawing.
“For me, it’s the whole process, similar to when you write a song. You are building something that starts quite small and then becomes something flamboyant. Finally, you have the moment on stage – the payoff moment. Like this exhibition.”
Lady Tina Green can be credited for convincing Boy George that his art work needed to go on show publicly, and that her 
Boy George and Tina Green. Photo credit: Claudia Albuquerque[/caption]
“Lady Tina was the person that really encouraged me to do this exhibition. I have been stock piling for a number of years now, without any real intention of showing it. To be honest, I don’t really know what I was going to do with it.”
Boy George has, over the years, donated a few of his works for fundraising. In fact, one of his sketches sold for more at a charity auction than an original artwork by the Angel of the North creator and famous sculptor Antony Gormley.
‘Scarman’, the promotional piece for this exhibition, also features in the singer’s new song ‘Let Somebody Love You’. The single is from the album ‘Life’, Boy George and Culture Club’s first album in 19 years.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McifsS0OYlo[/embed]
Boy George may have shot to fame as the flamboyant frontman of Culture Club in the 1980s, but he was also a successful DJ for 25 years, a photographer and is still a fashion designer.
“I started making clothing because I didn’t want to have the same clothes as everybody else. There is no incubation with ideas nowadays, once something goes on the internet it is out there. There is nothing that hasn’t been done before. But what you are left with is your own interpretation of everything and I think that is just as valuable and beautiful as anything else.”
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Monaco Life Editor Cassandra Tanti with Boy George[/caption]
And with that Boy George is whisked away from our interview and taken across the room. As I get ready to leave, he comes bouncing out the door. “I just sold my first ever painting!” he tells me excitedly.
‘Prince’, it turns out, had attracted the attention of a collector hours before the exhibition was even due to open.
Boy George – the artist – is clearly on another path to success.
'Prince' by Boy George[/caption]
Top photo: Boy George, credit: Claudia Albuquerque
