The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 162

2 Extra 6 THE AGE SATURDAY 21 FEBRUARY 1998 WSteredDM OFF the weekend's TEXTILES COMEDY GOSPEL ARTS BOOK I 4 rW VAPOR ETTO 13 by Robert Girardi "EALTH experts are always telling us that is an essential Sceptre, $22.95 ARABESQUE is an exhibition celebrating diversity and cooperation. Not only are the works mixed media painting ceramics. SEE THE light 1h DM toys from Alabama act as spiritual guides in a triifrimjji and musical IKKY, elegant Venice is the MS backdrop to Robert third novel When TRACY BARTRAM is like most mums -she has a spot on a very popular radio station, met her husband when he raised his hand at a gig, travelled to Edinburgh for the Comedy Festival (where people laughed with her, not at her) and is now performing in her lack meets the strange and melancholy Caterina he becomes lost part of our diet. Artist Naomi Ota has taken that advice one step further and made 'fibre', the weaving variety that is, an integral part of her contemporary textile works. Ota researched the history of lead lighting they were created by 12 artists from Arab nations including Syria, Egypt, Lebanon and Palestine and the exhibition has been made possible by a range of Australian-Arab communities.

Arabesque seeks to portray both contemporary and historical influences of an artistic style that floats like desert sand in a storm. Arabesque opens today at the National Gallery of Victoria (until 22 March). There will be a free public concert tomorrow in the Great Hall from 2pm to 4pm, with belly dancing, folk music and more. Tel: 9208 0222. experience (hat will move the souls of the most devout athiests.

This gospel harmony group celebrates God via blues, funk and soul with frontman and founder Clarence Fountain. For 54 years these "pilgrims on the Gospel Highway" have been plying their trade along the route, including a stopover at the Melbourne International Festival in 1996. They're great (and that's the gospel truth). At the National Theatre, comer Barkly and Carlisle Street, St Kilda tonight from 8pm. Book at the venue (tel: 9525 4611) orTicketmaster (tel: 1150066).

lost in life and in the city of water. Swirling mists, damp back streets and cats feature in this romantic story of haunted love and loss. "I wandered around in the early gloom completely disoriented, unsure even of which part of the city answered the hollow echo of my footsteps. There was no one to ask. No street signs.

Everywhere 1 looked I saw the crumbling facades, sagging into each other at crazy angles. Above, the same featureless, hazy sky. own show, which includes a six piece band. Pretty ordinaryreally. Altar Dark is performed at the Athenaeum Theatre tonight only.

Book with Ticketmaster (tel: 1 1566). Tickets from $23.50 to $36. fibre, including Ikat weaving from her native Japan, and used the findings to launch Tidal Recollection, an exhibition of various textile forms. At Craft Victoria, 1 14 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy until 14 March. Tel: 941731 1 1.

Check out the remarkable collection in the State Library, where there are rooks as well as books Benazir Hussain makes her debut as a gutsy princess Going solo "We see each other so rarely, we just try to be like brother and sister. We don't talk about our jobs. Our lifestyle is a very strict regime, and I know he feels pressured. Everyone asks him about his job. It's very difficult, because my dad owns a cricket school and all he wants to talk about is cricket!" Hussain's initial link with Australia was through Errol Pickford, a Perth-bom dancer, who also moved to Britain as a child.

They met at the Royal mm) Ballet and married alter seven years together. During the company's recent upheaval, the couple decided to explore opportunities in Australia. ft Check mate: Brian Hubber, (foreground) rare books librarian "With the Royal Ballet premises being redeveloped, we felt we didn't want to do too much touring, as the company is wheeling out the classics to tour. We thought, if we're going to make a big move, this may as well be it, said Hussain. Pickford had been a guest with the WA Ballet and loved Perth on sight.

Hussain followed, but only she has been plucked by the AB. She and her husband live and work apart, but she's prepared for the sacrifice. "I found the WA) company a litde too small for me. There's not enough repertoire to keep me sustained. It's an amazingly talented company, but they need more financing." She's accepted she 11 see 1 iilll THE ACCENT is downtown London, but the eyes are deep, dark wells, inherited from her Indian father, the cricketer (award Hussain.

Beaded and bejewelled for La Bayadere, Benazir Hussain looks every inch the Indian princess sought by the Australian Ballet When Hussain first met Australian Ballet chief Ross Stretton, she slipped and broke a tiny bone in her foot Limping offstage, stricken, was not what she'd had in mind. The lithe dancer had exhausted herself dancing several performances of Giselle for the West Australian Ballet She had another chance when Stretton returned to Perth with the Australian Ballet last year, and again watched her during class. "This time I was really out to impress!" she said, with characteristic brio. Hussain soon moved east to join the AB as a leading soloist. She has an impeccable pedigree for a ballerina: strict schooling at Britain's Royal Ballet School and a busy career with the prestigious English company.

Fortuitously, her first role with the AB is a favorite, Gamzattj, in La Bayadere, a love story set in the opulent temples of India. While she hasn't visited her country of birth for many years, she revels in its exoticism and the dramatic story of the ballet Gamzatti is the princess betrothed to Solor, a prince who falls in love with a temple dancer, Nikiya. "It's a very gutsy role. That's the best way I can describe it She'a very strong, domineering woman," says Hussain. In her journey from India to Britain and Australia, Hussain has absorbed several cultures and, like most travellers, has a fascinating family story to tell.

Her father met her mother, an art student, while touring England as a young cricketer. "They decided to move back to India for 13 years, where we were all bom. My mother was a very cosmopolitan woman, very happy to travel." The family moved to England when she was a baby. At just two and a half she began the long, hard road to excellence in the English classical ballet system. The Chess Room Pickford once a month, at best.

"He's been ambitious in his career, and he's a bit older than me. He knows he can't hold me back." By RACHEL BUCHANAN ush, hush, be quiet, be still: this is the silent heart of a silent place and minds are being made up. Pawn to match pawn? Rook to Hussain, her ambition and her much-punished feet, have this week come under the instruction of Natalia Makarova, one of the world's legendary dancers, visiting Melbourne to supervise the AB's production of La Bayadere. The Royal Ballet's star ballerina, Darcey Bussell, is also visiting, and may attract the most attention, in her guest performance as Nikiya. But Hussain can be singled out by her height, if not the charcoal eyes.

She finds Australian dancers can be more individual than the Royal Ballet's, a difference she enjoys. "It's whatever you like to watch: carbon copies or individuality. At the end of the day, both look beautiful But here I feel I can put my expression and personality into my dancing." II -SOMA HARFORD chess, played at the Westminster Chess Club between Monsieur L. de la Bourdonnais and an English amateur of first-rate Bobby Fischer's modest work My 60 Memorable Games is included, along with C. Tomlinson's 1854 ode, Chess: a Poem in Four Parts.

There is a whole section devoted to various books on the 30 or 40 standard opening moves. More shelves reveal the secrets of check and of mate. The collection, like some chess games, appears to be without end. Chess itself has no real beginning. Chataranga, the earliest known version, was played in India, in 600AD, and spread east to China, Korea and Japan then west through Persia and into Europe with the Moors in Spain and the Arabs in Sicily.

"It is transnational. It developed in different places at different times," says Brian Hubber, rare books librarian. Chess is mentioned in European manuscripts as early as the 12th century and by the 15th century it was understood by the aristocracy as an allegory for political intrigue. About half of the library's collection was donated by Melbourne accountant M. V.

Anderson. "He was a chess fanatic," Hubber says. "He was an enthusiastic but only competent player." Since Anderson's death in 1966, the library has continued collecting. It tries to buy every new chess book in English and authoritative periodicals and major works in other languages. The collection and chess room used to be in the Queens Hall.

It was moved five years ago to its current site, which is less atmospheric but more secure. Two kinds of people -chess players and chess scholars use it. "Some of them are quirky and idiosyncratic sorts of people. They almost definitely keep to themselves," Hubber says. "It is hard to define the average user," says Des Cowley, rare print collection librarian.

Both agree that chess people tend to be particular. For, example, John van Manen spent years going through old newspapers and magazines to research the results of every tournament game played in Australia since 1848. He handwrote his findings on thousands of cards, which fill 21 ringbinders. As well as being a monument to one man's staggering list-making abilities, the cards are one of the collection's major primary resources. Still, this is not enough for some.

"We had a guy using this a couple of weeks ago, Cowley says of the results cards, "and he said: 'You know, he missed some games'." The State Library's Chess Room is open seven days a week, the same hours as the library. Meanwhile, her three older brothers pursued one of India's greatest passions cricket. One brother, batsman Nasser Hussain, is the English test team's vice-captain, currently touring the West Indies. Australians will remember his knock of 207 when England won the first Test at Edgbaston during last year's Ashes serie's. It might be expected that she and Nasser would have much in common the athleticism of their jobs, injuries and physiotherapists.

But when they meet, they put all that aside. take knight? Rook to protect queen? In the chess room on level 3A of the State Library, two men one young, one old are sitting at separate chess tables pitting themselves against the games described in the pages of the hard-covered books at their feet. They could sit there forever because the State Library has one of the world's biggest chess collections. About 13,000 items, from the 1561 di Ruy Lopez Libra de la invention liberal arte del jnego del axedrez, to match reports from Zagreb in 1965, and W. Lewis's 1835 manual, which features "a selection of games of a'aVi'Jtwi OPTION! SINGLE? YVONNE ALLEN IS YOUR.

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