What is a White Night?

If you’re a Melburnian, you would have to be living under a rock not to know that last night was the annual White Night event, but readers further afield may be wondering, ‘What is White Night?’ This post explains all.

What is White Night?: www.feetonforeignlands.comWhat is White Night?

White Night (which is the anglicisation of Nuit Blanche) is a concept which had its origins in Paris, France in 2001 as a way to make art and culture accessible to large audiences, within public spaces.
Nowadays, more than 25 cities around the world hold similar all-night events. The events are seen as an opportunity to showcase a city’s art, music, food and culture.
What is White Night - www.feetonforeignlands.com
Melbourne’s first White Night was held in 2013 and an estimated crowd of more than 300,000 people attended. The second one, last year, drew a crowd of over 500,000 people. We have been part of the crowd each year so far.
Here in Melbourne, White Night runs from 7pm Saturday to 7am Sunday morning, and features music, dance, visual displays, light shows, installation art, street performances, and a variety of buskers. Institutions such as Arts Centre Melbourne, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne Museum, National Gallery of Victoria (St Kilda Road and Federation Square), and the State Library of Victoria all open their doors, and offer special programming over the entire 12 hours.
White Night Melbourne is a State Government of Victoria initiative created by the Victorian Major Events Company. The Directors Andrew Walsh AM (Artistic Director) and Bryn Skilbeck (Operations Director), draw on a huge team of skilled people to bring the event to fruition.
The program is huge, and is held within the centre of Melbourne, with activities in city streets, parklands, laneways, public spaces and cultural institutions. This year the program covered an even larger area of the city than in the past, which helped in dispersing the crushing crowds of 2014.  Events were divided into nine precincts from Southbank Boulevard to Victoria Street and Melbourne Museum, and from Elizabeth Street to Russell Street, as well as along the banks of the Yarra River.
With over 90 events ranging from big performance stages, or huge lighting installations that cover several buildings, through to tiny artworks tucked away down laneways, or under bridges, it is impossible to see and do everything over the course of the evening, even if you stay the whole 12 hours.
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We’ve tried a few approaches now. The first year, we started at 7pm and stayed until around 10.30pm. The illuminations are best after 9pm when it’s dark, but the crowds are also at their largest between then and about 11.30pm.
The second year we booked hotel rooms in the city, and although our plan was to come and go from them throughout the night, we ended up starting around 8pm and kept going until about 1.30am when we went back to the hotel rooms and crashed.
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Last year’s crowds were so incredibly dense, that we thought we’d try for an off-peak solution this year, and took the train into the city at 11.30pm, and stayed for several hours, getting the train home when we were near collapse. (Public transport runs all night for the event.)

 

Next year, I think we’ll go to bed early, get up around 3.30am and go straight into the city for the last three hours of the event.

 There is no perfect plan! You just have to accept that you can only scratch the surface of such a huge programme, and enjoy the parts you do encounter.

Some of the highlights of our time last night included:

Wonderland illuminations on Flinders Street (Created by The Electric Canvas).  The illuminations on these buildings are a key feature of White Night each year. This year they took on an Alice in Wonderland theme. There were several versions of the projected images, and the vibrancy of the colour was astounding.
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Sita’s Garden (directed by Andrew Walsh and Co-curated by Kate Ben-Tovim and Pallavi Sharda) saw the banks and water of the Yarra transformed into a Little India. Giant, floating lotus flowers set the scene for an Indian Bollywood dance spectacular that took place on a floating stage towed up and down the river.  This stage was a great idea, as it meant that people on both banks and over a long distance were able to see the performances relatively up-close. If we’d still be around at 6am, there was to be a massive yoga sun salutation sequence in the area to welcome the dawn.
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KEYFRAMES in the pond of the National Gallery of Victoria was an installation of luminous plastic bodies which uses programmed lighting sequences to create a complex choreography of movement to music and sound.  It was done by the artistic collective Groupe LAPS (Artistic Director Thomas Veyssiere).

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Infinite Curve (by Kit Webster and Dave Leigh) in the Grollo Equiset Garden of the National Gallery of Victoria was a laser lumia effect created by transmitting red, green and blue lasers through a slowly rotating circular disc of textured glass. It results in an ever evolving and changing projection of light and colour. Quite mesmerising.

What is White Night - www.feetonforeignlands.com

Totem Turtle (Cirque de Soleil) was a seven metre inflatable turtle that swam and bobbed about above the crowds near the boatsheds on the banks of the Yarra, controlled skillfully by puppeteers.

What is White Night - www.feetonforeignlands.com

Nocturnal Bloom (Rachel Prince) was one of the quieter, tucked away events, consisting of casted resin pod-like formations that enclosed flowers into crevices between bluestones under the Princes Bridge.

What is White Night - www.feetonforeignlands.comWhite Night has become such a significant event on the Melbourne calender, its worth planning a trip to Melbourne to coincide with it. It’s been held on the third Saturday night in February so far each year, but the date for 2016 will not be confirmed until later this year. Check the White Night Melbourne website for further details.

So, will you be White Nighting next year?

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