RINGING THE CHANGES IN DOCKLANDS

Liese Spencer
Friday 04 July 1997 23:02 BST
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Time was when you could scrape together a couple of bands, a tombola and a Portaloo and call it a festival. But these days, it had better be a multi-media event that will saturate everyone with dance, music, theatre and art. This grandly synaesthetic approach is aptly demonstrated by the Greenwich Docklands International Festival, rung in this weekend with Llorenc Barber's Symphony of 100 Bells. On Friday night, carillons of bells from church towers all over Greenwich, Deptford and Limehouse will be conducted by Barber as he floats down the Thames on a barge playing his own set of Spanish bells. Grandiose? That's only the beginning...

Sound collective, Greyworld, have designed an acoustic carpet for the damp old Greenwich foot tunnel, which plays music as people walk on it, while the Royal Naval College will be transformed into La Rambla, where five Barcelona dance companies will perform Greenwich's own Dies de Dansa Festival.

Then there's more dance in Deptford, an Irvine Welsh surround-sound experience at Trinity Buoy Wharf, and of course, fireworks on the Thames.

11-20 July. Info: 0181-853 4444

Liese Spencer

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