Laurie Anderson kicks off Adelaide Festival Laurie Anderson with her exhibition at the Adelaide Festival. Picture Kelly Barnes Source: The Australian IN a prelude to tonight's free outdoor concert of Neil Finn and Paul Kelly, Laurie Anderson launched the first annual Adelaide Festival this morning with a sample of her unique vintage New York punk. Under warm sun and a bright blue sky in a forecourt at the University of SA, Anderson recreated one of her signature performance pieces from the 70s by wearing ice skates embedded in iceblocks and simultaneously playing an electric violin and a sampler. In a performance that was more Nigel Kennedy than Torvill and Dean, the slim 65 year old polymath was assisted onto the stage with her feet in skates embedded in heavy, slippery ice. Then half an hour of discordant electronica later the show was over, the ice having melted enough to release the skate blades. Anderson's one-off performance was part of a new survey exhibition of her work displayed at the Samstag Museum of Art under the umbrella of the Adelaide Festival where she is also giving two concerts. On Sunday she will deliver her solo show Dirtday! and on Saturday will perform with veteran chamber group and arts festival favourites Kronos Quartet. The quintet dubbed their collaboration Landfall because it was partly inspired by the arrival of Hurricane Sandy in New York last October when the show was being conceived. Anderson said she was disturbed that Landfall's Australian premiere in Perth on Wednesday night coincided with the arrival in the Pilburra of another extreme weather event, Cyclone Rusty. She describes Dirtday! as a "collection of short stories that have a meandering relationship." Anderson said it took little convincing to be so heavily committed to the Adelaide Festival on account of her history with new artistic director David Sefton. The pair worked together twice previously when Sefton ran the UCLA Live festival and before that at London's Meltdown where he was the inaugural director.