Circenses at NZFA 2012

I’m old enough to remem­ber when the Arts Fest­iv­al was known archly as The New Zea­l­and Inter­na­tion­al Fest­iv­al of the Arts. In recent years the name has been tidied up but the goal has remained the same – bring really cool, really great, inter­na­tion­al artists to Wel­ling­ton and show­case their work along­side the best of our homegrown tal­ent. That mis­sion is always going to cause, shall we say, dis­cus­sion – and chal­len­ging the assump­tions made by our cul­tur­al gate­keep­ers is gen­er­ally a good thing – but I don’t think any­one can doubt the effort, com­mit­ment and ded­ic­a­tion of the Fest­iv­al team under Lissa Twomey and Sue Pater­son.

So, see­ing as I did­n’t get an invit­a­tion to last night’s launch – or a goody bag – I have spent the morn­ing trawl­ing the web­site look­ing for per­son­al high­lights of next February/March. Feel free to add yours in the com­ments below.

FREE – Full marks to the fest­iv­al for recog­niz­ing that a) times are tough b) tak­ing a whole fam­ily to an event can be pun­ish­ingly expens­ive and c) Wel­ling­ton rate­pay­ers have paid for a lot of this stuff so should be able to get some of it for free. There’s a whole, eas­ily access­ible sec­tion of the site for the Free gigs and my pick is the Maori Troilus & Cressida , per­formed in the Te Papa amphi­theatre – def­in­itely worth a look before the show heads to Lon­don to be part of the cul­tur­al Olympi­ad.

THEATRE – is my spe­cial­ist sub­ject so I take a close interest in the Fest­iv­al selec­tion but, Christ, where to start. There’s lots there for me to stick a pin in but I’m really excited by the New Zea­l­and selec­tion. Gary Hende­r­son’s Pen­in­sula has been miss­ing in action for Wel­ling­ton audi­ences for sev­er­al years and finally we get to see it – well done to Circa for mak­ing it part of their Fest­iv­al pro­gramme. Tawata Pro­duc­tions are adapt­ing Patri­cia Grace’s bril­liant nov­el Tu for the stage and I’m not entirely sure how they are going to pull it off. That short sea­son is going to be at Thorndon’s Pip­itea Marae for only nine per­form­ances. I’m sure @librarykris will have plenty more to say about the theatre pro­gramme, includ­ing Taki Rua’s reviv­al of Michael James Man­aia at Down­stage.

DANCE – Brazil is so hot right now so I have to pick Parabelo/Onqotô by Grupo Corpo. But I know not much about dance so I might be miss­ing out by not pick­ing the manga-inspired Tezuka with music by Nitin Sawhney.

MUSIC – Lots of people are already squee-ing over the pro­gram­ming of Bon Iver (although if the last fest­ival’s fore­shortened Calex­ico shows are any­thing to go by we may not be get­ting the full deal). My atten­tion, mean­while, is drawn to the bril­liant Libyan/Mailian mix of Tin­ari­wen.

THE FESTIVAL CLUB looks like a hoot . I really want to see the two-man recre­ation of Mike Old­field’s legendary prog-rog opus Tubu­lar Bells.

WRITERS & READERS – the full pro­gramme for W&R does­n’t get announced until the end of Janu­ary so we should­n’t expect too much from this early li- wha? Holy F-! Richard Price is com­ing for Writers & Read­ers.

VISUAL ARTS – Des­pite the medi­um being cor­rup­ted by the Grand hotel play­ing giant kick-box­ing fights on its walls from across the street, I really like the idea of giant archi­tec­tur­al pro­jec­tions so I have to pick Michel Tuffery’s First Con­tact 2012 on the walls of Te Papa as my visu­al arts pick. It’s also in the Free sec­tion. What do you think?

And don’t for­get, there’s going to be a Fringe again from 10 Feb­ru­ary to 3 March. What a great sum­mer we are going to have.