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.