First Contact at New Zealand International Arts Festival 2012The New Zea­l­and Inter­na­tion­al Arts Fest­iv­al opens tonight with a live event in con­juc­tion with the launch of First Con­tact. It’s FREE, fam­ily friendly, and starts at 8:30pm out­side Te Papa. There are visu­als by Linecheck­er and music and dance from the Whitireia Per­form­ing Arts School, The Nomad, Horomona Horo, Rhom­bus in Dub and Rayjah45.

First Con­tact is part of the Visu­al Arts pro­gramme. Artist Michel Tuffery has been inspired by works inside Te Papa. He will be pro­ject­ing his work onto the out­side of Te Papa. Nice. You can down­load the soundtrack. Oth­er Visu­al Arts exhib­i­tions start­ing today are the The 4 Plinths Sculp­ture Pro­ject (out­side Te Papa), Black in Fash­ion (Museum of Wel­ling­ton City & Sea), The Obstin­ate Object  (City Gal­lery), and four solo exhib­i­tions that offer dif­fer­ent takes on doc­u­ment­ary pho­to­graphy (Adam Art Gal­lery).

Wander past Wait­angi Park earli­er in the even­ing (6pm) and you’ll see Arcane.  Two per­formers clam­ber­ing around a run­away set of wheels? Crazy. In a good way. They’re lis­ted as part of the Theatre pro­gramme. Also open­ing tonight are inter­na­tion­als The Wild Bride  and The Rehears­al, Play­ing the Dane.  (Kiwi shows open­ing tomor­row -
Michael James Man­aia, and Pen­in­sula.)

For the Dance pro­gramme, Grupo Corpo from Brazil have two shows Para­belo and Onqotô to share with us.  In Music, the New Zea­l­and Sym­phony Orches­tra com­bine with amaz­ing opera tal­ent to bring us Oed­ipus Rex and Sym­phony of Psalms. Sadly there’s only one per­form­ance of this.

Oh, and I almost for­got the Fest­iv­al Club. It’s back in the tent in Odlin’s Plaza on the Wel­ling­ton water­front. See you there!