Author: Joanna

From the Terrace to Pompeii and back

 Those of you with an interest in tex­tiles, his­tory and dress­ing up might be veeeeeeeeeerry inter­ested in an upcom­ing lec­ture to be held at St. Andrew’s on the Ter­race at 2.30pm on Sat­urday June 19. 

Join the Dream­stress and the Wel­ling­ton His­tor­ic­al Cos­tume Soci­ety for a fun­drais­ing fash­ion his­tory extra­vag­anza: From the Streets of Pom­peii to the Salons of Par­is – The Clas­sic­al influ­ence on West­ern Fash­ion.

Tex­tile and fash­ion his­tor­i­an Leimomi Oakes will present a enter­tain­ing and inform­at­ive talk on the way Greek and Roman art and fash­ion have influ­enced West­ern fash­ion from the 18th cen­tury to the 20th. The talk will be illus­trated by 10 mod­els in his­tor­ic­ally accur­ate recre­ations of peri­od attire – from a 1770s’ robe a la fran­caise to a 1920s’ flap­per dress.

The talk will be fas­cin­at­ing, and the frocks will be fab­ulous – it should be an event to remem­ber! Pro­ceeds to bene­fit the Wel­ling­ton Free Ambu­lance. Tick­ets are $15 waged, $10 unwaged. Tick­ets will be avail­able at the door, or can be pur­chased in advance by email­ing thedreamstress@yahoo.com.

Hey Victoria, tell us a story!

  Hey you, Vic stu­dent! Should­n’t you be busy study­ing instead of read­ing blogs? Well fine, if you’re look­ing for ways to occupy your brain, Vic Books has a sug­ges­tion for you

Vicbooks is run­ning a duo of writ­ing com­pet­i­tions, one for Poetry and the oth­er for Short Stor­ies. We want to see what Vic­tor­ia under­gradu­ate stu­dents are cap­able of when they delve into poetry instead of eco­nom­ics, dip into fic­tion rather than his­tory (wait… was that irony?) and draw fully on their tal­ents and ima­gin­a­tion.

The selec­ted win­ner in each cat­egory will receive over $200 in Book Tokens, plus a pile of selec­ted books from our excel­lent stock. The win­ners will also be pub­lished in the stu­dent paper Sali­ent, on the vicbooks web­site and on our blog. There are no entry fees and all the details are on our web­site.

Of course, if you’re not a Vic under­grad, you can always tell us a story instead. Have at it in our com­ments sec­tion. 

Carmen’s a bitch

Tonight saw the open­ing of the Roy­al New Zea­l­and Bal­let’s Meridi­en sea­son of Car­men.

Set in the met­ro­pol­is of mod­ern-day Rio de Janeiro, Car­men works in a cigar­ette fact­ory by day and hangs out with a gang of low-life crim­in­als by night. When José makes the mis­take of fall­ing in love with Car­men, things spir­al out of con­trol. As José’s world falls apart, Carmen’s desire to live life on her terms sets a course that can only lead to dis­aster.

The bal­let is based on the opera by Biz­et (Wiki­pe­dia con­tains some ser­i­ous spoil­ers, of course), but this ain’t your grand­pappy’s bal­let. Gang­sters tote cell­phones, a bull­fight­er has become a rock­star, the seedy bar has soc­cer on its TV. The res­ult is a steamy piece of theatre that crackles with sexu­al­ity, while still being crammed full of play­ful humour and heated ten­sion.

I’m not a dance expert, but I’d say that this pro­duc­tion uses a lot of ele­ments of mod­ern dance as opp­posed to straight bal­let. There is a lot more swag­ger from the guys in their leath­er jack­ets. Car­men shakes her ass in a pair of tight jeans, while in her sparkly gown and heels she comes across like Cyd Charisse, all legs and sex.

And let’s talk about the set design! Harsh chain­link fences at the cigar­ette fact­ory are incor­por­ated into the cho­reo­graphy, neon signs light up the bar, and an iron bed is a stage for some incred­ible fore­play. The sets all seem very stripped back and simple, but it’s obvi­ous how much thought has gone into them. The Vec­tor Wel­ling­ton Orches­tra play along­side the action on the stage, and seem to have a lot of fun with the bugle-heavy score.

Dirtying up your ears: Erogenous Tones III

 Remem­ber how last year Ero­gen­ous Tones was nom­in­ated for a TAWA as Best Art Exper­i­ence? Well now’s your chance to exper­i­ence it for your­self! 

Ero­gen­ous Tones is cum­ming to you live again, again and again. Now two ladies (we lost one to the dev­ils dandruff in Brazil) read you erot­ic stor­ies XXX rated, romantic trash, and shock­ing fan fic­tion, all accom­pan­ied by sexy syn­thes­iser music by the Kre­mer. A romantic night of aur­al pleas­ure, that will make you wanna come again, again and again.

So we’ll see you on Wed­nes­day June 02 at 9pm at The Watusi, right? 

Some more bits and pieces

• Wendy from the deli­cious Cul­tured Petone is run­ning a cheese-mak­ing work­shop. Learn to make your own haloumi and ricotta. Yum!
• A treat for NZ Music Month: Phoenix Found­a­tion fan fic­tion. Bear cos­tumes sur­pris­ingly do not fea­ture. Please feel free to con­trib­ute your own fan fic­tion stor­ies in the com­ments. 
• Issue #2 of Fish­Head is out now. We haven’t read it yet so we don’t have fur­ther com­ment to offer at this stage.
• Richter City Roller Derby is hav­ing a CAR­NI­VALE-themed fun­draiser at the Garden Club on May 29:
  

  This fab­ulous event fea­tures the tal­ents of The Eye­balls, The Beat Squad, MC Lisa Tom­lins, The Raskolnikovs, DJ Rhys, DJ Forge and DJ Taip. Cheap drinks avail­able until 12am, and a prize will be awar­ded to the Best Dressed.

• The menu for the Mebus Wine­maker­’s Din­ner at Cel­lar-Vate on May 26 has been released (along with the email addresses of every­one on their mail­ing list, whoops!):  
  

Leaving a paper trail

We’ve raved about Monterey Bar before, but just quickly, we want to point you to their blog on which they dis­play the best of the art­works drawn on their paper-covered tables. You have to won­der about what was going on when this divorce set­tle­ment was writ­ten, or what exactly is wrong with these tights – but I could tell you the back­story to Sen­or Hand­some if you ask nicely. 

This job is pretty rubbish

 Remem­ber when rub­bish col­lect­ors used to come up and col­lect from your bins at the back of the house, even when you lived up big steep path­ways? Good times. Any­way, here’s a mini doc­u­ment­ary called Dusties from NZ on Screen for your Fri­day after­noon view­ing. Enjoy!

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s A TREE

We love com­munity, and we love art, so it’s no sur­prise that we love com­munity art pro­jects. Espe­cially when they’re organ­ised by our own lovely Sue from Craft 2.0 and the fab­ulous Knitsch from the TAWA-nom­in­ated Out­door Knit. Need­less to say, we’re very excited about It’s A Tree:

there are a few very tall lamp posts out­side the New Dowse in Lower Hutt, and Out­doorKnit decided it would be a pretty fun idea to turn them into some­thing different…trees! What Out­doorKnit needs is lots of knit­ted, crochet or even sewn flowers, leaves and nat­ive birds to cov­er these ‘trees’. The best medi­um for this is acryl­ic – it wears bet­ter when the weath­er gets a bit grotty.

The first install­a­tion is begin­ning in a week’s time, so now’s the time to make like a tree and make leaves. Or flowers. Or tuis…