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…