World of Wearable Arts Season

I’ve heard the com­plaints; World of Wear­able Arts – WOW is for women of a cer­tain age and is far too expens­ive. I’d not been to the show before so I could­n’t con­firm or deny, but oh wow are those people wrong. To start with WOW to me was two exper­i­ences seam­less mel­ded togeth­er, and also […]

Xtending ourselves to try a new bar

When Lou from LOUD in Pub­lic PR invited us to the open­ing of Xtend Barre Wel­ling­ton, we wer­en’t entirely enthused on the idea.  Great that a big brand was com­ing to New Zea­l­and and had chosen Wel­ling­ton first before Auck­land, but an exer­cise stu­dio pro­mot­ing a workout fusion of bal­let and pil­ates is not exactly […]

The New Zealand Fringe Festival

The New Zea­l­and Fringe Fest­iv­al has been going for a week and it’s got just over two more weeks to run. Sadly, I’ve only made it to two shows so far (because mov­ing house) a pathet­ic effort really, because there are HEAPS. Cab­aret, cir­cus, com­edy, dance, music, theatre, visu­al art – there are a lot of […]

Review: We have been there (Cloud in hand)

This is part of Foot­note’s Forte series which “has a spe­cif­ic object­ive to bring New Zeal­anders who have excelled off shore home to make work here.” Ber­lin based cho­reo­graph­er Lisa Densem has cre­ated a work set to music by Andrew Thomas. In the pro­gramme she writes the per­form­ance aim is “to cre­ate a struc­ture that […]

Review: Touched

Con­tact impro­visa­tion is a dance form in which the points where bod­ies touch provide a start for phys­ic­al impro­visa­tion. Some­times it’s the basis for set cho­reo­graphy, and some­times, as in this case, the impro­visa­tion is the per­form­ance. This per­form­ance also included artists, musi­cians, sing­ers, a pho­to­graph­er, and spoken word. We get to the per­form­ance space […]

Review: Fatu na toto

There isn’t much of a descrip­tion for this show on either the Fringe or the BATS web­site. It rather enig­mat­ic­ally says ““Fatu na toto” (The Planted Seeds).  Expressed through the Lan­guage of Siva Sam­oa. “The sand at our feet will remain, we take pride mov­ing for­ward with every grain”.” Thank­fully the pro­gramme explains that “A […]