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 […]