Wellington’s Festival of Circus 2013

The grand open­ing of Wel­ling­ton’s Fest­iv­al of Cir­cus is tonight at 6pm. They’re put­ting up the bunt­ing and bring­ing out the carou­sel pony as I type! (Appar­ently there will be real ponies as well.) Hype the kids up on candy­floss and pop­corn while watch­ing the Wel­ling­ton Youth Cir­cus on the Big Rig or get someone […]

Sky Dancer in the Capital E National Arts Festival

We’re grownups at the Wel­ling­tonista, well, unless there’s a fart joke to be made, so when there’s a Nation­al Arts Fest­iv­al for Chil­dren, we thought it would be good to get some chil­dren involved, so here are three reviews of Sky Dan­cer. Henry, age 11:  “Sky Dan­cer was not like any­thing I have seen before. […]

Review: Beep Test

Binge Cul­ture take a phys­ic­al fit­ness test and makes a show out of it. Upstairs at Thistle Hall there are inspir­a­tion­al mes­sages sticky-taped to the wall. GIVE IT A GO. TRIUMPH. We are wel­comed into the room by Simon and Izzy – the run­ners. Some of us are coerced into stick­ing up fur­ther mes­sages. U […]

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: [title of show] take two.

I real­ise Kris has already giv­en a review of [title of show] but I fig­ure I may as well throw my thoughts into the ring. There’s no such thing as too many voices on the inter­net right? This review con­sists the one-two punch of a guest review from my part­ner Laura, fol­lowed by my take […]

Review: A Collection of Noises

There aren’t any noises to speak of in A Col­lec­tion of Noises. The play con­cerns the men­tal break­down of an awk­ward young woman and claims Lyn­chi­an influ­ence, so obvi­ously there’s lots of archly deployed old-time rock ’n’ roll; but every meta­phor is visu­al. The cent­ral image is a bank of black and white pho­to­graphs taken […]

Review: [title of show]

 [title of show] is “a music­al about two guys writ­ing a music­al about two guys writ­ing a music­al”. First per­formed in 2004 it was nom­in­ated for a Tony Award for Best Book of a Show in 2008. Energy Theatre have giv­en it a lively NZ premiere. There’s a table to one side of the stage […]

Review: Residence

The fly­er says “This candlelit prom­en­ade per­form­ance will guide you though dif­fer­ent worlds with­in Inver­lochy House.” I was expect­ing some­thing that ref­er­enced the his­tory of the house. What I got was an explor­a­tion of storytelling and cre­ativ­ity.  Each sketch happened in a dif­fer­ent room in the house and did­n’t seem to be con­nec­ted to any […]

The kids are just fine at the Capital E National Arts Festival

While the urb­an­ites of the ‘ista are all cur­rently abuzz about the Fringe Fest­iv­al, those amongst us who are par­ents (yes, we exist) are more excited about the Cap­it­al E Nation­al Arts Fest­iv­al set to hap­pen from March 11–23. Dur­ing the weeks, the Fest­iv­al runs an edu­ca­tion pro­gramme, so expect to see bus loads of […]

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 […]