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 […]

On the fringes

The Fringe Fest­iv­al is hap­pen­ing from now until March 9! This is excit­ing! There are approx­im­ately six zil­lion shows hap­pen­ing, and while the ‘ista is cov­er­ing as many as it can (and thank you for your invites, pro­du­cers, we appre­ci­ate them!), we do all have day jobs and are all only human, except for Tom […]

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 […]

Review: The road that wasn’t there

Oliv­er de Rohan’s mother­’s neigh­bours think she is going mad. Oliv­er is pretty sure she’s always been mad. She’s always been fanci­ful any­way, telling him stor­ies of fair­ies and tani­wha.  Did she really meet his fath­er in a paper world? How did she get there? How did she get back? What is really going on? […]

Whakuku a Nga Kina

The art world is full of sharks[cita­tion needed], but one recent pub­lic sculp­ture is attract­ing watery beasts of a dif­fer­ent kind. Via his Face­book group, artist Michel Tuffery has been doc­u­ment­ing the sting-rays which have been cruis­ing his Nga Kina at Kumutoto wharf which was installed in Novem­ber 2012.

Guest Post: Bike Everywhere helps you to bike everywhere

Dur­ing the last week, I’ve been out on my very first multi-day cyc­ling tour, and it was an awe­some adven­ture, see­ing all kinds of beau­ti­ful parts around the Wair­ar­apa and the South­ern Coasts of the North Island. Since I’ve been back a friend men­tioned this great web­site, BikeEvery­where, whose Face­book page can be found here […]

Review: Perfectly wasted

Long Cloud Youth Theatre Sum­mer School have worked with A Slightly Isol­ated Dog to invest­ig­ate then recre­ate a night out. The show is fren­et­ic with lots of short scenes from a typ­ic­al night out. There’s a lot of drink­ing, some dan­cing. There are some ongo­ing stor­ies but most of the action and interest is in […]

Karen wants her twenty dollars back

A small com­munity ser­vice announce­ment… The fol­low­ing mes­sage was appar­ently left on an answer-phone when the caller mis-dialled. The involved parties would appear to be from Stokes Val­ley. Could someone let the ‘Rachel’ men­tioned know that Kar­en wants her $20 back. Thank you. (Warn­ing: NSFW lan­guage).