Search results for: fringe

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 […]

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? […]

Running down underground to a dive bar in Welly-town

A few Welling­ton­istas recent­ly had occa­sion to dis­cuss the pos­si­bil­i­ties for get­ting a drink – a seri­ous drink, mind, not a Mimosa or Bloody Mary – at 9:30am on a Mon­day. Now we’d hate to advo­cate heavy drink­ing to any­one (though it’s always worked for us), and none of our spec­u­la­tion should be seen as in any […]

Should they stay or should they go?

We receive a lot of press releas­es here at the Welling­ton­ista, but few are as charm­ing as this one: Brad and Nan­cy are actors who are also a cou­ple, and they’re try­ing to decide if they should live in Eng­land or New Zealand. Nat­u­ral­ly, they’ve decid­ed to do a show in the Welling­ton Fringe Fes­ti­val […]

Deluxe is deluxe

One of the most excit­ing and stim­u­lat­ing things about liv­ing in Welling­ton is the fact the our cin­e­mas are con­tin­u­al­ly rein­vest­ing in their facil­i­ties and always try­ing to top each oth­er in qual­i­ty of fit out and cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. What have we done to deserve this!? This year the burghers of Mira­mar got the Ming […]

Festival 2012

I’m old enough to remem­ber when the Arts Fes­ti­val was known arch­ly as The New Zealand Inter­na­tion­al Fes­ti­val of the Arts. In recent years the name has been tidied up but the goal has remained the same — bring real­ly cool, real­ly great, inter­na­tion­al artists to Welling­ton and show­case their work along­side the best of […]

Notional Significance: Reclamation

[See all Notion­al Sig­nif­i­cance posts] Kai­wharawhara is a node, a knot, a tan­gle of paths and his­to­ries. It’s where the epony­mous stream meets the har­bour, though quakes and recla­ma­tions have long since nudged the mouth sea­wards from its orig­i­nal posi­tion at the fault line, engulf­ing fore­shore, ship­wrecks and shell­fish beds in the process. It’s where […]

Notional Significance: Up and Under

[See all Notion­al Sig­nif­i­cance posts] The path sidles away from the road. To my left, and indeed to almost everyone’s left, is Wellington’s rad­i­cal head­quar­ters, 128 Abel Smith St. It’s well over three years since the shat­ter­ing dawn when police smashed down the door, seek­ing evi­dence of so-called “ter­ror camps”, but the Ure­w­era 18 are […]