Auckland Arts Festival 2023 - Coverage highlights
Blanc de Blanc Encore
Blanc de Blanc Encore
North & South
“A visitor from Belgium arrives at Auckland’s Aotea Square this month, inviting you to an evening of Champagne bubbles, beads of sweat and glittery hot pants.”
Read the full story here.
NZ Herald review
“The Auckland Arts Festival is back for 2023, with dozens of events across Tāmaki Makaurau running until March 26. For reviews on the big theatre performances hitting the stages across the festival, check back here for insights from the New Zealand Herald team - proud supporters of the Auckland Arts Festival.”
Read the full story here.
Poet Tusiata Avia
The Savage Coloniser Show
Sunday Magazine / Stuff
“On the eve of the stage debut of The Savage Coloniser, Michelle Duff talks to Ockham-winning poet Tusiata Avia about fearlessness, racism, and the realities of growing up Pasifika in Aotearoa.”
Read the full story here.
Radio New Zealand - Nights
“Poet, performer and writer Tusiata Avia MNZM has attracted two weeks of “harrowing and violent” online attacks ahead of the stage debut of The Savage Coloniser Show.
“The play, based on her Ockham Award-winning poetry collection, The Savage Coloniser Book, opened last night (9 March) as part of the Auckland Arts Festival. The show is directed by Anapela Polata’ivao and produced by Victor Rodger. “
Read / listen here.
The Spinoff - Review
“I left Wild Dogs wanting to talk about it, I left Savage Coloniser needing to sit with it”
Read the full story here.
Express Magazine
“Directed by Anapela Polata’ivao and produced by Victor Rodger for FCC Theatre, the company that also adapted Avia’s Wild Dogs Under My Skirt for the stage, Lam talks to express about the deep wounds at the root of Avia’s words and taking her work to New York.”
Read the full story here.
The Bill Withers Social Club
The Bill Withers Social Club
Radio New Zealand - Sunday
“Bill Withers was one of the great American soul singers, and he left his mark on a generation of musicians in Aotearoa, who will come together in a special tribute to him at the Auckland Arts Festival.
“Rio Hemopo of TrinityRoots and Breaks Co-op fame is part of an all-star band of Aotearoa musicians who will perform The Bill Withers Social Club 9 March alongside vocalists Troy Kingi, Dallas Tamaira, L. A. Mitchell, and band members Iraia Whakamoe, Ryan Prebble, Adán Tijerina and Daniel Hayles.”
Read/Listen here.
New Zealand Herald Canvas
The Bill Withers Social Club is an all-star homage to the legend as part of the Auckland Arts Festival 2023 - Te Ahurei Toi o Tāmaki. Aotearoa artists performing in the show tell Canvas how he’s inspired and informed their own mahi.“
Read the full story here.
Judith Hill
Judith Hill
New Zealand Herald - My Story
“I was a bit of a shy kid, quite quiet, although I grew up in a very musical family, as both my parents were professional musicians. Mom and dad had a studio at our home, and they also had an amazing network of musician friends who were always around at our house in Los Angeles. Being surrounded by incredible musicians and singers was inspiring, but it was also intimidating, so I became more of an observer, a sponge, soaking it all up.”
Read the full story here.
Radio New Zealand - Music 101
“Judith Hill is on her way to New Zealand to perform at the Auckland Arts Festival and her show sounds like something you don't want to miss.”
Listen here.
Credit: Daniel Boud
The Picture of Dorian Gray
New Zealand Herald - Canvas
“So far, some 60,000 people have seen the show. By all accounts, its Aussie star, Eryn Jean Norvill, is an absolute knockout. No, seriously, she was knocked out on stage during a performance in Sydney last year when a haze machine went rogue and she slipped on a splotch of oily fluid. The name of the ambulance driver who turned up at the theatre? Lucky.”
Read the full story here.
The Spinoff
“What you’re left with at the end, though, isn’t the spectacle. It’s the depth and breadth of Norwell’s performance, it’s the quiet moments when you can hear a pin drop in an audience of thousands, and the moments when a text reaches across a century, with the aid of a few screens, and hits you right in the chest. Unlike Dorian Gray, you probably still have a heart there.”
Read the full story here.
Credit: Angus McBryde
Force of Nature
Radio New Zealand - Concert
“Composers have long been inspired by nature, whether it's animals, landscapes, flowers or birdsong.
“The latest project involving music inspired by our land, water, flora and fauna is an Auckland Arts Festival concert marking the centennial of conservation charity, Forest & Bird.”
Read/Listen here.
Requiem
Radio New Zealand - Saturday Morning with Kim Hill
”Auckland-based composer Victoria Kelly’s latest work Requiem takes inspiration from the work of New Zealand poets and photography - drawing on the words of Bill Manhire, Sam Hunt, Chloe Honum, Ian Wedde and James K Baxter as well as the exquisite images of Anne Noble.”
Read/Listen here.
Your Weekend / Stuff
“Composer Victoria Kelly's 132-year-old Auckland villa was built for a doctor - but also for a musician”
Read the full story here.
Radio New Zealand - Concert
“Victoria Kelly started thinking about writing a requiem around 30 years ago, after her father died.
“Her work, Requiem, will have its world premiere in the Auckland Arts Festival on 11 March. It's shaped around poetry by five New Zealand poets and inspired by the visual language of photographer Anne Noble.
“And while it draws on parts of the Latin Mass for the Dead, Victoria doesn't see it as a work about death.”
Read/Listen here.
Radio New Zealand - Concert
“The world premiere of Ātahu, by Wellington-based Kai Tahu composer Ruby Solly, has been a long time coming after Covid got in the way of the original 2021 concert not once but twice.
Two years on, the piece will get its first performance at the Auckland Arts Festival in early March.”
Listen here.
Credit: Daniel Boud
SandSong: Stories from the great sandy desert
Radio New Zealand - Saturday Morning with Kim Hill
“Between the 1920s and 1960s many Aboriginal people from Australia’s great Western Desert and Kimberley regions were removed from their country and forced into hard labour on livestock stations. Despite this, the Traditional Peoples have maintained strong unbroken connections to their country. Now, Bangarra Dance Theatre’s new work Sandsong is bringing their stories and songs to Aotearoa.
“Established in 1989, Bangarra is considered one of the world’s leading first nations companies. Stephen Page became artistic director in 1991, a role he’s finally stepping down from this year.
“Page is co-choreographer of Sandsong, to be performed at the Auckland Arts Festival 15-18 March.”
Read/Listen here.
Whakaata Māori
“The widely acclaimed First Nations Bangarra Dance Theatre company will appear in Aotearoa this week with its latest show Sandsong: Stories from the Great Sandy Dessert starting tomorrow and running through till Saturday at the ASB Waterfront Theatre in Auckland.
“The company draws on the extreme hardship faced by the Aboriginal people over many years and channels that into art and theatre.”
Watch here.
Your Weekend / Stuff
“Stephen Page is the former artistic director of Bangarra Dance Theatre, a Sydney-based Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander dance theatre group.
“The 57-year-old dancer, film director and choreographer, of the Yugambeh tribe in southeast Queensland, choreographed dozens of fearless works for Bangarra, including his work, SandSong: Stories from the Great Sandy Desert, which tells the story about past displacement.
“It will be staged during the Auckland Arts Festival – Bangarra’s first performance in New Zealand since 2005.”
Read the full story here.
New Zealand Herald - Kahu
“The widely acclaimed First Nations Bangarra Dance Theatre company is appearing in Aotearoa with its latest show Sandsong: Stories from the Great Sandy Desert…
“The company draws on the extreme hardship faced by the Aboriginal people over many years and channels that into art and theatre.”
Read the full story here.
SPARK by Studio Roosegarde
SPARK
CX Magazine
“Four years ago, Professor of Design – and artist – Daan Roosegaarde was challenged to transform traditional and polluting methods of celebration such as fireworks, balloons, drones, and confetti, into a new sustainable means of celebrating good times, “One of my students said to me ‘Our future is frozen’. His generation is banned from doing so much and no one is providing them with any alternatives. It really made me think about keeping our traditions but modernising them.” The result was SPARK, a poetic performance of thousands of biodegradable light sparks which organically float through the air, creating a stunning sustainable alternative for traditional community celebrations.”
Read the full story here.
Revisor by Kidd Pivot
Revisor
Radio New Zealand - Nine to Noon
“(Canadian Choreographer) Crystal Pite's repertoire is expansive - she's created more than 50 works for some of the biggest dance companies in the world.
“She formed her own company - Kidd Pivot - in 2002 and is bringing one of its most popular shows - Revisor - to the Auckland Arts Festival”
Read/Listen here.
Rodger Fox
Your Weekend / Stuff
“How do you celebrate your 50th anniversary? Perhaps a party, or a wave of toasts and speeches. Or, if you are making half a century of jazz excellence, it’s a “drum-off” between three of the world’s greatest drummers, under the sparkle of the Auckland Arts Festival in March.”
Read the full story here.
He Kete Waiata
Sunday Magazine / Stuff
“I accept everything about myself these days': Jazz queen Whirimako Black on embracing her bilingual strengths”
Read the full story here.
Skyduck - A Chinese Spy Comedy
Your Weekend / Stuff
“Sam Wang is one clever cookie. After starting his career as a lawyer and time in the corporate world, he set his sights on the artistic, studying at Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School, earning a nomination for Best Male Lead at the Sydney Theatre Awards, and he currently has a comedy concept being developed for TV.
“Now, he’s about to return to New Zealand to perform his one-man play, Skyduck: A Chinese Spy Comedy (“Top Gun meets 007 with a J-Pop backing track”) at the Auckland Arts Festival in March.”
Read the full story here.
Toitū Te Reo
Sunday Magazine / Stuff
“Māori Language Commissioner Rawinia Higgins on being a Māori language warrior or worrier”
Read the full story here.