Currently logged in. Logout
Hearts will stop as the New Zealand Festival gives Wellington, the country’s creative capital and the world’s ‘coolest little city’, an art attack from 26 February to 20 March 2016.
This year marks the New Zealand Festival’s 30th anniversary and to celebrate the city of Wellington will be transformed into a global culture zone, showcasing some of the finest international and home-grown music, theatre, dance, artists and writers, handpicked by the festival’s Artistic Director, Shelagh Magadza.
The three-week festival boasts a programme that caters to everyone’s taste, featuring a full schedule of contemporary, classical and family-friendly experiences. Exciting Australasian exclusives, an avian-inspired light and sound experience in the midst of native bush, 150 international musicians playing a ‘love letter to peace’, and a free junkyard fairground are just some of the experiences on offer.
The first-ever appearance in New Zealand of the late German dance-maker Pina Bausch¹s extraordinary company Tanztheater Wuppertal is among eight Australasian exclusives during the festival. Other highlights promise to be La Veritá, in which Switzerland-based Compagnia Finzi Pasca bring the surreal world of painter Salvador Dali to life through extraordinary imagination and dazzling acrobatics, and cinematic theatre show Cineastas, where five actors portray scores of characters in a play with eight plot lines and a two tier set.
The artists behind 2014 festival favourite Power Planet return to the city again, this time bringing the Wellington Airport Season of For the Birds, which will see an immersive avian-inspired light and sound experience take over Otari Wilton¹s Bush reserve from 3 to19 March.
The free-to-attend Contact Festival Playground in Frank Kitts Park is also sure to delight, hosting the parent-powered junkyard fairground Arquitecutra de Feria. The playground features vintage motorbikes seats on a merry-go-round and toilet bowl seats on a Ferris wheel, among many other amazing creations.
Positively Wellington Tourism chief executive David Perks says the city’s collection of year-round attractions would also be turning it on for locals and cultural tourists alike, “From ‘Gallipoli: the scale of our war’ and ‘The Great War Exhibition’, to ‘Nga Toi at Te Papa’, a tribute to an artist who changed the way we think about New Zealand art history at City Gallery, and the recently upgraded and visitor favourite Wellington Museum, there will be a phenomenal programme on offer throughout the city.”
WellingtonNZ.com/NZFestival
www.festival.co.nz
26 February to 20 March, 2016
Wellington, New Zealand
