Arts Festival offers a sneak preview

New Zealand International Arts Festival

Wellington
February 24 – March 18

The New Zealand International Arts Festival has released a teaser for next year’s festival consisting of an opera, a circus, a dance and one of the writers for the NZ Post Writers and Readers Week

One of the major works on the programme will be the new opera, Hōhepa compsed by Jenny McLeod. This will be presented by NBR New Zealand Opera and the New Zealand International Arts Festival. The opera tells the story of friendship between the Māori chief Hōhepa Te Umuroa and a Pākehā settler during the turbulent time of the 1840s land wars.

Spanning the 19th Century to 1980s, it represents more than a decade of extensive research by McLeod, based on recorded, personal and oral histories. It is an opera of epic dimensions but with a focus on the human dimensions with a mixture of humour and drama.

General Director of The NBR New Zealand Opera, Aidan Lang, says: “In the early days of our discussions with Jenny, we envisaged Hōhepa as being a chamber opera. Now, through the support of the New Zealand International Arts Festival we are thrilled to be able to present Hōhepa on a much larger scale, to incorporate kapa haka, as well as a large cast of singers, and to do justice to this important New Zealand story.”

Festival Artistic Director, Lissa Twomey. Says of the opera, “Any work, whether intricate or operatic in scale, needs longevity to develop to its full potential. New, New Zealand works of this scale are exactly the kind of production the Festival looks to present. It’s a real cause for celebration.”

Hōhepa features an outstanding cast. Returning from the UK to sing the title role is The NBR New Zealand Opera’s PwC Dame Malvina Major Young Artist, Phillip Rhodes. Alongside him are fellow New Zealanders Jonathan Lemalu, Jenny Wollerman, Martin Snell, Deborah Wai Kapohe, Eddie Muliaumaseali'i and Robert Tucker.

A further eight singers take the remaining roles and form the ensemble. Hōhepa is directed by Sara Brodie, assisted by Teina Moetara (who is also Cultural Advisor) and Taiaroa Royal (choreographer). The design team includes Tony de Goldi (set and costumes), Louise Potiki-Bryant (video) and Jeremy Fern (lighting).Hōhepa will be accompanied by a specially selected group of musicians, conducted by Marc Taddei.

One of the UK’s most exciting contemporary choreographers, whose work has attracted widespread critical acclaim, brings his new work, Political Mother, to the New Zealand
International Arts Festival. Since exploding onto the dance scene in 2007,

Hofesh Shechter has established himself as one of the UK’s most dynamic creative forces, in demand worldwide. The Telegraph declared Political Mother an “audio-visual marvel’’, after its 2010 premiere. It was the Israeli-born choreographer and composer’s first full-length piece, although he had already developed a reputation – and awards – for his distinctive and dramatic work.

“Hofesh Shechter is unlike any other choreographer. Not only are his charged and awe-inspiring steps instantly recognisable, he also writes the powerful and personal music that accompanies them. And he often plays it himself, live,” wrote Mark Monahan in The Telegraph. In 2007, London’s three major dance venues, The Place, the Southbank Centre and Sadler’s Wells Theatre collaborated to commission a new work by Shechter, In Your Rooms, which was presented at all three venues to sell-out audiences.

The work won Britain’s Critic’s Circle National Dance Award for Best Modern Choreography in 2008. Political Mother, featuring Shechter’s stunning young company and a live band, promises to be an exhilarating experience, says Festival Artistic Director, Lissa Twomey. “It’s a very diverse soundtrack and the choreography is incredibly powerful. It’s unlike anything anyone here has ever seen before.’’

The old-world romance of the circus will be brought back to life by three generations of Belgium’s extraordinary Ronaldo family.

All the nostalgia of sawdust and sequins, with a contemporary theatrical twist, is there in Circenses, staged in the intimate setting of their own Big Top on Wellington’s Waterfront.

One of Europe’s most exciting contemporary circus companies, Circus Ronaldo presents a show of two very different halves: for the act one, half the audience are treated to a vintage evening of traditional circus skills. The other half sit backstage, where they are privy to quite a different world.

Each half of the audience cannot see the other side of the stage, although they can hear intriguing, and often contradictory, sounds. At interval they change places – and have their curiosity satisfied.

In the great circus tradition of curiosity and illusion, things in Circenses are not as they first appear. As the troupe says: “Those who sat around the ring now discover the darker side of the circus... In short, everything that is not on the poster.’’

The Ronaldo family trace their circus lineage back to the early 1900s, when one of their descendants ran away from home at 15 to join the circus. He eventually married into a theatrical family – and Ronaldo’s unique mix of circus and theatre was born.

Three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and best-selling author Thomas L Friedman will be a key note speaker at the New Zealand International Arts Festival’s Writers and Readers Week, from 9-14 March 2012.

Foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times since 1995, Friedman has been described as one of the world’s most influential public intellectuals. His work on globalisation, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, has sold more than four million copies in thirty-seven languages. Other titles include From Beirut to Jerusalem, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Hot Flat and Crowded and Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World after September 11.

Friedman is an outspoken commentator on global affairs with a unique ability to focus on the social, economic, political and environmental trends shaping our world.

In his latest book, That Used to be Us, Friedman examines four major challenges facing America today – globalisation, the revolution in information technology, the nation’s chronic deficits, and its pattern of energy consumption. That Used to be Us has been described as both a searching exploration of the American condition today and a rousing manifesto for American renewal.

Friedman’s career with The New York Times includes postings in Beirut and Jerusalem at flashpoints in those countries’ histories. He was also the paper’s chief White House correspondent during the first year of the Clinton administration.