NZ draws strength from tragedy

A STRONG local program has never been more important at the New Zealand International Arts Festival.

Dance work Tezuka

THERE is a meteorological phenomenon curiously familiar to New Zealanders, yet largely unknown to the rest of the world.

It's called a weatherbomb - a severe storm characterised by an intense low-pressure system on all four fronts - and when it hit Wellington on the second weekend of the New Zealand International Arts Festival, its cameo did not go unnoticed.

Temperatures dropped to single figures, gale-force winds howled through the city and driving rain lashed the CBD in scenes more akin to an Arctic winter than a Pacific summer.

Amid the deluge, two figures, sodden and smiling, walked a tightrope, swaying violently between a pair of trees, in a small park off the city's artsy downtown Cuba Street.

"Bugger the rain!" yelled one of the practising performers at passers-by. "There's a bloody arts festival on, people!"

Even at its wildest and woolliest, Wellington's biennial arts celebration is a rare, unassuming gem on the international festival scene. Where Sydney and Melbourne may trade on come-hither sexiness, Wellington plays hard to get.

The island nation's 14th biennial festival, the third by outgoing Australian artistic director Lissa Twomey, is a vibrant, if understated, program featuring 900 artists and 300 local and overseas acts. And while the international contingent is impressive - acclaimed British theatre group Propeller, performance artist James Thierree, Bon Iver and the National Theatre of Scotland head the bill - Twomey is proudest of the local content.

"Providing a platform for and seeing NZ artists perform alongside high-end international counterparts is one of the joys of the festival," Twomey says. "There has been a palpable sense of pride in the achievements of local artists."

One local work taking NZ theatre to the world is The Maori Troilus and Cressida, which opens in Wellington on Friday. The Maori version of the Shakespearean play, which stars Whale Rider's Rawiri Paratene, will play at the Globe this year as NZ's representative at the London Cultural Olympiad.

Then there's Tu, a Tawata Productions theatre work based on the Patricia Grace novel of the same name. The play, starring Kirk Torrance - NZ acting royalty - is performed in a marae, a traditional Maori familial meeting and mourning place. It's a hauntingly apposite space to perform a powerful play that details the deadly effects of three wars on three generations of a family.

But, then, tragedy is something with which New Zealanders are painfully familiar. The country last month commemorated the first anniversary of the devastating Christchurch earthquakes that killed 185 people, reduced the city to rubble and, according to Prime Minister John Key, changed the nation forever.

Twomey says a strong local program has never been so important. "I'm really very proud of the local (acts)," she says. "It's been a very, very tough year for New Zealand."

Nowhere in the city is the feeling of cultural solidarity more pronounced than at Te Papa Tongarewa, the national museum. Te Papa, which means "container of treasures", is Wellington's true cultural centre.

The sprawling institution on the capital's waterfront, which also acts as the festival's main hub, formed the centrepiece of the opening night celebrations last week as artist Michel Tuffery's projected-image display First Contact - which shows nightly - lit up the building's curved sandstone facade.

Built in 1998, Te Papa is not your average museum. Indeed as we walk into its first-floor annexe, the entire building fills with the sound of percussion.

"The Cook Islanders are having a little exhibition downstairs," says our guide, Paul Cobitt, over the complex rhythms. "Sometimes groups such as these book out the floor for performance. Wonderful, isn't it?"

It seems an appropriate soundtrack against which to view rest of the museum, which features works dedicated to the Polynesian nations that came across the seas to the tiny Pacific country about the 13th century.

Te Papa also houses the national art collection, a selection of which is displayed in its upstairs art gallery, as well as a wing dedicated to travelling international exhibits; a variety of cultural and learning centres, including a marae in the museum's western wing; a seismological study centre; and an interactive children's learning centre. You name it, it's here: "It's a very, very inclusive place," Cobitt says.

Te Papa also has a theatre wing, and on Friday night it hosted one of the festival highlights: Masi. The world premiere of the Fijian-NZ production did not disappoint. Masi tells the love story of Conch Theatre artistic director Nina Nawalowalo's parents - a Fijian high chief and the daughter of Cambridge-educated schoolmasters - through a mix of song, dance, theatre and magic.

New Zealand's first opera, Hohepa, is also expected to attract interest when it opens on March 15. It retraces the life of Hohepa Te Umuroa, a Maori chief who was transported to the penal colony of Maria Island off Tasmania.

The bigger international hitters, including Beautiful Burnout by Frantic Assembly and the National Theatre of Scotland, and Propeller's Henry V/A Winter's Tale began this week, while Thierree's Raoul opens on March 14. All have come to NZ following recent shows in Australia.

But there is something about Wellington that draws one back to its local elements; something about this nation's bicultural fabric - effectively enshrined in the 1985 amendments to the Waitangi Treaty - that seems to resonate in the least obvious places.

Tezuka, the spectacular international dance production that traces the life of manga's founding father, is indicative of this. Choreographed by Belgian-Moroccan Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Tezuka, held in the city's palatial, ornate 100-year-old St James Theatre, uses animator Osamu Tezuka's manga animation - in particular his famous character, Astro Boy - as a counterpoint to recent Japanese history.

Referencing last year's earthquake and tsunami along the way, the show's message is clear: that while the earth may move, we must always move with it. There is always hope. It's a notion of solidarity not lost on earthquake-weary New Zealanders.

Of the festival's total budget of $NZ13 million ($10m), only 20 per cent is government funded. The remaining 80 per cent is evenly split between box office takings and philanthropists and sponsors.

Ambitiously enough, posters in various places across the city declare: "We're taking over." But the truth is far more complicated than that. The arts have a long way to go to supersede rugby union as NZ's dominant social currency.

Indeed, fly into Wellington on the national airline, which has a dedicated rugby channel, and you'll be greeted by a huge white Hollywood-esque sign that reads: All Blacks.

"I used to curse the rugby," Twomey says, laughing. "But I will say this: thank god the All Blacks won the World Cup. This country needed it."

Twomey, who will return to Sydney at the conclusion of the festival, is staying mum on her future. NZ-born artistic director Shelagh Magadza takes the reins in 2014. "I've been on the festival road for 15 years, and it's been a great privilege," Twomey says.

"I have enjoyed it, hated it, all of that. I am coming back to Sydney and finding my feet again."

Tim Douglas travelled to Wellington as a guest of the New Zealand International Arts Festival, Positively Wellington Tourism and Air New Zealand.