Festival of Colour announces five world premieres
LAKE WANAKA, New Zealand (December 4, 2008) – The Southern Lakes Festival of Colour this week announced the 2009
programme will include five world premieres from some of New Zealand’s foremost artists and playwrights.
At a function for patrons and benefactors of the arts festival, director, Philip Tremewan said he was delighted
heartland New Zealand beats the big cities of Auckland and Wellington to be the first to see some major new work.
Work from iconic artist, Grahame Sydney will launch the Festival with a premiere of his documentary, Dreaming of
Eldorado: the old Dunstan Road. In addition, the festival has commissioned a number new works in music, dance and
theatre with support from Creative New Zealand. Mike Nock’s Southern Suite is a piano duet themed around the Southern
Alps and New Zealand’s top two pianists, Michael Houstoun and Diedre Irons, will premiere the work during the festival.
Local theatre group, Flat Out Productions is working with director Stuart Devenie to produce the play, Witches Over
Wanaka, bringing a touch of Shakespeare’s Macbeth with Devenie’s own imitable style.
The final two commissions were announced by the artists themselves with Raewyn Hill and Dave Armstrong taking to the
stage. One of New Zealand’s top choreographers, Hill presented her vision for her latest dance work, Finders Keepers
that will also premiere at the festival. Finders Keepers started when Hill visited a small park in central Hong Kong - a
park where the owners of song-birds brought the birds in their cages to socialise and to compete with each other. She
saw the passion the men had for their caged song birds and this started her thinking about relationships, about love and
about how we sometimes try to cage what we love.
“Having performed White in 2005 and Mercy: a dance for the forgotten in 2007 it’s really nice to continue the
relationship with the festival artistically,” she said. “The Festival of Colour has to be my favourite arts festival as
the autumn colours are insane and the energy, the real sense of community ownership and really infectious energy;
everyone gets excited about new works.”
Renowned playwright, Dave Amstrong talked about his new play, Le Sud that imagines New Zealand colonised in a completely
different fashion, splitting in 1839 to the British North Zealand and the French speaking South - Le Sud. Thanks to
abundant cheap hydro-power and farming subsidies, Le Sud flourishes, but free-market economies and a civil war with the
Tuhoe nation mean North Zealand is a third world backwater. So a North Zealand delegation heads to Le Sud to ask for
foreign aid and cheap power. What follows is a tense round of negotiations combined with elements of classic French
farce with many romances, quarrels and leadership challenges along the way.
“Because it’s a Festival of Colour commission, the play is set in Wanaka and it’s such a great place to premiere a work
about north vs south,” said Armstrong. “I’ve had a longstanding relationship with the festival with work at both the two
previous festivals and it’s great to be coming back for a third time with another exciting work.”
The next Festival of Colour takes place on 28 April to 3 May 2008 in Lake Wanaka and is generously supported by Central
Lakes Trust, The Community Trust of Otago, Creative New Zealand, Infinity Investment Group, Queenstown Lakes District
Council and Aurora. For further information, visit www.festivalofcolour.co.nz
ENDS