Festival Countdown #5 - December 2008

Seasons Greetings
Christmas is fast approaching and once we’re into the New Year then we’re really on the countdown to the 3rd Festival of Colour. Make sure you have 12 February marked on your 2009 calendar. That is the date of the Festival launch and the start of our priority booking period for Patrons and Sponsors. Public sales and internet bookings go live on 23 February.
5 World Premieres
We held a special function for patrons, sponsors and benefactors on 3 December to announce 5 premieres at the 2009 Festival of Colour.
Two of the commissions were announced by the artists themselves with Raewyn Hill and Dave Armstrong taking to the stage.
Festival of Colour veteran, Dave Armstrong amused the audience talking 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.

One of New Zealand’s top choreographers, Raewyn Hill presented her vision for her latest dance work, Finders Keepers. The inspiration was when Hill visited a small park in central Hong Kong, 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.

Diedre Irons 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 new music work 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.
Gift Vouchers
It is the gift giving season, but we all have that relative who is impossible to buy for, or a friend who appears to have everything. To solve your gift dilemmas we are offering Festival of Colour Gift Vouchers redeemable for tickets to any performance during next year's Festival (28 April – 3 May 2009).
Recipients will be able to choose from a diverse range of music, dance and theatre - ensuring that they can use your gift for something they'll enjoy.

Vouchers are available either for prebooking a daytime event at $10 or for the full price of one of our mainbill events - $32 (please note that change cannot be given).
Vouchers can be purchased by phoning the Festival office (03) 443 4172 with payment via cash or cheque only.

Also, for other gift ideas we still have supplies of special edition Festival wine and t-shirts in a variety of sizes so please check out the website http://festivalofcolour.co.nz for full information and how to purchase them.

Sponsors
Since our last Festival Countdown we are delighted to see Ngai Tahu and The Wanaka Sun join us as Silver sponsors, Berry & Co as a Bronze Sponsor and Paper Plus, Mitre 10, and Entertainment Solutions come on board as Festival sponsors. For a full list of all our sponsors visit www.festivalofcolour.co.nz/supporters. We are grateful to all of our patrons, sponsors and benefactors for their support.

From all of the team at the Festival of Colour we would like to thank you for all of your support and wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
The next Festival of Colour takes place on 28 April to 3 May 2009 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.

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