Top acts lined up for arts festival

Last updated 10:53 04/11/2009

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Conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy and sitarist Ravi Shankar are among the top acts announced for the New Zealand International Arts Festival, which runs in Wellington from February 26 to March 21.

A total of 930 artists from 30 countries will take part in theatre, music, dance and visual arts, with 18 shows having their Australasian premieres.

Ticket sales open on November 19, but the festival includes many free performances, including Mahler's Symphony No 8, which will be relayed live from the Michael Fowler Centre into Civic Square.

Tenor Simon O'Neill will perform with the NZSO in a Wagner gala, which includes highlights from the Ring Cycle, Parsifal and Lohengrin.

A chamber music weekend opens with the Borodin Quartet and includes, in addition to the music, free recitals, films, talks and an exhibition.

The theatre programme includes the New Zealand debut of director Peter Brook, whose latest work, Eleven and Twelve, premieres in Paris later this month.

The theatre lineup includes the cult show Circus Cirkor, as well as dancer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui performing Sutra, a Sadlers Wells production, and the show Good Morning Mr Gershwin, by French choreographers Compagnie Montalvo-Hervieu.

Also from France, street theatre maestros Royal de Luxe present Revolt of the Mannequins – free comic strip theatre played out by 40 mannequins in 10 Wellington shop windows.

For something a little quirky in the way of free theatre, the Compagnie Beau Geste performs Transports Exceptionnels at Waitangi Park, where dancer Philippe Priasso will perform a duet with a mechanical digger to the voice of Maria Callas.

Fifteen exhibitions in eight galleries include the work of light sculptor Anthony McCall, video artist Bill Viola and sound sculptor Janet Cardiff, as well as New Zealand artists Frances Hodgkins, Seraphine Pick, Milan Mrkusich, Judy Millar and Francis Upritchard.

Literary luminaries Neil Gaiman, Simon Schama and Richard Dawkins will feature among 19 international and three New Zealand writers in the New Zealand Post Writers and Readers Week.