In their latest Utes and Ukes travels, Claire Cowan (composer) and Kiri Schumacher (jeweller) embark on a week-long feast of festival treats in Taupo.
Claire and Kiri offer their pre-festival picks, plus follow their travels from Erupt Lake Taupo Festival in the twitter feed below.
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OMG. We must be the luckiest bloggers in the land of the long white cloud. We're about to embark on a week long feast of artsy festival treats, in the stunning Lake Taupo district. With multiple shows to catch on every night of the week, and an array of public art exhibitions and events, not to mention action adventure activities on and around the lake, we'll be seamlessly flowing, like hot molten lava, from one activity to another. It's enough excitement to leave us petrified on the spot.
ERUPT festival is Taupo's biennial festival of the arts. Showcasing local and international talent across all genres, this year's festival line up looks to be a goodie.
Claire’s favourite things to be spewing from the ERUPT volcano of arts this year:
The smoking hot Venus IS - a physical theatre/dance work taking it's inspiration from 'historic erotic literature'. Shakespeare gets saucy, with James Joyce and friends. Leave the kids at home, it's R18. Sorry kids. Go and do your English homework.
We'll be quaking with laughter at Idiots of Ants - the 'stars of the Edinburgh fringe' performing physical fast-paced comedy sketches on our fair shores for the first time.
The group claim a huge online following with their sketch entitled Facebook in Real Life.
Love, puppets and the Apocalypse. Mammoth themes on a micro-scale. The Adventures of Alvin Sputnik is a 'one man micro-epic puppet show' involving 'saving the human race' and following his 'wife's soul to the underworld.'
This multi-award winning production comes to us from a stone's throw across the ditch - Perth. I'm puppet mad, so I'm getting pretty excited about this one.
As rare as an erupting volcano, a unique opportunity to see Moko being created live at the Taupo Museum is offered by artist Haki Williams. Usually a very private experience, visitors can be part of this special demonstration, as part of the Face Value exhibition.
Kiri’s ERUPT 2012 treats:
Playing at arguably the best venue of the festival, Tom Rodwell and Storehouse will be striking and strumming their tunes aboard a floating stage; the Otunui Paddleboat on Lake Maraetai in Mangakino. It’ll be a 40 min adventure beyond the ERUPT Taupo hub, and well worth the trip. The Gospel-blues-calypso quartet is famed for getting their crowds a jumpin’ and a hollerin’. They deliver the kind of rhythms that top up inner-funk reserves, so you’ll be sauntering and hip swaying down the street for days.
I thumbed On the Road as a teenager, but it’s been a while since I’ve given much thought to the Beat boys. For ink stained road trippers such as me and m’lovely lady, it seems only appropriate to pay homage to the American maestros of penning-while-on-the-road. Beautiful Losers is the story of a trip taken by Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassasdy as they smoked, drank, heckled, mused and cavorted their way across America. Their journey gave Kerouac fuel for his writing, which in turn sparked the Beat Generation and the Hippie emergence. At times exhilarating, other times desperately sad, Beautiful Losers comes with rave reviews.
Maori contemporary dance is in full swing at Atamira Dance Company. They’ve crafted a new programme by the name of Kaha, a mixture of 8 short works created by members of the company. Hmmm….always a risk in my opinion. Yes, I’ve been burned. Badly burned by multiple choreographer combos. Catapulted like a pin ball between slow and fast, from silence to an onslaught of sound. But these Atamira fellas do come well recommended, and it’s exciting to be seeing new works. I’m particularly keen to see Taane Mete’s Piata. It’s a solo female performance, and breathtaking by all accounts. Inspired by the Patupaiarehe, the work presents notions of other-worldliness and explores the ability to exist within two realms.
If we can squeeze time between one cultural experience to the next, we’ll be dusting off our Leisure Suits, and partaking in the pursuits of Taupo’s Great Outdoors. There’s fly fishing wonderousness, and all manner of on-water, in-water, under-water activity. Not to mention rather romantic natural wonders: Blue and Emerald lakes in the surrounding mountains, Craters on the Moon, a Lemonwood walk. There’s an endangered Blue Duck, who has surely just walked straight of the set of a fairytale... golden pears and lute playing fawns here we come.
It may be harder than we thought to distinguish on-stage wonders from real life in Taupo’s land of natural glories. But one thing’s for sure, by the end of the week we'll be well practiced in the quick change from waders-in-water to high heels and lippy.