The Auckland Festival is a biennial arts and cultural festival held in New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

’s largest city, Auckland

Auckland

The Auckland metropolitan area , in the North Island of New Zealand, is the largest and most populous urban area in the country with residents, percent of the country's population. Auckland also has the largest Polynesian population of any city in the world...

. The Festival features works from New Zealand, the Pacific, Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

 and beyond, including world premieres of new works and international performing arts events.

History

Auckland was the first city in the Asia Pacific to have a large festival, which it hosted from 1948 to 1982. Almost 20 years later, in 2000, Auckland City Council reinvented the festival, based on the premise that Auckland is a rich, dynamic, diverse, important city. Auckland City Council voted to support the establishment of a unique arts and cultural festival for Auckland celebrating its position in the Pacific. AK03, the inaugural event of the “new” Auckland Festival, opened on 20 September 2003. Subsequently the dates were moved to March and festivals were held in 2005(AK05), 2007 (AK07), 2009 (Auckland Festival 2009) and 2011 (Auckland Arts Festival 2011).

The festival celebrates the distinct and unique characteristics of Auckland and its particular Pacific style. Its main objectives are to engage Aucklanders in the arts, to support New Zealand art and artists, and to reflect what is unique about Auckland.
Its program features more than 100 events including dance

Dance

Dance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting....

, music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

, cabaret

Cabaret

Cabaret is a form, or place, of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue: a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables watching the performance, as introduced by a master of ceremonies or...

, burlesque

Burlesque

Burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects...

, theatre

Theatre

Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...

, ballet

Ballet

Ballet is a type of performance dance, that originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century, and which was further developed in France and Russia as a concert dance form. The early portions preceded the invention of the proscenium stage and were presented in large chambers with...

, visual arts

Visual arts

The visual arts are art forms that create works which are primarily visual in nature, such as ceramics, drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, design, crafts, and often modern visual arts and architecture...

, film

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

, and public forums, occupying most of Auckland's theatres, galleries and concert halls. In 2007 a dedicated music and cabaret environment (“Red Square”) was created, which serves as a hub where artists and public gather during the festival, day and night. In 2011 'Red Square' was re-branded as the Festival Garden and a new program element, White Night, modeled on Europe's 'Nuit Blanche' events, was introduced - the first such event in Australasia.

Highlights of 2011 included performances by the Lautten Compangney (Gerrmany), the Manganiyar Seduction (India), U-Theatre (Taiwan)
and a commissioned full-length work 'RAPT' by New Zealand choreographer Douglas Wright.

The Festival is run by an independent not for profit trust, the Auckland Festival Trust. It is principally funded by Auckland City
.

The next event will be held from 2-20 March 2011 and will be known as Auckland Arts Festival.

Festival Directors

Year	Director
2002	Mike Mizrahi & Marie Adams
2003-2004	Simon Prast Simon Prast Simon Prast is a director and actor from Auckland, New Zealand. Prast was the founder of the Auckland Theatre Company and director of the first Auckland Festival AK03.-Early life:...
2005-2011	David Malacari

External links

• Auckland Festival – official website
• YouTube - Auckland Festival Highlights