29 April 2025
The 2008 Festival featured more than 800 artists from 29 countries around the world, showcasing cultures from all ends of the globe on stages across Wellington and the greater Wellington region during the 24-day period.
Marking the opening of the Festival on Friday 22 February was a dawn pōwhiri welcoming overseas and local artists to Te Whanganui-a-Tara.
Did you know - the Festival built sets for eight different shows across the programme and helped facilitate the arrival of 14 containers of freight? A 28 tonne replica propeller for the opera The Lindbergh Flight/The Flight Over the Ocean & The Seven Deadly Sins, was one of these containers that took a four-month journey from the Lyon Opera company in France to our Wellington workshop in Upper Hutt.
Alistair Cameron (Technical Manager) and David Inns (Chief Executive) with the propeller via The Dominion Post
A specialist company from Christchurch was contracted to make the propeller functional to fly, suspending it nine meters above the St James Theatre stage during the performance.
The Lindbergh Flight/The Flight Over opera, by German writer Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill, told the story of Charles Lindbergh’s pioneering trans-Atlantic flight of 1927. The Seven Deadly Sins, directed by renowned Canadian choreographer Marie Chouniard, followed the spirited journey of twin sisters Anna I and Anna II voyaging across America for seven years.
Shen Wei Dance Arts was another highlight coming from China / United States, showcasing the genius of acclaimed Chinese choreographer, painter and designer Shen Wei with his landmark double-bill – Rite of Spring and Folding.
"The turbaned dancers gave impeccably sustained performances against several of the laws of physics and gravity. An evening of unusually exquisite performance.” - The Dominion Post, review by Jennifer Shennan.
Shen Wei Dance Arts with Folding
“Great theatre not only conveys strong emotions, it elicits them. Te Karakia, showing as part of the International Festival of the Arts, is such a play” - The Wellingtonian, 2008
Long-time Festival artists Taki Rua Productions celebrated 25 years with a commissioned work co-produced with the New Zealand International Arts Festival, Te Karakia. A love story of hope and forgiveness amidst the 1981 Springbok Tour, it followed a young man’s struggle of revolutionary pursuit of 1980s New Zealand society with strict religious upbringing.
Composer Philip Glass, who featured in the inaugural Festival in 1986, made a return for one night only with the Book of Longing, a new work based on poetry and images of Leonard Cohen.
Oscar winner Cate Blanchett was the director of Blackbird with the Sydney Theatre Company, receiving attention for her involvement in the Festival, and Flight of the Conchords stars Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, with actress Lucy Lawless, appeared as guests in bro’ Town Live on Stage at the St James Theatre.
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