For fourteen years The Performance Arcade has brought many mauhiriri to the various programmes it hosts along Ara Moana, the ocean pathway that is Wellington’s waterfront. The opening night of PA2024 activated this year's series of performances with the theme mÄtiro whakamaua / look beyond the horizon.
A review of selected works on offer in PA2024.
Each year The Performance Arcade offers a kaleidoscopic spatial collage of performance-related events and event-based arts practices. Now in its 14th annual iteration, its site, coordinated by its founder-director Sam Trubridge along with a highly skilled and attentive team, has been both well travelled, and reconfigured many times, and the echoes of many past performances may be easily recalled if you have previously visited or participated. A kind of mirror image of characteristically large-scale public gallery exhibitions, most often centered around major retrospectives and material installations of many discrete works, the works on view in the Arcade bring a contingency, a fleeting “Did I just see that?” or “What was that meant to be?” lightness at the best of times.
Tired of comics making stand-up look easy? Then slide along to the LATE NIGHT JAZZ SCAT where we challenge the brightest stars of the festival to perform their material to the improvised jamming of a live jazz band.