From 22 February - 16 March next year, Wellington will be playing host to more than 800 artists from 29 countries during the 2008 New Zealand International Arts Festival.

From 22 February - 16 March next year, Wellington will be playing host to more than 800 artists from 29 countries during the 2008 New Zealand International Arts Festival. The programme boasts big names - including a Hollywood star, the creator of a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoon strip and an American jazz legend - while also actively addressing human rights, globalisation and environmental concerns.

Theatre The theatre programme presents the critically acclaimed TV3 Season of Black Watch, hailed as a cultural landmark of the 21st century; and the Clemenger BBDO Season of Chekhov's Three Sisters, directed by Cheek by Jowl founder Declan Donnellan and with a stellar Russian cast. Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett directs the Sydney Theatre Company's 2007 production of Blackbird, a confronting theatre piece which scooped a 2007 Olivier Award for Best New Play; bro'Town makes a foray to Wellington for its first-ever live stage performance; director Nigel Jamieson's dance theatre piece Honour Bound is an artistic response to David Hick's incarceration for five years at the infamous Guantanamo Bay; and the delightful Lifeboat, a true story of two 15-year-old's death-defying journey to escape war-torn Britain. The Festival's new stage commissions for 2008 include Indian Ink Theatre's first production in five years, The Dentist's Chair, starring Jacob Rajan in the title role; and the world premiere of opera The Trial of the Cannibal Dog, a contemporary adaptation of Dame Anne Salmond's award-winning book. The Festival is also co-producing, with Taki Rua Productions, Albert Belz's Te Karakia, a love story of hope and forgiveness set amidst the 1981 Springbok Tour, and Auckland Theatre Company's Where We Once Belonged, a starkly honest, sometimes brutal, but often wildly funny coming-of-age story adapted from Sia Figiel's award-winning novel.  

Music Among the highlights of the international music programme are the double-bill of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's final collaboration The Lindbergh Flight and The Seven Deadly Sins; the masterful French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, and former child prodigy, violinist Chloë Hanslip making their debuts with the NZSO in two very contrasting concerts; 2007 Pulitzer Prize winner Ornette Coleman - one of jazz's most important and controversial exponents; The Bad Plus, the biggest breakout story of jazz in the past decade; the highly anticipated Book of Longing, a musical collaboration between legends Leonard Cohen and Philip Glass; and The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain who re-arrange punk, funk, metal, classical and pop standards for the miniature guitar.  

Dance The star-studded dance programme features one of the world's foremost ballerinas, Sylvie Guillem, in collaboration with London's hottest choreographer, Akram Khan in Sacred Monsters; Shen Wei's landmark double bill of The Rite of Spring and Folding, which mixes Asian traditions and American experimentation; circus skills of somersaulting, contorting and balancing in Les 7 Doigts de la Main's show Traces; brilliant Finnish modern-dance choreographer Tero Saarinen's production Borrowed Light; a controversial interpretation of classical ballet Giselle set to Slovak folk dancing and Texas two-step; and with no two performances the same Glow uses a solo dancer who emotionally and physically triggers a video-tracking system creating absorbing images.

The Pacific Blue Festival Club The Pacific Blue Festival Club returns to Frank Kitts Park to host entertainment from noon to night, including devilish late-night acrobatic show La Vie; legendary soul singer Mavis Staples; the bossa nova edge of Nouvelle Vague; and the exotica performance artist Meow Meow, hand-picked for David Bowie's High Line Festival in New York. New Zealand artists include Dave Dobbyn, Lucid 3 and Wellington band Little Bushman.

New Zealand Post Writers and Readers Week The New Zealand Post Writers and Readers Week provides provocative discussion and debate, including the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stigliz, fiction writers James Meek and Mayra Montero; 2007 Booker nominees Mohsin Hamid and Ian McEwan; Canadian virtuoso performance poet Christian Bok; Pulitzer Prize-winning Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau; Gourmet magazine editor Ruth Reichl, and climate campaigner George Monbiot in a live video session from the UK.

Other events Events on the waterfront consist of one of the world's largest interactive artworks, Body Movies. This free public art installation features photo portraits from around Wellington and the world, which people can match, animate or embody through shadow-play; and the ground-breaking show Secret from Cirque Ici, which enlists circus artist, equilibrist, and sculpture manipulator Johann Le Guillerm, who will create sorcery under the big top in Odlins Plaza. There are also a number of free events for the whole family, so keep an eye out for From Score to Screen on 24 February in Waitangi Park and Once Upon a Deadline around the city on 10 March.

Visit the Festival website for more information. Tickets go on sale to the public on 16 November. 5/11/07

Image: Dance show Glow.