Atamira Dance Company's 2016 development season, Manaia, presents three short works which engage with some aspect of that mythological

COMMENT: With less than a month to go until Rio, serious concerns have been raised about the safety of tourists and teams arriving in the city.

Tearepa Kahi's documentary Poi E: The Story of Our Song debuts at the NZ International Film Festival this month in time for Matariki, the Maori New Year.

"Basque songs unique, emotional and better than Maori"

Dancers step into a magical world, writes Dionne Christian.

Happy 70th birthday on Monday, Sam, though I've wondered sometimes whether you'd make it this far and I suspect you have, too.

In its 2016 season, Footnote New Zealand Dance draws upon the talents of overseas based artists to present an intriguing double bill

The splendid dancers of Nederlands Dans Theater's company NDT1 received a standing ovation on the opening night of their Auckland season, an acknowledgement of their stellar performance.

Suyeon Kang, the first Australian to take top honours in the Michael Hill International Violin Competition, has undertaken her winner's recital tour and concerto performance.

A New Zealand gun shop is selling and promoting the AR-15 rifle, the firearm synonymous with American mass shootings.

An original art work depicting Captain Cook's arrival in the Pacific is being restored for display at Te Papa.

The superb retrospective show of photographer Fiona Pardington at Auckland Art Gallery, which finishes this weekend, is a series of essays.

Unfortunately, the performance needed more polish if one was to overlook the conservatism of the programming.

Modern theatre frequently brings together disparate cultures to create vivid and dramatic storytelling and it's certainly true with Auckland's Matariki Festival programme.

Universities to set up three Asia-Pacific centres of excellence.

Zoom, the first of NZTrio's 2016 Loft concerts, did just that for a taut 70 minutes of music, with matching Zoom cocktails available at the downstairs bar for thirsty patrons.

Todd Emerson goes back to 1980s NZ in three of his current roles in TV3 series Westside, the popular play Hudson and Halls and Kiwi rock musical Daffodils.

Call it a case of life imitating art. Copies of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird have become hot property at Auckland libraries.

The Auckland Art Gallery is showing a small exhibition of lithographs by Honore Daumier that acts as a lively adjunct to the current Auckland Festival of Photography.

In a brazen one-man performance, Potato Stamp Megalomaniac depicts a real life roller coaster breakdown.

In book publishing, there is James Patterson - and basically everyone else.

Hot on the heels of 100 Maori and Pacific artists visiting Guam for the 12th Festival of Pacific Arts, Salisbury is the next destination for a contingent of NZ artists.

This year's big important NZ rock book has arrived and it's by the guy who founded Flying Nun. Here, he comes Clean about why and how he wrote it.

COMMENT: I'm going to selectively quote from a Pablo Neruda poem titled To Wash a Child.

At just 21 years old, Zac Johns plays a pivotal role in the latest production of Evita. You won't see Johns on stage, though.

Stephen Jewell talks to British author Chris Cleave about bravery, racism and how he avoids getting stuck in a writing groove.

Experiencing Stephen Hough's magisterial Brahms Second Piano Concerto brought back a conversation in which the Englishman talked of the power that came from the work's sense of emotional containment.