Screens filled with red clouds at dawn start this contemporary circus with hip-hop styling, but instead of a shepherd's warning, they herald a city delight.

Almost halfway through the Auckland Arts Festival, advance ticket sales are at a record high.

One of the subjects of a remarkable new Maori TV series on the descendants of those painted by Gottfried Lindauer is businessman, Treaty negotiator and new chief of Auckland Council's Southern Initiative John McEnteer.

This rich 1999 experimental classic from China is stylish, hip, humorous, streetwise - and hopelessly romantic: under youth's swagger are youth's desperate illusions.

We had come to the Civic Theatre to hear Haydn and Mozart from Kronos Quartet; in partnership with pipa virtuoso Wu Man, the Americans were offering a rare mingling of music and magic.

Micahel Hurst dons the Fool costume for King Lear, three decades after first tackling the role. By Barney McDonald.

Around 100,000 people are expected at Western Springs Lakeside Park in Auckland today for the annual Pasifika festival.

Auckland Art Gallery director Chris Saines leaves next week for Queensland after 17 years of working towards the gallery’s expansion and rejuvenation. But he’ll be back one day, he tells Linda Herrick.

Just go see this. French pyrotechnical wizards Groupe F offer a superlative, splendiferous, explosive extravaganza. Artistic director Christophe Berthonneau and his team, and Red Leap Theatre, are to be congratulated.

Walking tours - especially those guided by a remote, apparently all-seeing, all-knowing central HQ - are full of tantalising possibilities: where will I be going? How will I know how to get there?

Cantina opens with a velvety voiced crooner promising to "shoot the moon right out of the sky" and honours that with an exhilarating acrobatics display set in the seductive ambience of a 1920s speak-easy.

Pacific Les Mis musical hugely leavened by romance, humour and funky 70s style

Regional polytechnics are important to their communities, and the National-led government is underfunding them, two Labour politicians say.

If you see Auckland Arts Festival artistic director Carla van Zon wandering around town over the next couple of weeks, give her a bottle of water and something healthy to eat to boost her stamina for the duration of the programme.

What Auckland's cultural scene does lack, when it comes to Ateed and Aucklanders in general, is a true appreciation of the goodies that are on offer on their doorsteps.

At the North Shore Woodturning Guild, Danielle Wright discovers a piece of the past with a link to the future

The body of artist Ralph Hotere arrived to emotional scenes at Mitimiti in Northland this afternoon.