Excitement is building for Splore Festival, with a stellar programme featuring an eclectic selection of Aotearoa’s homegrown artists on Feb 25-27, 2022.
Splorers can get ready to dust off their dress-ups for an extravaganza of music legends, immersive performances and thought-provoking interactive visual arts on the shores of Tāpapakanga Regional Park.
The Living Lounge, Splore’s iconic performance stage, will bring its usual cheeky antics across the weekend including ‘The Wide-Awake Club!’ cabaret on Saturday night, an interactive show serving flamboyant self-expression and unmissable tricksters whose talents are destined to awaken your wild side.
Performance Programme Director Emma Vickers says “Inspired by the bouncy, brash, wide-eyed 1980s UK kids tv show, it will be loud, bright and not at all subtle. Whether it’s woke awareness in (and possibly on,) your face, neon dancers, bananas, llamas and pillow fights, or literal naked truths doing backflips into the audience, if you’re weary this’ll wake you up, if you’re wired, this won’t help you sleep!”
With new work from rising boylesque drag-star The Ever Changing Boy, boundary-shattering performance-art from Hannah Tasker-Poland and Korean b-boy legend Ducky Kim, there is an ever-fresh pool of NZ-based talent coming for the first time to Splore, all MC’d by the inimitably outrageous Lizzie Tollemache and Tom Sainsbury.
Invited back are a multitude of star Splore performers like Banana Jolie, BosSHE, Flow Academy and Oblivion Westwood. Also, one-off collaborations, with Dust Palace, returning with a re-worked ‘Haus of YOLO’, this year featuring vogueing from House of Galliano, on Friday night.
Over the entire weekend, from the Piazza to the Skeletons’ Closet, the sea, and nooks and crannies across the site Splore adventurers will discover street shows, interactive dance, circus sideshows, a tiny cinema and more.
Performer line-up; (in no particular order)
Dust Palace- Haus of YOLO
House of Galliano
Hannah Tasker-Poland
Tom Sainsbury
Lizzie Tollemache
Dance Plant Collective
The Ever Changing Boy + Troupe
Banana Jolie
Dust Palace Performers
Oblivion Westwood+ Paul Klaass
Freaktopia
Amber Liberté- The Consensual Sensory Peep Show
Human Agency- Why is a Raven?, Airquarium, Minema, Dream State
Flame Entertainment
Flow Acrobats
Ducky Kim
Rodney Bell + Chloe Loftus
BosShe Dance
Rollicking Entertainment
The Bombay Bombshell
Splore music programme:
TEEKS
Kora
Ladi6
Breaks N’ Brass(feat. Ria Hall/Tali/Rubi Du)
Don McGlashan
The New Loungehead
Rubi du
Rei
Anthonie Tonnon
KITA
Hipstamatics
FilthAKL
Huia
Phodiso
Wellington Sea Shanty Society
Paul Bosauder – Flamenco Project
ThoseWhoLove
Dylan C
Frank Booker
Stefaan van Leuven
Marjorie Sinclair
Clarke Gayford
Dick Johnson
Zuke
Cam Harris
Wattsson
Mac Mylo
Gabriella Gonzalez
DIMPRI
Eastern Bloc
(Halalamama) حلالاماما
Takas
Pork Crackle
Bontempo
Aw B
Lauren Gin
Hudge
Heylady
The Dastardly Bounder
Amandamania
Bobby Brazuka
Forrest Bump
Mr Big Stuff
Ugly Disco
Moondog
Miss B
Pippin
Mia Kober
Sister Rosa
Sigmund
More music to be announced in the coming weeks.