Reviews of Festival shows generated a great response. Currently media is devoted to reporting saddening stories of natural disasters and political unrest. At times like this, I think it's comforting to reflect on events that can help us transcend these traumatic experiences. Art is a wonderful expression of the great courage and joy which are possible even in the darkest of moments. 

Some of the week's highlights include:

-rapt, a Festival dance-theatre commission by Douglas Wright, gave audiences the chance to see "an important work in divining and inspiring New Zealand culture" (NBR).

-Audiences who attended the dance-theatre piece The Show Must Go On by French choreographer Jerome Bel were given a creative work-out. The performers were auditioned to reflect the people of Auckland and provided an experience that was challenging and confronting even as it had some audience members standing, sashaying, swaying and singing to the pop songs which were its soundtrack.

-Sound of the Ocean had audiences holding their breath, mesmerized by the beauty and subtlety of percussion that was alternately trancelike and spine rattling.

-Physical theatre from Gaff Aff had performer Martin Zimmermann scampering over seats to keep up with the cardboard rat race he and Dimitri de Perrot created on stage as a metaphor for our modern lives.

-Carnival of Souls, performed at the Mercury Theatre in the Festival's first week, moved to The Civic for the Festival's last night. It's been a pleasure for us to use these wonderful venues, particularly Mercury Theatre which offered Aucklanders the chance to reacquaint themselves, or visit for the first time, this classic Auckland theatre venue.

-Conor Lovett brought his nuanced interpretations of Beckett's First Love and The End to the Festival. This was a real treat. The Irish company's performances were particularly pertinent as they coincided with St Patrick's Day. 

-The pack-out of the Festival Garden was a little sad. We bid a fond farewell to the Pacific Crystal Palace Spiegeltent, the Garden Theatre, the Stoneleigh Garden Bar, and the TV3 Garden Stage. It was great to see the Square become a spot for people to come to play and stay. The Festival Garden really showed Auckland how the Aotea Square can be used as an engaging venue for everyone.

Sadly, this was my last Auckland Arts Festival.

I hope that my legacy for the event will be a discussion on the development of the Festival's repertoire.  This year the inaugural White Night was a tremendous success and allowed Aucklanders to view their galleries and museums as part of a city that is alive and engaged with creativity, performance and arts.

Over the years the Festival has continued to engage more Aucklanders in a broader range of cultural activities and activated the energies of the city so that it is increasingly recognised as a major cultural centre of the Asia Pacific and a more attractive city because of that. Over the years the Festival has continued to bring to Aucklanders new and unique arts and cultural experiences, commissioning and presenting wonderful work from our own artists including The Arrival, rapt, Sleep/Wake, Strange Resting Places, Wild Dogs Under My Skirt, Terrain, Dark Tourists, The New Zeibekiko and has continued to bring amazing international artists and work also including:  Ishinha (Nostalgia), Heiner Goebbels (Max Black), Robert La Page (The Andersen Project), Groupe F's A Little More Light - fireworks display), Ea Sola (The White Body), Angelin Preljocaj (The Four Seasons), La Clique. These events have culminated in a 2011 programme of astonishing diversity including FranceDanse New Zealand 2011, The Manganiyar Seduction, La Odisea, and Sound of the Ocean to unfairly name only a few.

Ultimately, for me, the success of the Festival will be measured on whether something in it made a difference to someone - whether some work or performance opened someone's mind to think differently or interpret their own lives or the world around them in a different way.  Working on the past four festivals has certainly done that to me.

Each Festival at least one event or performance or artist has produced a moment of great elation in my heart.  I hope you too have had such experiences.

Modern Dance is something I've seen very little of, but when the chance to see the legendary Douglas Wright's Rapt came along, I knew I had to take it. I cant tell you what happened or what it was about but I can tell you the company, the choreography and just everything had my mouth hanging open with wonder. Just go, if you are a fan of modern dance go, if you're not, try something outside your comfort zone, I did and I was blown away. It's so theatrical and not just dance per se, the images were amazing, it was evocative, I think it was about life, like watching a sumptuous painting come to life. It was muscular, animal, ornithological even. It's not about rationality, it's about subconscious comprehension and the sets and costumes were staggering.

Then last night I saw the Swiss troupe of two (can you be a troupe of two? I don't know but you know what I mean) perform the acclaimed  Gaff Aff.

DJ, Dimitri de Perrot and performer, Martin Zimmermann, who is part dancer, mime, comedian, contortionist, puppeteer and clown, had the audience transfixed.

These two shows push the human body beyond what you'd consider possible, the limits of endurance are tested and both companies astounded me with their ability to tell a story without resorting to run of the mill stuff like talking or text.

"There are 19 pop songs, some good, some bad, some mediocre in the extreme, but all universally familiar. There is a DJ. There are 20 dancers, plucked from the general populace.

Some, maybe five, are experienced performers. Some have no relevant experience at all.

The music drives the show. The lyrics are important. It takes a while for some in the audience to get it, that if the song says Let the Sun Shine In there will be sunlight. If the song says Come Together the cast will arrive.

The man on the left remains deeply unconscious through several tracks. He doesn't even realise the show has begun. He talks loudly about the Mercury Theatre's architectural features, waves his arms, aiming to impress his handsome young companion.

The young woman to the right, a dance student, leads the irritatingly chirpy chorus of false and forced laughter.

"I get it! I get it!" Even when it's not that funny.
Quite a few people leave. Along with Left Man. Hurrah!

Some of the antics are rude - I Like To Move It. Some are strangely touching - Ballerina Girl with some truly awful ballet and Into My Arms for its uncompromised compassion.

John Lennon's Imagine with the stage a black void, proves too much for most people. But 20 bodies sprawled motionless on the floor to Killing Me Softly with His Song draw a total hush.

Then it is all over with repeated curtain calls to The Show Must Go On.

It has been a great show. A totally absorbing 90 minutes. Twenty dancers and one DJ who also danced, have fronted and confronted. Characters have emerged. Stories have been told. Questions have been provoked. Like what compels us to move like this? Why do we seek this behaviour out and on display?"

"These top-notch Chinese musicians, drawn from the staff of Beijing's China Conservatory, delivered an astonishing preview of what the Auckland Arts Festival is bringing us tonight in the Town Hall Concert Chamber.

Sounds proved to be as exotic as the instruments that made them, from a giant Chinese zither or zheng, to the lute-like pipa. Yang Jing mesmerised with a virtuoso pipa solo. The mandolin-like rustle of strings combined with dulcimer provided an evocative backdrop for an erhu solo from Zhang Zunlian, playing an instrument almost chameleon like in its shifting moods and sonorities.

Director Liu Shun and leader Shen Cheng have created a tight ensemble that could turn on a humble jiao coin. Vast surges of sound take the breath away and sometimes the energised bustle would rival that of a Balkan dance party.

For those who associate contemporary Chinese music with a few too many trips on the Yellow River in a concerto sampan, this music is a welcome corrective. Tonight's concert is simply not to be missed."

"Wright has always been the master of arresting visual image, rich in meaning, fuelled by a piercing intellect, eclectic imagination and a punishingly, specific point of view.

Then there is the dance!

It comes this time, explosive, lyrical and distinctively Wright's own via nine brilliant bodies, and set to Heinrich Biber's The Rosary Sonatas, Wagner's Lohengrin, Rodgers' and Harts' Blue Moon, beautifully crooned by dancer Will Barling, Lionel Belasco's Carmencita and original compositions by David Long,

Rapt deals with themes of loss of identity, sanity, serenity and ultimately with death.

Three empty chairs move ouija board style in the work's early moments.
A desperate humanity is variously portrayed; through the moaning and muttering residents of a madhouse; or as two beings quietly suffocating in conjoined gasmasks while the opiate of the people, The TV, orbits dangerously out of control.

But there are also themes of hope, of rebirth, and the very first image is a filmed one in which an angelically chubby, naked, baby boy gently pees into his cloudlike couch, and smiles. Later comes the Zen Buddhist koan: "show me your face before you were born."

The magnificent Sarah-Jane Howard, another astonishing talent, dressed in a brief and gauzy dress of springlike green, dominates the stage with her creative goddess power and beauty, the comparatively gentle Kelly Nash, in a tunic of ocean blue, her close ally.

The beautiful bodies of the dancers in full Wright flight - and much of the music - sing of hope and passion, albeit against the odds, in Wright's eye.

But the most magical moment of seeming rebirth comes in Alex Sasha Leonhartsberger's heartstopping solo. His slender frame is very different to the stocky original, but so completely and utterly embodies Wright's own magnificent dancing body in this moment of total transmutation, that it hurts."

"The Swiss duo of choreographer/performer Martin Zimmermann and scratch DJ/composer Dimitri de Perrot offers virtuoso hipster clowning to a polyrhythmic soundtrack. Stylistically, the influence of Marcel Marceau meets that of DJ Shadow, while the subject is in the realm of Bret Easton Ellis: the banality of the capitalist dream, on a fast train to nowhere.

Rubber-bodied Zimmermann plays a middle-class everyman; he's the suit, he carries the suit's accessories - the briefcase, the cellphone, the A4 sheets. These are symbols we know very well - important in a wordless show.

De Perrot, on the side of the revolving stage, is Zimmermann's technically skilled puppeteer, controlling him not with strings but with sound. As he repeatedly scratches his records, Zimmermann similarly has to rewind and replay his actions. As de Perrot speeds it up, Zimmermann acquires a humorous chipmunk blether voice.

The tracks incorporate thudding oonst oonst, static and feedback, commuter trains and planes, whirring wings, mouth organ and the squeak of Zimmermann's shoes.

Specific pinpoint sound - unusual for live theatre - is used to create the impression that cellphones are ringing in the auditorium. Cleverly, the sounds and Ursula Degen's lights increase the show's intensity without Zimmermann always increasing in pace. Car headlights beam out to the audience like
monster eyes.

But it's not all high-tech and cool electronics; much of the show's appeal comes from its inventiveness with cardboard. Zimmerman plays with the cardboard city set, rearranges it, rebuilds it, revealing new images, even eats it.

The pointed climax involves an army of cardboard suits with no heads. Have they been cut off? Zimmermann's evil monkey laugh suggests otherwise: they are zombie bankers, neither alive nor dead.

The quiet coda isn't quite so punchy, but it's still full of commentary. Unlike its bankers, this is comic entertainment with its head screwed on."

"This time though he's cut down on the backing. But he's brought almost all his songs instead - one hundred of them, delivered alphabetically at a rate of 25 or so a night.

The A-Z show had its origins in a summer spiegeltent season in hometown Melbourne six years ago. Its subsequently has grown into a book (How to Make Gravy, in which Kelly elaborates on the songs and any other subjects) as well as a CD box set and even an app. All of which for the true Kelly-tragic, is far more rewarding than yet another best-of volume.

But - to quote Dumb Things, a second-half highlight - welcome strangers, to the show ... a great show which on the first night of its Auckland Arts Festival season traversed A to E in Kelly's back catalogue, starting with his bittersweet ode to his birthplace Adelaide and ending with the Raymond Carver-inspired Everything's Turning to White.

That was before encores which managed to stay within the alphabetical restrictions, holding back After the Show to a fitting place in the reprise To be picky Kelly and sideman guitarist/nephew Dan, didn't play everything in Uncle Paul's book.

There was no Behind the Bowler's Arm. But with a compulsory reading of his heroic epic, Bradman, maybe one cricket song was enough.

And there was no Beggar on the Street of Love which he wrote for Jenny Morris, though there was Difficult Woman which he wrote for Renee Geyer (and survived to tell the tale).

But what was apparent from this stripped-back approach was that it held up Kelly's songs to the light and they sparkled anew.

The alphabetical sorting neatly balanced things out between old and more recent tunes, between the familiar and obscure and between songs that were autobiographical, fiction and non-fiction - or a combination of all of the above.

In between singing and flipping the big cards showing what letter we were at (nice typeface), Kelly offered anecdotes, which, despite having already been spun into that 600-page memoir, didn't sound well-worn.

And he didn't just stand there and play guitar all night either. Anastasia was delivered as an a cappella/harmonica one-two; Change Your Mind, a song with lyrics cribbed from other songs and which quotes Bic Runga's Sway, had him delicately prodding at the town hall Steinway.

Mostly though it was Kelly, his keening voice and guitar aided by young Dan's sweetly reverberating lead lines and and vocal harmonies.

There was occasional clarinet by his partner Sian Prior, which helped take the formerly reggae-powered Coma into klezmer territory, while her backing vocals gave Deeper Water an odd ethereal touch of the Dame Joans near the end.

Given the arts festival context, I did wonder if the minimalist show might have been enhanced by some supporting video - historical footage of Bradman; postcards from those Cities of Texas, photos of the late great fellow musicians he referred to in his introductions like Go-Between Grant McLennan and longtime guitarist Steve Connolly. That sort of thing.

But, of course, the pictures are all there in Kelly's A-Z. You just had to listen for them. And seeing and hearing Kelly's musical life flash before your ears is a film festival in itself. Further screenings come highly recommended."

"The first half of the concert featured Prasanna and his son Rishab on flutes, playing with a sighing delicacy not so far from what we might expect for Corelli or Vivaldi.

Long-breathed phrases took our breath away but not that of the players and the occasional admission of a very Western third in the men's harmonies provoked a smile, later enchantment came from playful musical duelling between father and son, and an exhilarating final rush when piccolo-sized flute piped up over a veritable storm of tabla.

23-year-old Shubh Maharaj, a musician with his own impressive lineage, effortlessly laid out complex tabla rhythms. Timbres seemed to dance under his fingers; here was a master of illusion who almost had toes tapping to music that, because of intricate rhythms, was hardly intended for such a response.

All this fitted in with the sometimes sly humour of Prasanna senior, whether through his witty turn of musical phrase or, introducing the final offering, describing the voluptuousness of a piece inspired by Krishna.

After interval, Prasanna drew vociferous applause for a powerfully sustained note on the shehnai, a raw, blisteringly beautiful relative of the oboe. In brilliant solo flights, he reminded me of the inspired outpourings of jazzman, John Coltrane.

Prasanna was now joined by Vikas Babu, a low-key presence on tambura to this point, but adding his shehnai for some ecstatic duetting.

This enterprising presentation deserved more of an audience and we were told so, good-humouredly, by Mohindar Dhillon of the Nataraj Cultural Centre, who also lamented the Indian community's obsession with the titillation of Bollywood.

It was a certainly a superb introduction for the Auckand Arts Festival's ongoing series of exotic concerts this week. Thursday's O Cambodia, with the music of Jack Body, Gillian Whitehead, Chinary Ung and Him Sophy, played by the NZTrio and the Cambodian Tray So ensemble should be high priority."