Festival of Colour looks to successes

Luke Buda, of the Phoenix Foundation, performs during the band's Festival of Colour performance at the Queenstown Memorial Hall on Friday night.

Steve and Suzanne Neumann, of Melbourne.

Sisters Billie (left) and Bonnie Pryde, originally of Queenstown.

Tonya Cruikshank (left) and Lara Fletcher, both of Queenstown.

From left, Figo, of Ireland, and Andrew Wilson and Owain Griffiths, both of Wales.

From left, Sir Eion and Lady Edgar, and Patty and Mike Norris, all of Queenstown.

Paulina Nyer, of Germany, with Anne Stark and Kate Burgess, both of Wellington, at the Festival of Colour performance of Latin American dance extravaganza at the Queenstown Memorial Hall on Thursday night

Jen Wilson, of Wanaka, with parents Ruth and Brian Wilson, of England.

Aoi Takano, of Japan, and Lucio Rivas, of Argentina

Despite some Queenstown events attracting smaller crowds than expected, organisers of the Festival of Colour say they look forward to hosting further festival performances in Queenstown in the future.

This year was the first time the two-yearly six-day celebration of the arts, which is predominantly based in Wanaka, was expanded to include Queenstown.

Festival trustee Victoria Murray-Orr said because of this it would probably take a while for people to get their heads around what it was and what it had to offer.

"Obviously, there were some shows that were better attended than others, and when we move forward to future events we hope that the attendance will grow as people come to recognise the festival for what it is, which is an amazing opportunity for people to see some fantastic performers in the Southern Lakes."

The Queenstown performances at the Memorial Hall started with the world premiere of Rita and Douglas on Tuesday night, followed by three sessions of Linsey Pollak's improvised wind instrument show, Passing Wind, on Wednesday.

They continued with Ole Ola - a journey through Latin American dance - on Thursday. Globe-trotting Wellington band The Phoenix Foundation rounded off the Queenstown festivities on Friday.

To conclude the area's performances, Glenorchy Hall hosted the plays C'Mon Black on Friday night, and the award-winning Guru of Chai last evening.

Mrs Murray-Orr it was great to take the festival to Queenstown and she hoped to do it again in the future.

"We loved being able to go to Queenstown and we hope they loved having us there as well." The festival had been a huge success overall, with 31 of the performances sold out, and others with "quite full capacity".

"I think there were 68 performances we did in seven towns, and we sold over 12,000 tickets in total, so it has been a huge success. It's been a lot of fun and we're looking forward to 2013."

Festival trustee and Queenstown Times columnist Miranda Spary attended several of the performances, including Passing Wind, and Ole Ola, which she said was "pretty full" and "absolutely fantastic".

She said "everyone was just blown away" by Passing Wind.

"He made instruments out of really weird stuff like camping chairs and garden hoses, and some of the noises he made were really funny and some of the music he made was really beautiful. Everything was quite unexpected."

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