The gathering of Dunedin arts practitioners, organisations and supporters heard about almost 30 music, theatre, dance, visual arts and community events to feature in the festival, which will run from April 6 to 25.
Festival director Charlie Unwin said the festival had always prided itself as “a celebration of the excellent and the extraordinary” and with this year being its eleventh iteration, the challenge was to "crank it up".
Mr Unwin told the crowd he was thrilled to be able to launch his first programme for the Dunedin Arts Festival and thanked long-standing festival director Nicholas McBryde for handing over his "baby", promising to look after it.
Welcoming Mr Unwin as new festival director, Dunedin deputy mayor Christine Garey said it was great to see the city’s cultural calendar so full, with the Dunedin Arts Festival, Dunedin Fringe Festival, Wild Dunedin, and Dunedin Readers and Writers Festival all in the first half of the year.
The "shenanigans of 2020" and the postponement of the festival from its usual October timeframe, had presented an opportunity to rethink the schedule and align the Dunedin Arts Festival with the city’s thriving festival scene, Mr Unwin said.
"This is all part of our grand plan to assert Dunedin’s position as a ‘festival city’.
“But the most important thing right now is our fantastic 2021 programme, and the barrage of New Zealand’s finest music, theatre, dance, visual arts and community events that will take over our city in April."
Highlights of the 2021 programme include the music of Dunedin’s own Pixie Williams; The Chills at Larnach Castle; New Zealand’s newest dance company BalletCollective Aotearoa with NZTrio live on stage; "Found in Translation" with Julia Deans, Mel Parsons and Bella Kololo; "Beethoven’s Big Bash" with Dunedin Symphony Orchestra and a massed choir; and the incomparable Tami Neilson exploring feminism in country music in "The F Word".
