Our Aotearoa premiere as part of Te Ahurei Toi O Tāmaki | Auckland Arts Festival sold out, playing to full houses of general public, whānau and kura. An amazing first season on home soil.

Our World Premiere season commissioned by The Cultch and Urban Ink played to packed houses, sold out shows and standing ovations. We were honoured to meet many Indigenous whānau in Canada and share good medicine and kōrero with them.

In order to fulfil the physical development on our new cirque apparatus, and in alignment with the kaupapa of allowing for the development of Māori circus performers, we’re undertaking a process of on-going weekly development for our performers. Alongside this process Amber will be writing our full script.

We spent two full time weeks with an incredible group of performers skilled in circus, mau rākau, movement, karakia and of course command of narrative. We explored many strands of narrative and ways which circus and te reo can uplift each other.

Provoking these performers and calling upon their individual pukenga we spent the two weeks garnering the results we needed to more forward from the project; knowledge, understanding and methodologies for the creating of whakaari maninirau.

Our initial tasks were to gather as much research as possible around ngā tūī, their voice and their roles in history and in te ao Māori. We brought that research together in a weekend long wānanga with writers Annette Morehu and Amber Curreen. he centra kaupapa of the work was discussed and a plethora of story ideas thrown up.