CULTURE

Feisty, funny and fabulous is how the Royal New Zealand Ballet is describing its new interpretation of Cinderella. Artistic director Patricia Barker says the dream team behind 2019’s Hansel and Gretel – choreographer Loughlan Prior and composer Claire Cowan – has reimagined the ballet into “a sparkly, well-styled twist on the much-loved classic, with a heroine who knows her own mind and a hero who follows his heart.” Three years in the making, Cinderella opens in the St James Theatre, Wellington, before touring four other centres.

CALIFORNIA KIWI

Singer songwriter Greg Johnson returns to New Zealand from his home in Santa Monica, California, for a tour of nine centres including Wellington beginning on 9 July. Johnson won a Silver Scroll in 1997, and a Tui Award in 2002 for his album ‘The Best Yet’ before moving to America. He has built a steady career making music for American television shows. THRICE IS NICE

Three-time Grammy award winner Hilary Hahn will perform three concerts with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in Wellington in August. The violinist last performed with the NZSO in 2010 during their European tour. Since then Hahn has continued her rise in the classical world to become a sought-after soloist. She will perform some titans of violin repertoire - Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No.1, and Brahms’ Violin Concerto among them. GRACEFUL DANCE

Now in its 27th year, contemporary dance company Black Grace is embarking on another tour, its first since the covid pandemic. The programme on the six-city jaunt across the United States and New Zealand includes two world premieres by founding artistic director and choreographer Neil Ieremia (ONZM). One of the works, ‘Fatu', is inspired by the work of Samoan artist and fellow recipient of the ONZ Fatu Akelei Feu’u.

The last confirmed sighting of a huia was in December 1907 in the Tararua Ranges – not far from the Dowse Art Museum’s location. To mark this historical event and acknowledge the museum’s 50th anniversary, photographer Fiona Pardington (pictured) was commissioned to produce an installation work. Te whitinga o te pō (“the shining lady of the night”) includes the artist’s signature photography plus sculptures. The exhibition is described as both homage and a moment of contemplation for the loss of a significant taonga.

MAGIC CARPET RIDE

A giant map created as a carpet is part of Wellington Museum’s new ground-floor exhibition Te Whanganui-a-Tara. The exhibition explores the history of Wellington’s natural and cultural landscape. It was developed in collaboration with mana whenua and scientists. It also includes commissioned artworks by three Wellington artists - Xoë Hall (pictured), Derek Cowie and Ariki Brightwell. Superhigh-definition satellite images of the region make it possible to spot your house in the carpet-pile. ONE PEOPLE ONE FILM

Fighter for justice and equality Dame Whina Cooper has been immortalised in film. The much-delayed movie Whina will be in theatres from July. Renowned for her activism for Maori land rights and the rights of women, Cooper is played by three actors covering different stages of her life – Rena Owen, Miriama McDowell, and Tioreore Ngatai-Melbourne. POWER BALLADS

Local singing teachers have complained of not being able to source New Zealand repertoire for their students. Conductor and musician Michael Vinten embarked on a mission to find some. The result is a three-volume, 118-song resource of pre-1950 New Zealand art songs, many never before published. Vinten, along with a pianist and three singers, will present a concert of some of the songs. In conjunction with NZ Opera the concert Call of the Huia: The Power of Song, will be performed in the three main centres in August.

A new television series is in the offing and Wellington has a principal role. Although the creative team is not from Wellington, the landscape and vibe convinced producer Peter Salmon (pictured) he should set it here. The sixpart series After the Party applied successfully for funding from the Te Puna Kairangi – Premium Productions for International Audiences Fund. Nine films or television series made successful bids in this final round of funding from the $50-million kitty intended to help the New Zealand production sector recover from Covid-19.

SPILL THE TEA

Ever been stalked by a sheep, argued with a mullah, or planned the perfect murder? Sameena Zehra has, besides having a cuppa with some terrorists in Kashmir. In her play Tea with Terrorists she shares stories from a life that has straddled her Anglo/Indian heritage. Before moving to New Zealand the writer, director, performer, and blues singer lived in the United Kingdom. Circa hosts the play throughout August. DEVELOPED LIFE

From portraits to panoramas, everyday life to grand occasions, Whirinaki Whare Taonga in Upper Hutt is celebrating its city in black and white photography. Photo essays by ten photographers capture the area’s history, people, and places. In photography from the 1960s to the present day, Upper Hutt in Black and White covers more than five decades of city life. COMPARE AND CONTRAST

Psychologically-charged encounters with the intangible form the common denominator in the work of two emerging Wellington artists currently showing at City Gallery. Photographer Hendrix HennessyRopiha and installation practitioner Dayle Palfreyman have mounted Talia an exhibition filling two small galleries. Their work is starkly different in many ways, but both of them use their practice to explore some difficult territory, including suicide. The show runs until 14 August.

Image by Rebekah de Roo Image by Roc+ Photography

Image by Roc-T

Image by Isabella Austin

PHOTOGRAPHY BY EBONY LAMB

Poet and public-policy strategist Sudha Rao tells Sarah Lang about her background in classical Indian dancing, and learning to be a New Zealander.

You’d never know Sudha Rao is shy. She exudes warmth and positivity. “I love being with people and the energy they bring,” Sudha says. But she also needs space to recharge. And to write.

She’s been writing poems for pleasure since the 1970s. Her debut book – a lyrical poetry collection called On Elephant’s Shoulders – will be published in July. Much of it speaks to the migrant experience.

Sudha, who has two adult sons and lives with her policy-analyst husband in Wadestown, grew up in South India. “My mother was a classical musician and beautiful singer who encouraged me in dancing.”

“Classical dance in South India used to be the domain of men, passed on from father to son over generations. Men performed both male and female parts. It wasn't until the late 19th century that women were taught dance as a form of praise in temples supported by rulers of the area. Women of higher castes weren’t allowed to dance, though they participated in other art forms.”

“Aged six, I started learning Bharatanatyam.” This is the pre-eminent Indian classical dance form, in which dance and music are utterly inseparable. “At nine, I performed my ‘Arangetram’: my first solo performance, which lasted over two-and-a-half hours.” (The word “Arangetram” means “ascending the stage”, via a performance that is the culmination of years of work.) Aged 12, she won the junior category for Bharatanatyam in the fiercely-competitive All India Dance Competition.

Sudha was in her early teens when she moved with her father, mother, and three brothers to New Zealand. Her father, a doctor, came to take up a research fellowship at the University of Otago’s Medical School. A two-year stay became permanent when he got a teaching role.

“Dunedin was where I began to learn to become a New Zealander. We may have been the first Indian family to live in Dunedin.” Was it hard to adjust? “Yes and no. It’s just how things were.”

“My life in India was all school and dance. Arriving in Dunedin, I felt lost – until Shona MacTavish [the late dancer and choreographer] appeared on our doorstep after reading an article about our family and my dance background in the Otago Daily Times.” So Sudha began teaching Bharatanatyam to Shona’s students.

“Our family, along with two other Indian couples, introduced classical Indian music and dance to Dunedin, with our first performance at the Globe Theatre. My mother sang, I danced and my father was programme director. In the late 1970s, the audience had very few Indians!”

Halfway through her degree in education at University of Otago, Sudha travelled to Madras in South India, to complete a degree in dance at the Kalakshetra Dance School: a cultural academy dedicated to the preservation of traditional South Indian arts, with an international reputation for training dancers and musicians. Sudha was a live-in student for four years. “Life on campus was simple and austere – focused on learning dance, music, and reading Indian literature.” Sudha became part of Kalakshetra’s touring troupe and performed around India.

Returning to New Zealand, she gave well-received solo performances around the country. But Sudha found it less satisfying to perform to New Zealand audiences, to whom Indian classical dance “was still an unknown language.”

Sudha and former student Bronwyn Judge collaborated to create performances meshing Sudha’s classical Indian style and Bronwyn’s very expressive “Bodenwiesser” style. “The shows weren’t very successful, and we were a little bruised, because I don’t think the audience understood what we were trying to achieve. It wasn’t the right time, I think.”

“And I used to get nerves before going on stage. I didn’t like costumes or makeup and would have preferred to perform in a simple sari.”

There are other reasons she gave up performing. “It was partly the need to have an audience that understood Indian classical arts. Also, I was becoming interested in New Zealand music and literature, and their intersection with dance.”

Sudha married, had two sons, and worked as a librarian in Dunedin. After divorcing, she moved to Wellington in 1994 to become the first chief executive of Dance Aotearoa New Zealand, an infrastructure organisation set up by Creative New Zealand. “My vision was to bring different New Zealand dance communities together while maintaining their individual identities, to increase the profile of dance as an artform, and especially to convey the value of dance for the community and the economy.” DANZ is still going.

After three years of juggling the job with parenting, Sudha became a strategic business analyst for Wellington City Libraries’ chief librarian. This spawned her interest in arts policy. Sudha became a National Library policy analyst and earned a Master’s in Public Management from Victoria University. She worked for

six years at the Ministry of Transport. At present she is the strategic adviser at Education New Zealand, a small Crown entity that works to attract international students.

She says she has never experienced overt racism. “But there’s systemic racism. It isn’t just about colour – it’s about perceptions. Some people make assumptions about me, such as I only cook and/or eat Indian food.” She actually likes a good single malt whisky.

Some of her poems refer to her Hindu beliefs. “Hinduism is a way of life. We believe God’s spirit sits in all of us. My book’s title, On Elephant’s Shoulders, references Lord Ganesha, the elephant-headed God, whose spirit Hindus invoke at the start of any venture or daily activity to remove any barriers and smooth the path for success. The ‘shoulders’ in the title also represent my family who brought me to New Zealand.” Does she finally feel she belongs here? Yes and no. “There’s always the sense of being the ‘other’.”

She definitely feels a sense of “belonging” to the Meow Gurrrls, a group she joined 15 years ago. At present, seven Wellington poets meet every six to eight weeks (for many years, at Meow). They often bring work in progress to critique and discuss. It’s a source of encouragement, friendship, support. “To be with people doing and talking about similar things is so important as a writer.” Their YouTube channel shows them performing their poems (it’s “performing” not “reading” because usually you know them by heart).

Sudha participated in a Verb Wellington event, performing her poems and incorporating dance movements in the classical Indian style. She also attended the International Bengaluru Poetry Festival 2019.

In 2017, she completed a Master’s in Creative Writing at Victoria University’s International Institute of Modern Letters. She submitted her manuscripts to publishers and got a yes from the Cuba Press. “I’m so pleased to contribute an Indian New Zealander’s voice through my poems. I’ve written poems about my family, parents, sons and husband as part of becoming a person living on this land, alongside tangata whenua.”

“I like to think dance and music have flowed into my poems, because these art forms all have rhythm binding them, and help me express the world around me.”

The different threads of her life have come together. “I love ambiguity. I love change. I love spontaneity. That’s where I feel most comfortable.”

Our foodie landscape looks very different than it did six months ago. Sophie Carter has cast her eye over the changing landscape and compiled a list of who’s in, who’s out, and who’s shaken it all about.

Chaat Street has quickly become the talk of the town. The restaurant offers tapas-style Indian street food by chef Vaibhav Vishen, cocktails, and a “Chaat-ityourself” takeaway option – take home prepped food and assemble it when you’re ready to eat.

Abandoned Brewery’s new pop-up taproom in Porirua is the first stage in making the site their permanent home. They have has teamed up with food truck Kid Karaage, so customers can grab some grub to accompany their beer.

The new kid in Newtown. Auntie Social Lounge features 70s-style carpet walls, live music, and mulled wine.

Scots Gaelic for ‘flour,’ Flùr opened in May at the top of Cuba Street. The new café serves coffee and clever little pastries you’re unlikely to find anywhere else (it's not every day you eat a pistachio passionfruit friand).

In November last year That Little Cake Shop opened its Victoria Street store. Going from strength to strength, baker Alisha Lewis will soon also be serving her cakes and cookies in a second shop at Paraparaumu Beach.

Starting their journey in a tiny food truck in Dunedin, RE Burger has now expanded to nine locations, Wellington’s Tory Street being the latest.

After running a delivery service with their plant-based treats, Belén Vegan Bakery has opened a store on Lambton Quay. They offer everything from vegan sausage rolls to carrot-cake croissants.

Chews Lane is now home to New Zealand's first and only Chartreuse Bar. At Elixir Bar and Restaurant you can enjoy Chartreuse on its own, paired with food (like a negroni tart) or in a custom cocktail.

After a series of pop-ups Kisa now has a permanent home at 195 Cuba Street. From their shiny new premises they’ll be serving Middle Eastern inspired cuisine, mezze sharing plates and Martinborough wine.

There’s always room for more wine in Martinborough. Karahui Wine Bar and Eatery is the latest addition to Memorial Square. They offer tastings from their own tasting room, saving you the wobbly bike ride around the vineyards.

Kelburn just got cooler. Graze Wine Bar not only serves wine, but also top-notch food. They aim to have as little environmental impact as possible, sourcing local, ethical ingredients for their dishes.

In the mood for a fresh loaf of sourdough, a sandwich filled to the brim or a vegan danish? Black Lion Bakery is stocked up with all the good stuff and open on Cuba Street.

When Lido closed, the space received an extensive red and gold make-over, becoming Concord. This is the latest venture of Shepherd Elliot and Sean Golding (best known for Shepherd restaurant and Golding’s Free Dive).

In May customers queued outside Le Moulin, hoping to get one last baguette. The bakery took a seven month break in 2021, while co-owner Nita Kivi recovered from heart surgery. They reopened in October, but after 24 years they decided it was time to prioritise family time and health.

Vic Books Pipitea has announced their shop and café will close at the end of July. A retreat for students and hungry Pipitea residents, the café could no longer sustain the damage from the pandemic and the vaccine protests. Vic Books Kelburn will remain open.

After its 16 years on Ghuznee Street, in April we said goodbye to Milk Crate. They coped with the pandemic, but in the end it was rising rent that made owner Morgan Allan-West decide it was time to close the café.

The sunny Lombard Street coffee shop has become another casualty of covid. After 11 years they have closed. Owner Dave Lamason said he doesn’t think “the book is finished” but "a great chapter of this amazing story has sadly come to a close."

Lido was a much loved institution for over 30 years. Owner and chef Frank De Roose said the café had been struggling with staff storages because of the pandemic, and with a grandchild on the way he decided to call time.

Welly’s favourite brownie shop has closed its Eva street café. But fear not, Lashings treats are available online for delivery, and the café is holding regular pop-ups at their old location so you can still get your brownie and donut fix to take away.

Shake it all about Hop Garden to Boneface Tavern After almost 12 years, in early June The Hop Garden poured their last pint. But as one door closes another opens. Boneface Brewing Company has taken over the 13 Pirie Street location, where they’ll be serving their own beers on tap along with their famous menu.

In December 2020 one of the city’s oldest eateries, Astoria, closed. But after 18 months Astoria is back up in business, and it’s had a makeover.

Newtown's cycleway development means the The Brew House has moved. They’ve joined forces with Mean Doses brewery to make a onestop-shop. At Mean Doses on Tory Street customers can now both fill up a flagon and pick up all the equipment to brew their own.

Grill Meats Beer has had an extreme makeover. The Cuba Street joint, which specialised in IPAs and burgers, underwent a speedy transformation into Liberty Restaurant, a fine dining establishment.

Mason is becoming Margot. Owner Matt Hawkes has decided it was time for a break and will be heading north for warmer weather and better surf. The new owners will take over in August.

Pizzeria Tommy Millions served its last slice in March. After 10 years in business they decided to “call time” on the final remaining kiosk. Their next-door-neighbours, Lucky Chicken, have now moved into the larger space.

La Belle Waffle’s little window closed in June. We will miss the sweet, warm smell wafting down Manners Street and having a little bit of Belgium on this side of the world.

The best Reuben in the city was cruelly taken away from us in May this year. Purveyor also of many European treats, OnTrays in Petone has closed, after more than 20 years.

Crowds stood outside Laundry on its final night at 240 Cuba Street, where it had been for nine years. Due to lease issues they have packed up their vintage lampshades, leopard print curtains and disco balls, and will be moving to new digs.

The little hole-in-the-wall bubble tea shop has been shut since last September for earthquake strengthening. Thankfully it will soon reopen in a new home on Lombard Street.

Fans of freeze-dried food come in many shades – end-of-the-world “preppers”, hungry hikers, top chefs looking for a bit of zing. Jacqui Gibson caught up with a handful of fanatics to find out why this latest food trend is flying high.

Water out, flavour in. That’s freeze drying, and it creates crunch, turns up taste and makes food last a really long time, as much as 30 years. Probably invented by the Inca to preserve potatoes back in the thirteenth century, freeze drying today zaps away moisture in a slow mechanical process. It renders veges, fruit, meat and even some dairy products lightweight and durable, while locking in nutrition and boosting flavour. Add water, and a freeze-dried strawberry or garden pea plumps up again, maybe even sweeter. Once the preserve of doomsayer preppers, trampers, and space travellers, freeze-dried foods are taking off around the world and in our own backyard.

You may find one of Yvonne Cheong’s freezedried treats in the next dish or cocktail you order. In 2020, the Wellington entrepreneur launched Foodnerd, a food business specialising in small-batch freeze-dried fruit and vegetables for Wellington’s food and hospitality industry.

She’s supplied dessert cafes with freeze-dried berries and city bars with fruit, vegetables and tiny marshmallows, all freeze-dried. Artisan food retailer Forage Merchants of Wellington stocks her retail packs, as does Fresh Choice in Merivale, Christchurch.

Yvonne’s most recent convert is Hippopotamus’ executive chef Jiwon Do, a “huge fan”. He’s using freeze-dried lemon with a citrus oil to enhance the flavour and texture of his fish of the day. He’s also added parsley powder that Yvonne’s made exclusively for him to the deer-milk dessert.

“I wanted something with maximum colour and flavour; something that hadn’t completely lost the chlorophyll. I knew dried parsley wouldn’t do the job.” He likes the “unrefined” aspect of the powder – “You can still see all the tiny leaves.”

Wellington chef Vicki Young says few people realise how flavoursome and versatile freezedried foods are.

“It’s exciting. As kids we’re told, ‘don’t play with your food’. Well, freeze-dried food gives you full licence to play.”

Vicki met Yvonne at a Welly Hospo Wāhine networking event and the pair have experimented with freeze-drying foods for Vicki’s various projects ever since.

“She’s fearless and I love her approach to my crazy ideas. She’s freeze-dried corn, which I used in a dessert and cocktail match. Together, we’ve freeze-dried vegan ice cream for a pop-up event last year.” Experimenting with tomatoes was “perilous” – they were whipped out of the freezedryer “mid-explosion”, in the nick of time. “They were so good, like little pockets of sugar, and just so wild-looking and intensely flavoured.”

While Yvonne is excited about her business, she admits it’s still early days.

Her husband’s desire to stockpile food in the early weeks of covid led to her to her importing a domestic-scale freeze-dryer from the United States and setting up a small business.

“We freeze dried all sorts of things – vegetables, cheese, chicken. You name it,” says Yvonne. “But we found fruit tasted particularly amazing.” Nothing, not even sugar, has to be added to fruit, “the freeze-drying process retains its nutritional value and makes everything crunchy.”

Their commercial range is mostly fruits, including banana, orange, pineapple and berries, and petite popmallows, Yvonne’s only freeze-dried lolly.

The global freeze-dried food market is expected to grow by more than eight percent annually over the next three years according to market research reports.

It is growing fast in the Asia-Pacific region, with an increasing demand for ready-to-eat meals. But exploiting this demand is not straightforward.

Hataitai food writer and entrepreneur Rosie Percival has spent some years exploring the possibilities of freeze-dried ready-to-eat meals aimed at outdoorsy types and trampers. Using Massey University’s freeze-dryer, and with help from a food technology student, Rosie prototyped two gourmet vegan meals. But the cost of producing the meals themselves, combined with the difficulty of finding compostable bags that could withstand the requisite hot water, proved too much. So she switched to making freeze-dried vegetable mixes that could be added to an existing meal for nutrition and texture. This time she contracted a commercial freeze-dryer, but before the year was out the company shut down. Rosie shelved freeze-dried products altogether, and settled on a line of dehydrated hummus and blackbean dips, which she plans to launch this summer. “It has been about identifying a process that’s viable and still meets the needs of my target market. And, for me, the cost of freeze drying was too big a barrier.”

According to New Zealand food technologist Samuel Richardson, freeze drying (or lyophilisation) is a three-stage process of removing water from food.

These steps are usually freezing, drying (using vacuum), and secondary drying (using sublimation).

Refined by various industries for more than a century, freeze drying is now commonly used in the food, pharmaceutical and aeronautical industries. During World War II, for example, it was used to preserve human blood. In the 1970s, it became the preferred means of preserving food for space travel. It seems to have surged again during the global pandemic as people sought to dodge shortages by stockpiling.

Samuel says that freeze drying can maintain a food product’s colour, shape, and nutritional value. It also lengthens shelf life, intensifies flavour, and makes foods more crisp and lightweight.

But freeze drying is relatively expensive to set up and to run. It uses significantly more energy than air drying. And buying and setting up a freezedrying plant costs anywhere from tens of thousands to more than a hundred thousand dollars.

Katie Louttit launched her freeze-dried lolly business, Sweets and Treats, in October 2021. She’d noted the popularity of freeze-dried sweets online during lockdowns, and wanted a small business that could grow into a fulltime job. Katie searched high and low for an affordable freeze dryer and eventually found an American-manufactured model in Auckland, and had it shipped to Christchurch. After several months’ experimentation with many kinds of sweets, she launched a range of around a dozen freeze-dried lollies to an eager market.

After less than a year in business, Katie has already decided it’s time to buy bigger machinery, increase her production, and rebrand. “I’m only just keeping up with demand. I’m turning down requests to bulk buy my product.”

She explains that the process changes the texture of sweets completely. “It makes things airy, but crunchy. It feels like hokey pokey in your mouth. Kiwis love freeze-dried pineapple lumps.” And it intensifies taste freeze-dried sour lollies “come out even more sour.”

She says Wellingtonians, her second-biggest consumer market right now, are “adventurous and always keen to give new things a try.”