the word sings

Tonight I'll frock up for the Auckland premiere of the Royal New Zealand Ballet's Sixtieth Anniversary debut of three short ballets - Made to Move - with my sister.

Photo credit: Royal New Zealand Ballet

 

Meanwhile, across Albert Park, Lane and the kids will be rugging up for The Breath of the Volcano by French company Groupe F.

                                                      Photo credit: Gate Photography

There'll be people tumbling onto Queen St outside Q, estatic from the musical beauty of The Factory - Aucklanders telling an Auckland story. At the Basement, people will be laughing at the physical comedy of Moving Stationery. There'll be people drinking wine at the Festival bar in Aotea Square, and groups wandering the streets in search of food and post-show conversation - spilling out of the Aotea Centre, the Town Hall, the Maidment, the Fesival Club. The city will be alive - this Tamaki Makaurau - filled with the Auckland Festival.

I love this. My city, glittering like the jewel she can be, filled with stories from all over the world. Telling us, through dance, theatre, art, music, what it is to be human.

I read a poem the other day, by Roald Hoffman - Nobel Laureate, Holocaust survivor, writer. I had the privilege of meeting him in early February when he was in New Zealand for a conference. The poem, 'Code, Memory', is a kind of meditation on science, writing, life. It ends:

The word sings, in alp

and alkaline phosphatase

and DNA, in nuanced refrain;

this side of memory, of a world

that was; and one that will be.


That word which sings is life, and it will sing tonight.