You couldn't get further away from an artist's studio or concert auditorium than the Laboratory for Animate Technologies at the University of Auckland's Bioengineering Institute.

Are we in danger of kicking creativity out of the classroom? Dionne Christian looks at what the arts can teach our children.

In part 3 of our Arts in Auckland coverage, Dionne Christian looks at how you try to include everyone.

With high-profile regional facilities in central Auckland - not to mention the lion's share of festivals - is there arts and cultural life in the 'burbs?

Is Auckland now the city of arts? Dionne Christian investigates in a five part series that starts today by looking at arts & the economy.

Ahead of a new exhibition marking the 30th anniversary of the Homosexual Law Reform Act, David Herkt reveals what it was like to grow up gay in the 1970s, while Sam Brooks explains what it's like today.

Acclaimed Kiwi soprano Dame Malvina Major has performed all around the world, in front of royalty and in terror-ravaged countries.

This spectacular cirque cabaret, starring the stylish acrobats of The Dust Palace, imagines The Odyssey as Star Trek.

Get your leotards, leg-warmers and sweatbands ready, because Flashdance is making a comeback, this time in stage musical form.

The Southside Arts Festival has morphed into Urbanesia, and offers more than 70 events, concerts, workshops and family days, many of them free, at a range of venues.

Pasifika beats, arts, culture and talent will be seen and heard around Auckland over the next two weeks during the Urbanesia festival, which starts today.

The lineup for next year's Auckland Arts Festival keeps growing with the announcement last night of more shows joining the March 2-20 programme.

One of our finest acting and directing talents turns his attention to the classic musical Guys and Dolls. By Dionne Christian

Mitimiti has its beginnings in choreographer Jack Gray's personal journey in search of a closer connection with his Te Rarawa heritage and marae in the Hokianga.

At the start of this intellectually confronting and complex one-man play, Olaf Hojgaard (Edwin Wright) tells us he was watching the 2011 Tour de France telecast when he first heard about Anders Behring Breivik's politically-motivated murder.

Perri Exeter is a choreographer and dance teacher at Rutherford College where her students got the best scholarship results in New Zealand.

Playwright Aroha Awarau has created a sensitive and engaging drama out of something that is almost unimaginably tragic - the random death of a young man cut down in his prime as an innocent bystander at a police shooting.

If you are going to do fairies there can be no holding back, so wunderkind English choreographer Liam Scarlett unashamedly mixes.

There was a sense of celebration, marred only by the thudding beats of revivalist worship downstairs. A well-filled Town Hall Concert Chamber hosted an audience keen to welcome home some distinguished young Auckland musicians.

The three choreographers contributing state of the art pieces for this ground-breaking season with the New Zealand Dance Company were given the brief of "light, illumination, space, image and movement" by the company's artistic director Shona McCullagh.

Princesses, pirouettes and prancing. Eli Orzessek gets a sneak preview of this weekend's Disney on Ice show in Auckland.

On stage, she's the leader of a sex strike, aimed at ending a 20-year-old war. Off stage, Amanda Billing can't fathom such a drastic move.

This second season of NOW - New Original Works - truly reflects its name, with four confidently emerging new choreographers, expressing some very original concepts, beautifully performed by the talented and extremely hard-working team of five dancers.