Nigel Benson

Spanish percussion group the Camut Band has arrived in Dunedin for the Otago Festival of the Arts, amid a sand storm.

Negotiations are taking place for an album of previously-unreleased John Denver songs to be recorded by Dunedin musician Bevan Gardiner.

A ancient tale of lust unfurls blood-red fingernails at the Fortune Theatre next week. Nigel Benson talks creepy gothic sex with Jane Eyre director David Lawrence.

Come and visit Alice in Wonderland behind the Iron Curtain, where the fruit is poisonous and tiny robotic insects beetle about. Nigel Benson meets Leila Ataya.

For the first time in its history, the Otago Festival of the Arts has had to cancel an event because of poor ticket sales.

A musical instrument is a friend for life. It will be a hard-won relationship, but persevere and it will never stop rewarding you. Nigel Benson looks back on 40 years of Saturday Morning Music Classes, while photographer Peter McIntosh captures the action.

It all started in Dunedin with Saturday morning classes in 1968 for world-renowned composer Christopher Norton.

Narnia Productions opens its fourth adaptation based on CS Lewis' Narnia chronicles in the Mayfair Theatre this week.

Out of the Blue, a movie dramatisation of the 1990 Aramoana tragedy, has scooped the inaugural Film and Television Awards announced in Auckland on Saturday night.

The University of Otago this week announced its 2009 Arts Fellows.

Ticket prices to Cats have been slashed.

Her baby dolls look nice and safe. Until you look into their eyes. Nigel Benson meets Suzy Platt.

Dunedin musician Bevan Gardiner turns 21 today, but he has already been given the best present he could imagine.

A band of young Dunedin violinists has pulled a few strings and scored the opportunity of a lifetime.

He's the poet laureate of the proletariat who has been described as the "Kiwi Jack Kerouac". Nigel Benson meets Sam Hunt.

If you were superstitious, you would blame it on a black cat. The Dunedin Operatic production of Cats, which opens at the Regent Theatre tomorrow night, has been bedevilled by bad luck during the past week.

The Otago Festival of the Arts has had its colours lowered a month before the festival starts in Dunedin.

Aucklander Richard Lewer won one of New Zealand's most important art prizes at the 17th annual Wallace Art Awards, in Auckland, last night.

A high-flying Dunedin schoolgirl is a step closer to realising her dream of being a professional dancer.

One of the most popular musicals in history saunters into Dunedin on padded feet this week. And this version of Cats is going to be unlike anything seen before. Nigel Benson hangs out with some very cool cats.