The Otago Festival of the Arts needs 15kg of "white, crunchy and fine" sand for Barcelona dance troupe the Camut Band to perform on.
"We've had a few unusual requests before, but I've never had so much drama for two minutes of performance. It's just part of the challenge of the festival," Otago Festival of the Arts director Nicholas McBryde said.
"We talked to customs about it and they said it was OK to send small samples out of country, but under no circumstances can you receive samples in, unless it's from a laboratory.
"New Zealand has some of the most stringent biosecurity enforcement in the world, which is fair enough. But I do find it rather extraordinary that they can travel all around Europe with their sand, but they can't bring it here."
The Camut Band checked Dunedin on Google and suggested sand from St Clair beach, which Mr McBryde duly sent over in a small plastic bank bag.
Too brown, they said.
"Then we asked Blackhead Quarry and they sent me to their Green Island plant, where they had lovely sand, but it was also too brown.
"We need silicon sand, which is white, crunchy and fine. We need the stuff that makes a squeaky noise."
Mr McBryde also approached the Mt Somers Quarry in Canterbury.
"That was beautiful sand, too. So we sent some of that over. But it was no good either."
The Camut Band is one of the headline acts in the festival.
"They are an outstanding troupe of Spanish dancers from Barcelona, whose Afro-Latin dance and percussion is breathtaking," he said.
The troupe of male dancers and musicians meld Spanish dance with African percussion, using sand in their performance, as they dance on large drums.
The band's only New Zealand performances will be on October 3 and 4 at the Otago festival, before travelling to Adelaide.
"The Aussies are having the same problem. They've tried semolina, which didn't work, and now they're thinking of buying rice and baking it and grinding it down," Mr McBryde said.
