Etena Fest, a festival of dance, performance and craft for Titirangi Village, returns in November 2026 for its anticipated second season. Brought to you through the collaboration of Ta’alili and Lopdell House Precinct.
Etena Fest emerges from the centre of an amphitheatre of ngahere and moana, the remarkable Waitakare Ranges. A month of dance, performances and communal arts workshops to activate local spaces, grow connections and share artistic knowledge within the community.
Titirangi’s arable soil, ecosystems of undergrowth and protective canopies are a place of seeding imagination. Imaginings that physicalise into rooted, interconnected arts ecology. Etena Fest arrives on the continuum of performance and artistic history of this special location to tautoko what has been and what still could be.
Etena Fest is born of a kaupapa in supporting the vital continuation of opportunity for local dancers and arts leaders to present, develop and extend their thinking to the wider community around them. Committing to the de-centre of the inner city as the local for experiencing and being moved by powerful live performance. We create in hope, beyond conventional funding systems and the challenges they pose to artists. We enliven the landscape around us.
Join us as we open ETENA FEST featuring Llampstands, followed by light refreshments.
Come and move, play and explore! Tākaro Taiao brings together dance and movement with traditional and contemporary tākaro (Māori games), creating a playful way to get your whole body moving.
Through movement, games and creative challenges, we’ll explore different ways to move, work together, create and challenge ourselves, experimenting with different taonga and taputapu (objects and equipment used for play) along the way.
Grounded in te ao Māori, Tākaro Taiao connects movement and play with te taiao (the natural world) and the environment around us.
No previous dance or movement experience needed – come as you are and be ready to move and play!
Photography: Jinki Cambronero
Muscle + Bone is an energising movement practice for mind and body, working from the feet up through rhythm, coordination, strength and fluid movement. Kasina brings her own hybrid twist to the practice, weaving together Polynesian steps, Latin flavours and her own Māori movement influences.
Much of the class moves together across the space through simple, repeated movement patterns. There’s no choreography to learn or get right – follow along, find your own rhythm and move at your own pace.
Kasina’s Muscle + Bone style comes from her years with MAU, an avant-garde theatre company, and draws on techniques from the Body Weather practice.
No previous dance experience needed. Nau mai, haere mai!
Photography: Jinki Cambronero
Ecoecho is a 45min promenade performance improvisation gathering embodied performers, dancers and singers together in and amongst the structures of Te Uru’s multi-levelled gallery.
The passages of improvisation draw attention to relationship, place, structures, art, memory, being together/apart, breathing, walking, caring and an ongoing echoing of past, present and future ecologies.
What kind of ecology/ies do you walk with?
This performance audience is guided. The work is not intended as an interpretation of any current exhibitions but a vibrant co-composition of live ephemeral matter with enduring works of art.
Featuring fidget collective performers (still being gathered) – Tori Manley-Tapu, Olivia McGregor, Claire O’Neil, Aloali’i Tapu-Manley, Maddie Piaget, Kristian Larsen and The Kitchen Choir, a local group of women who enjoy the art of singing and song.
Louise Pōtiki Bryant (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, Waitaha)
Pūheke – Movement of Flow
Pūheke means to flow. This gentle yet powerful movement practice invites you to slow down, breathe, move and find a sense of ease and flow in your body.
Guided by Louise, you’ll explore simple breathing and movement exercises inspired by wai (water), atua wāhine and te taiao (the natural world). Movements take inspiration from the different ways water moves – from an awa (flowing river) to a wairere (cascading waterfall) – giving you space to explore and find your own way of moving.
Pūheke draws on Louise’s many years of community dance practice, creating ways for people of all ages and movement backgrounds to come together through movement.
No previous dance experience needed – move at your own pace and find your own flow.
Photography: Jinki Cambronero
Direct from their Australian and European tour, join us for a free showing of Shel We at this years ETENA FEST
“A tribute to family, memory, and the natural world
Award-winning Sāmoan choreographer Tupua Tigafua brings his distinctive blend of storytelling and contemporary movement to the stage in Shel We.
Set to an evocative classical score, it’s a beautiful, funny, and moving escape from the everyday boxes we build for ourselves.”
OFF BOOK: Monologue Battles is a battle event for actors to test their craft amongst other actors. Sign up, learn two monologues, make some bold choices and battle it out through live performance rounds, direction challenges and a final pressure test.
As part of ETENA FEST 2026
Wed 25th November Titirangi Theatre
Prizes: 1st place $500 | 2nd $250 and more
*Disclaimer: This event will be recorded but not posted online. Individual footage will be sent out to you to do with as you wish.
Saturday 28 November – Brydie Colquhoun (Ngāpuhi)
Tuia te here tangata | Weaving Connection
A gentle movement practice for body, mind and spirit, creating space to slow down, breathe and reconnect.
Brydie will guide you through gentle movement, stretching, breathing and meditation, with te reo Māori woven throughout the practice. You’ll also have space to explore different ways of moving, following simple prompts and finding what feels natural for your own body.
There are no steps to learn or get right – just an invitation to move, connect and go at your own pace. No previous dance or movement experience needed.
Nau mai, haere mai.
Photography: Summer Knight
Which-a-Way, named after a foundational Locking movement, explores the directions, shifts, imbalances, switches and bends of life.
A Pasifika Funky dance work about finding your way, losing your way, and everything in between.
Find your way to your seat. It’s gonna be a funky ride!
Wai Hurihuri. A movement of wai, questions, species. A dancing of relations within the body of Waiopareira. A collaboration of differences through tākaro (games), rākau, kōrero and dance.
This is a performance that asks you to breathe with Te Uru as a catchment, our bodies as flows of species, waters, memory and dreaming.
Image credit: Owen Spargo
GROUND/VĀ Collective presents “ISA LEI” as the celebration of navigating life in the diasporas and the graceful connection of shared moments between self and community. It is a way to honour the Pacific human spirit, its emotional dialects, and the departure of the old self whilst continuing throughout the VĀ. Having evolved quietly within our creative ‘ato (bag), from a seed to the continuously redefining work it is today, ISA LEI reveals new ways to express the meaning of VĀ for ourselves, our audiences, and the Sa (sacred) spaces we inhabit together.
Performers:
Leilani-Grace Tonu’u
Petronilla Maletina Su’a-Wooching
Ratu Komaiwainicika Loaloadravu Waqalevu
Juelz Lilomaiava Silulu
ETENA FEST & Pacific Dance NZ are proud to announce the PDNZ Choreographic Lab recipient for 2026: Devonté Tama’ali’i
Ta’alili is proud to partner with PDNZ to host their 3rd recipient of their annual Choreographic Lab. Devonte’s Choreographic Lab also includes mentorship by our co-director Aloali’i Tapu who says, “Devonte is an exciting addition to ETENA FEST because of to his involvement with our first one in 24’ with our good friend Seidah Tuaoi’s work…hes a student at UNITEC and works and performs with Projekt Team means he’s often practicing, training and freestyling…its a busy year for him so I’m excited to have him this year to create a work that can articulate where he is at during this time with some support from us and all the people and partners who believe that he has an important place in the creative arts scene in Aotearoa.”
A message from Devonté:
“Talofa lava, my name is Devonté Laifa Tama’ali’i. I am an emerging dance artist from the villages of Vaitele and Vavau in Samoa, born and raised in Tāmaki Makaurau. Currently, I am a Year 2 Unitec Dance student working towards a Bachelor of Performing and Screen Arts, majoring in Contemporary Dance, and I am a member of the street dance collective Projekt Team. Fa’afetai Lava to Ta’alili and the team at Pacific Dance New Zealand for entrusting me with the 2026 PDNZ Choreographic Lab. I am deeply honoured to be given this opportunity, and I look forward to continuing to grow, explore, and develop my choreographic practice through this experience.”
