Viva Eclectika

Viva Eclectika is Aotearoa’s Intercultural Dance and Music Biennial Challenge, organised by the New Zealand-Asia Association (NZAA) Inc. to bridge cultures through dance and art.

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The first event was held in 1999 and has been successfully run as a performance showcase of the best and brightest talents in our dance community. Viva Eclectika offers communities a platform to recreate dance/music which fuses aspects from their own culture with that of at least one other different culture to forge positive relations in the community.

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The Concept of Viva Eclectika

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People from one culture perform with friends from another culture/s. Their dance cleverly weaves features from their own culture with those of the other culture/s.

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Viva = Vibrance and Vitality

Eclectika = is formed from the word 'Eclectic'  

 

This involves choosing the best of different ideas and weaving them into a new and creative whole.

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The Aims of the Viva Eclectika event are:

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▪ To promote unity, goodwill, and understanding, and to nurture positive race relations in the general
community of New Zealand through intercultural dance and music.
▪ To enrich the New Zealand-Asian cultural experience through a fusion of Asian dance and music with the tangata whenua, and New Zealand’s diverse cultures.

▪ To nurture positive race relations in the general community through a fusion of dance and music.

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The Rationale

Traditionally, ethnic communities perform to showcase their culture and heritage. Beyond this, the New Zealand-Asia Association (NZAA) Inc. encourages people from different cultures to come together, work out how they can recreate dance/music and perform together. In the process, they go beyond the comfort of their own culture to dialogue, learn from each other, integrate their ideas, and dance together in a creative fusion - educational, entertaining, vibrant, and eclectic and is an expression of positive relations and new possibilities!

Viva Eclectika encapsulates the spirit of diversity in unity and new possibilities. We look to dancers leaving footprints of their Viva Eclectika message which is Purposefully Intercultural.