What's on - FESTIVAL OF THE WINDS

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Come down to Bondi Pavilion and park to help us celebrate the wonderful world of kites!

Make sure you don’t miss Australia’s largest and most exciting kite flying festival this year, which promises to be a great day out for the whole family.

The skies will come alive with hundreds of kites of all shapes and sizes from local and international kite-makers and flyers. International guests this year include UK kite flyers and kite makers, Gill, Jon and Tara Bloom who will bring with them their hand-dyed, hand-appliquéd kites which draw inspiration from landscapes, cityscapes and Japanese wood-block prints. Craig Hanson and Jan O’Loughlin will be visiting from New Zealand with their large air-blown kites of various fun characters and there will be fabulous Delta and Free Form kites from the Australian Kite flyers Society members who will be showcasing their own designs, as well as kite designs from India, Malaysia, China and Japan.

And it’s not just the experts who can fly their kites - why not come down and fly your own! If you don’t have a kite you visit one of the many kite stalls in Bondi Park, or better still, you can make your own at one of our kite making workshops which are available throughout the day.

As well as kite flying, visitors can enjoy:
***A dynamic multicultural entertainment program with great music and dance including: Caribbean Soul will set the scene with their sweet reggae, happy calypso beats and dazzling dance moves. ‘The African James Brown’, Afro Moses, will have you up and dancing with his blend of Afrobeats and salsa grooves using traditional African instruments and soulful vocals. Cositas Flamencas will electrify the stage with their fiery and sensual Flamenco music and dance and Stole the Black Train Band will keep the vibe up with their lively Gypsy music, Capoeira Brasil will astound you with their athletic martial arts, dance and acrobatic skills and Bukhu will captivate you with his amazing Mongolian throat singing and fiddle playing. The entertainment program will be MCed by Sydney’s one and only, hilarious, highly talented comic juggling percussionist Joel Salom and his side-kick, Eric the Dog!

***Free dance workshops including Hip Hop, Capoeira, Zumba, Tango and African Dance can be enjoyed by all while learning some new skills.

***Children’s entertainment, including pony, carousel, mini ferris wheel, bungy jump, slides, face painting, animal farm, wandering minstrels, jugglers, stilt walkers, puppeteers, clowns, craft workshops, puppet shows and more will be available throughout the day.

***Multicultural food stalls with food and drink from all over the world including Turkey, Japan, Holland, China, Brazil, Hungary, Lebanon, Venezuela and the South Pacific will offer us the chance to try their scrumptious treats throughout the festival day.

***A spectacular, free of charge, aerial art exhibition will be held in the Bondi Pavilion Gallery between 2-27 September. Originally shown in 2009 in the Gallery of Modern Art Queensland as part of the Asia Pacific Triennial, artists Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan will reproduce an enormous suspended sculpture titled In-Flight (Project Another Country) for this year’s Festival of the Winds. The artists’ works use the process of collecting and collaborating to express ideas of migration, family and memory. In-Flight takes the shape of an aeroplane, constructed from hundreds of small handmade planes. This aggregation of tiny sculptures, created by children and adults from found objects and materials, will be added to during the course of the exhibition.

There’s so much to do and see at this year''s FESTIVAL OF THE WINDS, so if you’re up for a great day out, then the only place to be on Sunday, 12 September is down at Bondi Beach for Sydney’s most colourful, fun-filled, family-friendly festival.

Presented by the Bondi Pavilion, Waverley Council in association with The Australian Kite flyers Society.

Organisation: Bondi Pavilion, Waverley Council
Date and Time: Sunday 12 September 2010, 11am-4pm
Where: Bondi Pavilion, Bondi Park, Bondi Beach
Entry: Free
Phone: (02) 8362 3400
Email: bondipav@waverley.nsw.gov.au

Go to http://www.waverley.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0018/4554/FOW_Program_2010.pdf to download the festival program.