Review: Memoirs of Active Service

Ka maumahara tonu tatou ki a ratou - we will remember them…poignant last words… bidding farewell to a generation of veterans moving on...leaving fragments of memories and diaries for children/grandchildren to honour, celebrate and remember …black costumes billow, fold, swirl and wrap the dancers bodies…wide sweeping arm movements…jumps and turns…slides on all fours - provides the vehicle for five accomplished dancers to fill the space with fluidity and lyricism in this very moving finale, a lament set to Albinoni’s adagio - maybe old soldiers never die

Women and honour: Notes on lying

Review: ‘Women and Honour: Notes on Lying’ had four creative collaborators including choreographer Clare Luiten. Charlotte Rose produced an atmospheric music score, which enhanced the work admirably, likewise for the pools of light designed by Sean Curran

DZIAH to dance

Sue Cheesman talks to Billy Paea, director of DZIAH, a South Auckland-based hip hop dance crew

Olive and Otto: Placing dance outside the theatre-within the body

Olive Bieringa, a first generation New Zealander, and Otto Ramstad, a third generation American, travel the globe by desire and necessity in order to connect with land, family, explore new cultural contexts and sustain their work practices in dance. These two co-directors, dance performers and video artists regularly return to New Zealand, this time primarily, to run a weeklong BodyCartography project, and to teach the first Body-Mind Centering© (BMC) workshop in NZ

Somatic teacher/sage Sondra Fraleigh

Somatic teacher and sage Sondra Fraleigh discusses somatics and Butoh. Sondra Fraleigh is an American academic, accomplished writer and well-renowned teacher of dance, particularly in the field of somatics. In January this year, Sondra accepted an invitation from the Soul Centre in Auckland to visit New Zealand

DVD Review: Move it

DVD review of Move it (Dance class choreographed and taught by Anita Hutchins)

We are not struggling, we are thriving!

Dance in the Waikato region is thriving, particularly in Whaingaroa (Raglan). Soul Speed, as they introduce themselves are "a dance and theatre troupe from Whaingaroa, Waikato. " We are mothers, fathers, children, friends and family brought together" initially to raise awareness through performance about the critically endangered Maui Dolphin, the Popoto

Hybrid inorganic/organic photonic crystal biochips for cancer biomarkers detection

We report on hybrid inorganic/organic one-dimensional photonic crystal biochips sustaining Bloch surface waves. The biochips were used, together with an optical platform operating in a label-free and fluorescence configuration simultaneously, to detect the cancer biomarker Angiopoietin 2 in a protein base buffer. The hybrid photonic crystals embed in their geometry a thin functionalization poly-acrylic acid layer deposited by plasma polymerization, which is used to immobilize a monoclonal antibody for highly specific biological recognition. The fluorescence operation mode is described in detail, putting into evidence the role of field enhancement and localization at the photonic crystal surface in the shaping and intensification of the angular fluorescence pattern. In the fluorescence operation mode, the hybrid biochips can attain the limit of detection 6 ng/ml.We report on hybrid inorganic/organic one-dimensional photonic crystal biochips sustaining Bloch surface waves. The biochips were used, together with an optical platform operating in a label-free and fluorescence configuration simultaneously, to detect the cancer biomarker Angiopoietin 2 in a protein base buffer. The hybrid photonic crystals embed in their geometry a thin functionalization poly-acrylic acid layer deposited by plasma polymerization, which is used to immobilize a monoclonal antibody for highly specific biological recognition. The fluorescence operation mode is described in detail, putting into evidence the role of field enhancement and localization at the photonic crystal surface in the shaping and intensification of the angular fluorescence pattern. In the fluorescence operation mode, the hybrid biochips can attain the limit of detection 6 ng/ml

Martin Schuring, oboe

David MaslankaFranz Danz

Design rules for combined label-free and fluorescence Bloch surface wave biosensors

We report on the fabrication and physical characterization of optical biosensors implementing simultaneous label-free and fluorescence detection and taking advantage of the excitation of Bloch surface waves at a photonic crystal’s truncation interface. Two types of purposely-designed one dimensional photonic crystals on molded organic substrates with micro-optics were fabricated. These feature either high or low finesse of the Bloch surface wave resonances and were tested on the same optical readout system. The experimental results show that designing biochips with a large resonance quality factor does not necessarily lead in the real case to an improvement of the biosensor performance. Conditions for optimal biochips’ design and operation of the complete bio-sensing platform are established