The Dust Palace creates fun, exhilarating narrative-driven circus theatre that is intimate, visually stunning and brave in its frankness about human nature.
We connect communities and delight audiences through our narrative works, valuing quality, audacity and humanity as we take Aotearoa’s stories to the world.
WORK FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
THE ICE CREAM
IS MELTING!
Antarctic enthusiast Bonnie and younger sibling Nikau have been promised a special treat – everyone’s favourite – ice cream! But it’s a hot day and on the way back from the shops the unspeakable occurs: the ice cream begins to melt...
CIRCUS THEATRE
TE TANGI A TE TŪĪ
Tūī soaks up the world around it and responds in song. Though beautiful, his tune now is a faint echo of what it once was when Aotearoa was blanketed in the ngāhere, flutes of patupaiarehe filled the trees and Māori alone walked gently upon their mother.
CIRQUE CABARET
HAUS OF YOLO
Enter through the doors and drive deep into the inner sanctum of fashion label: “HAUS of YOLO” as Welt Couture and The Sexy Love Puppets create the ‘Collection to end all Collections", right before your very eyes!
TOP OF THE HEAP
A cute rainbow love story, told via the magical arts of circus and set on a ‘floating’ pile of pre-loved furniture and knick knacks. Top of the Heap is a 40 minutes show designed for families speaking on the themes of resourcefulness, loneliness, community and personal growth.
THE GOBLIN MARKET
Spring-boarding from Christina Rossetti’s iconic poem 'Goblin Market', the show is a contemporary circus retelling following two sisters, their temptation, sacrifice and eventual salvation. Delicious circus is precariously balanced with gritty performances and candid storytelling.
THE WONDERWOMBS
The Wonderwombs is a sex-positive, body-positive, irreverent romp that rejoices in the reclamation of our bodies and stories by and for ourselves. Laced with pathos but doused in humor, this uplifting and powerful performance piece will take any stage by storm.
WALLACE AND NED
Two bumbling and down on their luck thieves concoct a ludicrous plan to sneak into the travelling circus to steal the very valuable, very rare golden pants of the famous Russian superstar Yuri Gorbechov!
Hot on their trail is the dashing, the daring, the slightly dastardly (but don’t tell his Mother) detective Dirk Dunlop.
ITHACA
Sci-fi Cirque at its best.
The year is 2292. Odysseus leads a rag tag crew of soldier’s home across space. His sole mission... to be reunited with his love, Penelope.
HUMAN
Cirque cabaret that kisses the human condition, whips away your inhibitions and runs with them barefoot through the rain. Proposing stunning circus and candid cabaret, Human is a visceral trip through the nuances of the human experience. A celebration of our strength, weirdness, mortality and masks, it erases expectations and accepts each person for who they are.
We regularly appear at festivals, events, theatres and stadiums here in Aotearoa New Zealand and abroad, and have a delectable range of current shows that traverse themes both lighthearted and thought provoking from fast fashion, climate change, colonisation, love and desire, sex and body positivity, and much more.