Pacific Couture Show Powers Disabled Athletes to Marathon

MEDIA RELEASE
Issued by Achilles International New Zealand
August 7, 2013

Dazzling Pacific Couture show powers gritty disabled athletes to New York marathon

Glam up on Saturday 5th October for Pacific Couture is ART, a glitzy evening of Pacific couture, art and performance, and help send disabled athletes to compete in New York.

Every year Achilles New Zealand supports a team of extraordinary athletes to participate in the grueling New York marathon. It’s all grit, no glamour. Being blind, amputees, recovered stroke victims or cancer survivors cannot stop these runners, but last year the athletes’ dreams were dashed when Hurricane Sandy rolled in, cancelling the event and putting all their hard training to waste. Undeterred, a larger and more determined team of athletes are returning to New York this November to take up this daunting challenge.

‘Lineage Artist’ Lindah Lepou has put her huge creative talents behind her own special fundraising gala held at the Pacific Institute of Performing Arts (PIPA) in Auckland to give the athletes the support they need. The cocktail event will include a Pacific couture show, performances by opera singer Aivale Cole, Amanaki Prescott and Lindahs own fa’afafine trio, Hymnchidivah, an art auction of contemporary pacific art from local and international aritsts. Attendees will also receive goodie bags containing treats from sponsors.

Lindah is an artist of international standing and the subject of a new television one series of documentaries screening this September. She is supreme award winner of both Style Pasifika and Cult Couture fashion awards and has exhibited at Te Papa, City Gallery Wellington and museums around the world.

“We are all disabled in a society which creates ideals that are exclusive.  How I choose to respond to this is key, and therefore focus on what feels good about myself and celebrate what makes me unique.” Lindah Lepou.

The MC for the evening is TV3 newsreader and award-winning journalist, Mike McRoberts. Mike is running the New York marathon as a guide for a blind runner.

All proceeds from the event got to Achilles NZ, www.achillesnewzealand.org .

Pacific Couture is ART: Fundraising Gala
Date:         Saturday, 5 October 2013
Venue:      PIPA (Pacific Institute of Performing Arts), 48 Rosebank Rd, Avondale
Tickets:     $100 per person (sponsorship packages available)
Available through the Achilles NZ website
(www.achillesnewzealand.org)

ENDS

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