Arts magazine series For Arts Sake screened on TV ONE for two hours on Sunday mornings for 22 weeks in 1996. This segment on dancer/choreographer Mary Jane O'Reilly marks the launch of her new company Auckland Ballet. The founder of the celebrated Limbs Dance Company talks about still being involved in dance in her mid-40s, the formation of her new company, the similarities and differences between ballet and contemporary dance, and her move into making dance films. The item also features excerpts from some of O'Reilly's dance works.

This episode from series five of Kete Aronui, a documentary series featuring Aotearoa's artists that screened on Māori Television, follows the careers of iconic contemporary dancers Taane Mete and Taiaroa Royal. For both, training at Te Whaea propelled them into their art, teaching them not only technique but also a way of life. Featuring footage of Royal dancing in Douglas Wright's Forever (1993), the excerpt also includes a dance class with Michael Parmenter, another dance great, and discussion of dance companies Limbs and Black Grace.

The three day Nambassa Festival, held on a Waihi farm in 1979, is the subject of this documentary. Attended by 60,000 people, it represented a high tide mark in Aotearoa for the Woodstock vision of a music festival as a counterculture celebration of music, crafts, alternative lifestyles and all things hippy. Performers include a frenzied Split Enz, The Plague (wearing paint), Limbs dancers, a yodelling John Hore-Grenell and prog rockers Schtung. The only downers are overzealous policing, and weather which discourages too much communing with nature after the first day.

This live TV spectacular documents an 18 October 1981 Royal Variety performance in front of the touring Queen Elizabeth and Duke of Edinburgh. Performers in St James Theatre included Ray Columbus (in That's Country mode), Sir Howard Morrison and John Rowles. Dance is represented by Limbs and the Royal New Zealand Ballet, while McPhail and Gadsby and Billy T James deliver pre-PC gags. There’s a show stopping all-singing all-dancing finale, and what seems like the entire roster of NZ showbiz of the time lines up to greet the Queen, including Lyn of Tawa.

Infamous, short-lived, and arguably unfairly maligned, The Neville Purvis Family Show was hosted by the occasionally foul-mouthed and very Kiwi Neville Purvis — in reality, writer and musician Arthur Baysting (Sleeping Dogs). The series is best known for containing possibly the first use of the f-word on New Zealand television. The full episode containing the controversial utterance has likely been lost; surviving material from the show includes appearances by PM Rob Muldoon, actor Marshall Napier as Neville's mechanic mate, and Limbs Dance Company. 

Spats are better known as the band they soon became: The Crocodiles. Formed in mid 1977, originally as Les Hots, the eclectic act performed everything from jazz to doo-wop, as well as sellout shows at the Gluepot with Limbs Dance Company. In 1979 visiting US producer Kim Fowley (The Runaways) was won over by the band, especially the energetic 'New Wave Goodbye'. He encouraged singer Fane Flaws and company to change their name, and concentrate on more original material. 

Artists Prepare was a series of six programmes made by the NFU and screened in the Kaleidoscope programme on TV2 during July and August 1980. It featured prominent performance-based artists of the time with each episode exploring their particular creative process and performances of their work. The subjects were: Limbs Dance Company, composer Chris Cree Brown, mime artists Robert and Jane Bennett, songwriter-singer David Ngatae, poets Sam Hunt and Gary McCormick and singer Malcolm McNeill.

This showcase for Arthur Baysting's sleazy, comedic alter-ego Neville ("on the level") Purvis ("at your service") is notorious for containing the first use of the f-word on a New Zealand television show. As a result, Baysting was banned and crossed the Tasman to find work (an irony given the show's anti-Australian jokes). Surviving segments from the show include a launch by PM Rob Muldoon, a tour of Avalon, a performance by Limbs Dance Company (including Mary-Jane O'Reilly), a visit to the Close to Home set, an interview with a garden gnome fan, and some Mark II Zephyr worship.

This infectious clip marks one of the few local music videos to have been made independently of state TV in the 70s. Spats toured their eclectic brand of music from Blerta's old bus, before finding fame by morphing into The Crocodiles. In this track vocalist Fane Flaws demonstrates a TV screen can make a valid performance tool, the band demonstrate their moves, and regular Spats accomplices Limbs Dance Company add some fun moves of their own. The video was directed by Geoff Murphy, with help from Spats. 'New Wave Goodbye' ended up on Crocodiles album Tears.

In 1989 dancer Douglas Wright returned home from a dance OE to choreograph and form his own company. This TV profile, marking the premiere of his work Gloria, looks back on a late blossoming career that began at 21 — when he took up ballet to overcome a heroin addiction. After becoming a star with Limbs, Wright moved on to prestigious troupes in London and New York. Now, as opening night looms, he is acutely aware of the danger of pushing his dancers too hard physically as he fights to get the best out of them on an ambitious,  highly demanding piece.