A freelance arts writer since 1998, I fell in love with the theatre as a toddler, proved rubbish as a ballerina: my starring role was as Mrs Pussy in Noddy as a seven-year-old, and earned my stripes as an academic in Fine Arts and Art History, in subsequent years. I write for a range of online and print publications, including the Sunday Times, the Mail & Guardian and artslink.co.za and was formerly the arts editor of the SA Jewish Report, a weekly newspaper with which I was associated for 16 years. I am currently a Research Associate at Wits University. This blog promises you new stories every week, be they reviews, profiles, news stories or features.
CAN ONE REALLY ever successfully conflate politics with art, yielding a resolved and engaging artwork and a convincing political gesture at the same time? Art and theatre history is littered with the casualties of this earnest cleaving together of values. And often political crudeness will hammer the nuances in […]
WHAT AN ABSOLUTE joy to watch a brand new piece of theatre crafted with compassion, structured with wisdom and levity and put together with an impeccable sense of focus. Robert Fridjhon brings you a back story for British rock band Queen’s most famous song ever, Bohemian Rhapsody, breathing muscular, […]
THE CHALLENGE OF translating arguably one of the world’s most well loved stories, replete with fantasy and symbolism that reaches into the hearts of the crabbiest of grown-ups, is not to be sneezed at. Director Francois Theron has achieved something quite extraordinary in this production of Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s […]
You don’t conventionally associate Portuguese culture with the rough and tumble, fury and passion of contemporary dance and its smashing of aesthetic precepts and reinventing of new possibilities. This astonishing paean to the land by CDCE, a dance company supported by the government of Portugal presents not only […]
Silence is a complicated medium to use in contemporary dance. As is ballet. Particularly if it is being put under a rich loupe filtered with a deep understanding of gender binaries, 19th century European frills and trills and crazy little mannerisms that have become something looked up to […]
A YOUNG MAN dances emotionally and with great muscularity with a giant black plastic cloud in a moment framed with footage of the inside of Ponte Tower in Berea, Johannesburg. He is physically threatened, dominated out of his context by several dancers wielding buckets – or using a bucket […]
It was Mary I of Scotland who first stated “in my end is my beginning”, a comment uttered on her imminent death, and her quest for immortality. It’s a strange and yet completely fitting starting point for this great monster of a dancework, choreographed by Sunnyboy Motau, which […]
Taking on Sophocles with electric abandon might not be the dream of just any drama graduate. The material is difficult, linguistically, morally and chronologically. The language is complex and bloody and some of the issues it embraces are impossible to get your head around without your heart (or […]
SHE’S BEAUTIFUL, SHE’S blond and, on a certain physical level, she fits a Hollywood stereotype, but Moscow-born concert pianist Olga Kern is not just a pretty face. The product of “many generations” of classical music, Kern won the prestigious Texas-based Van Cliburn International Piano competition in 2001 – […]
WHAT WOULD YOU do if you discovered a great big cuddly lion with a penchant for roaring loudly at times of great emotion, in your local municipal library? This fabulous little yarn created by Michelle Knudsen and brought to musical life onstage under the directorial hand of Francois Theron […]
ansunecilliers
beckkglass
Chester Miggels
Gillian Rennie
elizhanduvenhage
erinventer02
Geoff Sifrin
godukazinobulali
henricopg
huibrechtdehart
isabeausophiajoubert
jessicajoubert
Kapisha Ramraj
kaylamullerr
lerato26mhlongo
matthewvanderwalt
meereieliefde
olgalouiselemmer
Palesa Moore
Peta Kaplan
Robyn Sassen
Saleemah Shaik
saleemahsketches
shanelschoombee
thembanhlapoart
Willem Pieter
zainabchoonara
Recent Comments