Shorter than most, and the youngest of all, Portia Lebohang Mashigo came into the South African dance fraternity when she was just 14. Armed with an inherent sense of wisdom and focus, she grew up in the industry to be a giant of a dance professional. She died […]
ALONGSIDE AN ALL-ABIDING fear of social interaction on every conceivable level, the coronavirus pandemic has brought us – particularly us in the arts industries – dire concerns about the very income that keeps body and soul together. On 15 January 2021, South Africa’s current minister of sports, arts […]
DANCE REVIEW: THEMBA MBULI’S MANMADE. WHAT IS AN item of clothing in this world? A swatch of fabric stitched and cut to fit a body? A thing to simply cover your nakedness? A repository of fashion values? Or a thing to define you in a specific way, fraught […]
TRIBUTE TO PULE KGARATSI, RESEARCHED BY LERATO NTILI. A humble mentor, beautiful dancing talent and gifted educator, Pule Kgaratsi was one of the formative dancers of Moving Into Dance Mophatong. He was killed in a shoot-out South of Johannesburg on 30 July 2017. He was 51. Orphaned at […]
DANCE REVIEW: PEST CONTROL. YOU DO NOT need to know the dirty politics of the arts in contemporary South Africa in order to access the angry new dance missile which Mamela Nyamza launches at this year’s National Arts Festival. You do not need to know the specifics of […]
DANCE REVIEW: AMAWETHU. THE STRATA OF South Africa choreography run rich and deep and are about education and values as much they are about tradition and magnificence. We have in this country a plentiful culture of dance companies which have stretched their members to take authority on what […]
BOOK REVIEW: TRANCEFORMATIONS AND TRANSFORMATIONS BY SYLVIA GLASSER IT WAS A work that would shake everything from the parameters of dance in South Africa to the way in which contemporary black dancers confronted their medium. Indeed, dance ethnographer, choreographer and academic Sylvia Glasser’s watershed piece Tranceformations that evolved […]
PICTURE THE FAMOUS bit of Western classical musical composed in 1928 by Maurice Ravel and called Boléro translated into raw sobs. Picture a professional mourner at a cemetery and a cast of close to 40 in costumes magicked to life by Black Coffee. Picture it all against a […]
IN THIS WORLD, where there is a growing pall of homophobic legislation in a whole clutch of countries, it is a breath of fresh air to see drag pushed all the way out in the spotlight. New York-based Men in Tutus brings some frissons of lewdness, a healthy […]
PLEASE BE WARNED: STROBE LIGHTS ARE USED IN THIS PRODUCTION! WHEN YOU ENTER the sacred confines of a new work which you’ve yet to experience and the front of house staff issue you with ear plugs along with your tickets, be afraid, be very afraid. Flemish choreographer Jan […]
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