She’s already dancing in a milky grey spotlight when you walk into the space. Amid the noise and rustle of an audience settling into itself and talking and laughing, she performs in a curious silence, marked by facial expressions at once comic and a little frightening. There is […]
Mixed programmes in Dance Umbrella always hold that frisson of possibility and that lucky packet threat that is about how the works on the programme relate to one another, as well as what you are left with at the end of the evening. Sadly the wretched acoustics in […]
When you watch a piece as catastrophically chaotic as Constanza Macras’s On Fire choreographed for the gala opening of this year’s Dance Umbrella, you might be tempted to question what exactly a choreographer does. Unlike the previous works we have seen by this choreographer and her company, there […]
What happens when you put four song and dance and jazz veterans together with some timeless classics from the American Song Book, a bit of Bessie Smith and a smattering of Joan Rivers, to say nothing of the Communards’ delicious Never Can Say Goodbye? In simple terms, a […]
If you’re seeking fine excuses to go to the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown this year, seek no further: Jenine Collocott and Nick Warren have once again been putting their very fine heads together, and this time have yielded a theatrical essay on Mandela’s childhood which soars with […]
Have you ever looked at an orchestra and pondered the back story behind the more monstrous and dramatic of its components? Or even the not-so-monstrous, but instruments which might be completely bizarre to the average Joe. And I’m not talking about the ordinary violin or sedate flute. What […]
The room you enter is crushingly ordinary. As the lights are dimmed and the instruments are fired up, magic erupts. Listening to the Image, an event which forced you to listen to a visual artwork with more than just your ears, not only presented four splinteringly fine new […]
The Afrikaans language is rich in talent – poets and authors, performers and playwrights. There’s a deep and full tradition of radio drama in Afrikaans as there is a history of children of Afrikaans heritage being schooled in the traditional performing arts and being audience members at ballets […]
It’s not every day that you come across a life story as shattering and empowering as that of classical ballerina Michaela DePrince. It’s also not every day that you encounter a first person narrative told with such unabashed freshness that leaves you with goosebumps on every page. On […]
Would you be interested in reading a blow by blow account of my sex life? How quickly would you lose interest? Writing about sexual encounters in the first person is dangerous: too much info and the words and their credibility part ways. And too much info about as […]
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