LIKE BEETHOVEN’S FIFTH Symphony or Van Gogh’s ear, Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake has become iconic in a very broad understanding of what western culture is. Go to anyone in the street and competently whistle the tune of the Song of the Cygnets and they will know what you’re on […]
SOMETIMES IT SEEMS as though the preciousness of opera has been hardwired into an understanding of the genre. But in truth, it’s not all fancy velvet ball gowns, polished European language and nebulous love tales told with an utter sense of privilege and moment. The history of opera […]
EVERY SO OFTEN, a film comes across your radar, which is so strong and so articulately phrased that you leave the auditorium physically weak. Your knees have turned to jelly and your heart, from the rollercoaster of emotion that you’ve been subjected to, is still rattling in your […]
WATCH OUT FOR the goosebumps that will plague your skin and soul and motivate you to move from one work to the next in Trans, an extraordinary exhibition put together by Brazilian curator Daniella Géo and featuring works that take the notion of the prefix ‘trans’ and splay […]
YOU MAY FIND it difficult to believe that the glossy corporateness of the Standard Bank Gallery in central Johannesburg could be challenged to its very core. There are only a few days left in the Johannesburg season of the exhibition of Igshaan Adams, the 2017 Standard Bank Young […]
WELCOME TO AFRICA! It’s a place of safari and godliness. It’s a context where the wily rabbit is often more sophisticated in his thinking than the beautiful leopard, and it’s a place where things die and are reborn. Jill Girard and Keith Smith bring you a compendium of […]
REAL FRIENDSHIP DOESN’T always come in just any neat package, mostly. And the message of this lovely children’s musical, with honky tonk vibes and a cuddly spider who has painted nails will warm the cockles of your heart – and that of your child. Daniel Geddes does a […]
IF YOU’VE WITHSTOOD the hype around the Mamma Mia musical, because you’ve instinctively recognised it for the candy floss, shameless money generating initiative that it is, don’t relent now. Mamma Mia! Here we go again, is a further foray into a schlock-redolent yarn rich with platitudes and clustered […]
IT TAKES A very special level of respect for a story to be able to tell it with the dignity and complexity it warrants and not teeter off into preachiness or sensationalism. Ellen Pakkies is a real woman who was raised in the Cape Flats context of unrelenting […]
ANY MANIFESTATION OF the arts in the public domain involves collaborative energy, give and take, the use of others’ expertise. And the names of those people are mostly not on the headlines of the work. Ask any sub-editor, stage manager, gallery factotum or set designer. Björn Runge’s film […]
Geoff Sifrin
Robyn Sassen
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