Category: Robyn Sassen

Sisters, in love and malice

MORE THAN AN exercise of escapism into the flaws and faux pas of privileged fictional characters, Craig Higginson’s most recent novel, The Book of Gifts, is a yarn about values and the fragility of young sensibilities. It’s a quick read because it is well crafted and the words […]

Portrait of granny, with crows

“YOU ARE THE cause of all the problems in this society, and we are going to kill you.” This is the gist of the kind of letters to which Maia Lekow and Christopher King’s compelling Kenyan documentary The Letter refers. Featured on this year’s Durban International Film Festival, […]

A cupboard full of ideology

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 […]

Soil in my suitcase

DANCE REVIEW: ABOMHLABA(THI). SOMETHING REALLY MAGICAL happens when you watch the give and take of three young bodies threading and knotting yarns between each other and the African soil that covers the world in Musa Hlatshwayo’s dance work Abomhlaba(thi), on this year’s Jomba Dance Festival, hosted by the […]