THE SCENE IS set for something utterly extraordinary. Quietude pervades. There’s a tight row of wooden crosses, standing plunged into the ground. And the riffs of sound filter through the space, subtly at first and then with richer resonance. You’re on high alert. You don’t know what might […]
WHEN SOMETHING SO unutterably beautiful crosses your path, at first you feel awestruck into silence, and once you have caught your breath and gathered your energies, it takes time before you are capable of reflecting on the intensity and pull of that beauty. This is what you experience […]
AS YOU SIT down and focus on the internal space created by the vast vertical diaphanous screens that are central to this piece, you might feel that you’re in the wrong seat. And as Corps unfolds, with the play of shadow with dance, video footage with photographic image, […]
SELDOM DO YOU find yourself turning to the bible in an attempt to access what you have just seen in a dance festival context. But this is most certainly where the perplexing, abstract but highly skilled De-Apart-Hate by Mamela Nyamza, which debuts in Johannesburg for the Dance Umbrella, […]
SOMETHING QUITE TERRIFYING happens when you find yourself among people you don’t know, being aggressively instructed in a language you don’t understand: You just obey. You do what other people are doing. You become frightened to step out of line. Frightened that the guards’ attention will become focused […]
It’s a completely astonishing privilege to watch both Gregory Maqoma and Roberto Olivan perform. They gyrate like whirligigs, they contort and jetee as though they have quicksilver in their veins and fire instead of bones. They are mesmerising in their beauty, in collaboration and individually. The work’s title […]
It’s a small programme – certainly the smallest we’ve seen in over a decade, but this year’s Dance Umbrella which starts on Sunday night, packs a hefty punch, not only in terms of big names and important productions, but in terms of seeing the Dance Umbrella turn a […]
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