From a giant toothbrush to a car tyre tutu, there’s a giraffe’s torso and a box from cremated ashes: the precious, the profane all in a beautiful conglomeration. There is respect both earnest and cynical paid to deceased mothers and representations of the horror of hate that leaves you queasy.
Soprano Louise Alder in the role of Zdenko/Zdenka lends ‘Arabella’ a feisty sense of character and her performance is one of the best reasons you should steel yourself to see this work. Her role is small, counterbalanced against that of the eponymous Arabella (performed by Rachel Willis-Sørensen), Zdenko’s elder sister.
Based on a snippet from the New Testament, involving the relationship between Herod’s step-daughter and the powers that be, Salome features Yochanaan (John the Baptist), played by Peter Mattei in excruciating scenes touching on cruelty and madness, with a touch of necrophilia and nuances of child sexuality in the mix.
With her impish gap-toothed grin and her sprite-like existence onstage and in the interstices of the stories she told, fearless and impetuous dancer and choreographer Dada Masilo leaves a brilliant legacy that radically shifted an understanding of what dance from South Africa can and should be, anywhere in the world.
‘Grounded’ is a knock-out of a work featuring the magnificent Canadian mezzo soprano Emily d’Angelo, that offers a take on female identity in the man’s world of war and aggression. It breaks fresh ground with contemporary technology and will blow your mind with its take on moral trauma and complexity.
This is opera at its best … prepare yourself for a total treat, for the ears, eyes and soul. It will replenish you, even if you are not familiar with the work, or the medium of opera.
That feeling when you get into a warm bath after a difficult day, and you know everything will be alright is the kind of sensation you get in the remote audience of Puccini’s timeless classic Madama Butterfly. It’s not just about music that you will recognise from countless […]
IF YOU SLIGHTLY close your eyes through all the frippery and flappery of the first act of Puccini’s La Rondine, you might believe yourself to have been magically transported into an Aubrey Beardsley painting, with all its Art Deco glissandos and arches, gold leaf and quirky feathery headdresses. […]
TRIBUTE TO ANTOINETTE MURDOCH. AN ARTIST WITH passion, a gallerist who didn’t shy from difficulty and an individual who held so much together with skill, until she couldn’t any more, Antoinette Murdoch, the former curator-in-chief of the Johannesburg Art Gallery (JAG) succumbed to Covid-19 on 10 July 2020. […]
TRIBUTE TO LAVONA DE BRUYN BY OLGA-LOUISE LEMMER. SHE WAS A woman with an epic level of complete enthusiasm for life: An artist and a social activist, a theatre practitioner and a teacher who touched so many lives and gave them direction, this was Lavona de Bruyn, who […]
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