Tag: South African State Theatre

Blinded by smoke; set on fire

Movement doesn’t need a thesis statement. The imagery that Transcendent shapes is unmistakeable, evocative and simple. It need not be anything more. Movement cannot lie. A single move can make you as powerful as it can make you vulnerable. And the performers beautifully hold this tension between power and vulnerability.

Once upon a time at a taxi rank

The narrative of ‘A Streetcar’ is rich with tropes central to the South African taxi industry, and its complex social and economic history. Listen to the discourse. Taxiology in South Africa is a real thing, about spicy micro-narratives and social protocol as well as about God, the universe and everything.

Death and the initiate

THE POWDER KEG of young men on the cusp of adulthood is the culturally messy and politically dangerous one that filmmaker John Trengove and his team grasped with both hands and many hearts in Inxeba (the Wound), which first saw light of day in 2017. It proved to […]

True selves, dervishes and calabashes

DANCE REVIEW: AMAWETHU. THE STRATA OF South Africa choreography run rich and deep and are about education and values as much they are about tradition and magnificence. We have in this country a plentiful culture of dance companies which have stretched their members to take authority on what […]

All my tomorrows in a burnt dictionary

IN EVERY GENERATION, real issues need to be taken seriously by the youth. Ours is no different. And these ‘real issues’ include struggle history. It’s a curious thing to be able to watch the focused attention awarded to a play about youngsters in 1980s South Africa, torn and […]

How to dance up a storm

WHAT ARE THE basic parameters that inform a festival of contemporary dance? Should there be a gatekeeper who assesses wannabe shows on the gig and plays god, in his or her ability to give a hopeful group of applicants the ‘yay’ or ‘nay’? And who is that gatekeeper? […]