ArtSpoken by Darryl Accone- 30/01/01
TJ
What was it like to be in Durban on Monday night when legendary Russian
pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy played with the KwaZulu Natal Philharmonic? The
concert was previewed in the first ArtSpoken a fortnight ago; now you can
read all about it at www.artslink.co.za, where Paul Boekkooi's review
appeared a few hours after the concert ended.
You'll have access to the same fleetness of review for this week's first
recommendation, Ezakithi, the latest musical by that doyen of township
theatre, Gibson Kente. Catch Gwen Ansell's review of Tuesday's opening night
performance at The Market Theatre in Johannesburg on the Artslink front page
on Wednesday morning.
Bra Gib, as he is better known, created what has come to be called the
township musical. His latest variation in the genre looks at the efforts of
a dance troupe to create an "African Renaissance musical" with the
stipulation that the cast be multi-racial. Socio-political aspects of this
country's transformation are examined, centring on the dancers trying to
determine if the white member of the cast can truly comprehend the
much-touted renaissance.
Ezakithi is slated to run until March 11, playing at 8pm on Tuesdays to
Fridays, 6pm on Saturdays and 3pm on Sundays.
Durbanites, who have already had the chance to sample Kente's musical, can
look forward to a weekend feast of dance at Imbuba 2001. This annual event
presented by Dance Link brings together the cream of KwaZulu's dance
community. Things kick off at 7pm on Saturday at the Elizabeth Sneddon
Theatre, with a programme that includes the Fantastic Flying Fish Dance
Company, Siwela Sonke Dance Theatre with a new work by Jay Pather. Entrance
is a bargain R25 for adults and R15 for under-16s.
Next Monday sees the opening at Durban's BAT Centre of Africa, an exhibition
by Mozambiqan artist Viler. The centre's Democratic Gallery hosts the show
of sculptures, drawings and paintings by this 20-year-old artist, whose
youth belies his reputation. Belonging to the celebrated artists' collective
Nucleo de Artes Maputo-Mocambique, Viler also has works in collections
around the world.
It drew plaudits and applause at the Standard Bank National Arts Festival in
1999. Now Rajesh Gopie's Out of Bounds is at the Baxter Theatre in Cape
Town, from January 31 to March 3. A sharp but warmly human double memoir,
it explores what it was like to grow up Indian in both pre and
post-aparthied South Africa.
The narrative is based on the lives of narrator Lal and playwright Gosie and
is peppered with clear-eyed and often very humorous insights into the
socio-political realities of South Africa's Indian community. As Gopie
notes: "My late grandmother used to say 'anything not shared is wasted', I
have come to understand in my own life that sharing at all levels of living
liberates me from the confines of insulation, single mindedness and
in-transition".
Also down Cape Town way, just a short drive from the Mother City at Evita se
Perron in Darling, Pieter-Dirk Uys presents Dekaffirnated on Friday at 9pm.
A look at the New South Africa through the ace satirist's distinctly
non-rose-tinted glasses, the show is refreshingly non-PC and wisely
mischievious.
At the Perron on Saturday at noon, Uys assumes his Tannie Evita persona to
play Tannie Evita Praat Kaktus, repeated on Sunday at noon. Tannie E mouths
off her spiky sentiments in a show the billing for which reads: "The most
famous white woman in South Africa diverts from black to white politics to
discuss the green of ecology in depth - symbolised by the Cactus of Separate
Development and incorporating a revisionist South African History, news
events of the day, truth, transparency, designer-democracy and
politically-incorrect opinion." When I saw an earlier version - and with
Pieter-Dirk, every performance is a new one, updated here, topicality of the
day thrown in there - at Grahamstown a while back, it was anything but
bulldust that P-D U was peddling.
Later on Saturday, at 9pm, Uys presents his Aids education road
show-cum-satire, For Facts Sake, just before it comes up to Gauteng next
week. (It plays at the Wits Theatre from February 6 to 8, nightly at 8pm.)
Uys crosses the final frontier and goes where he has not before, dissecting
and lacerating the absurd politics around HIV and Aids in the New South
Africa.
Nationally, on the big screen there is the small contender that packs a
knock-out punch, Billy Elliot; the big contender that's just a great white
hope, Unbreakable and the Sally Field-directed Beautiful.
Billy Elliott is about a youngster who wants to become a ballet dancer. The
seemingly insoluble problem is that he lives in the tough north-east of
England, where his father and brother are coal miners locked in the
do-or-die strike against the evil Mrs Thatcher. Billy's mother is long dead,
his home life forbidding and the material, spiritual and cultural poverty
around and within him almost unbearable.
Dance offers an escape into another world, removed from the cares of this
one. South Africans know the elevating power of dance and the other
performing and creative arts, though sometimes some of them need a little
reminding. Not you, the reader of this piece, who has elected to support the
Arts and Culture Trust of the President by being a Nedbank Arts affinity
member.
Only the hardest-hearted of viewers might remain unmoved by the lyrical
story of Billy Elliot. As Martha Graham memorably said, "the secret to
dancing is that it is about everything except dancing". So too with this
luminously intelligent film, which loves people, hates class snobbery and
grasping capitalism and is a glowing tribute to the principles that the
mineworkers' union held with such faith.
Oh, and did I mention the dancing? And the humour? And the universal themes
of parent and child?
Unbreakable is the new vehicle co-driven by director M Night Shyamalan (The
Sixth Sense) and star Bruce Willis (The Sixth Sense) with Haley Joel Osment
(The Sixth Sense) in the back seat for good measure. It's driven by the
writer/director's intriguing idea that comic book heroes and villains do -
or ought to - exist in real life.
Willis does not have additional senses here, only the great asset of seeming
to be indestructible. When he encounters a "glass-boned" (see the film, I'm
saying no more) art dealer and comic book fanatic and collector played by
Samuel L Jackson, the story enters the ethereal realms of The Sixth Sense.
It is not creepy, though, and Shyamalan is perhaps shown to be a one-trick
director: we've seen him deploy these elements before, from the desaturated
colours and whispering soundtrack to the single script trick that is like a
sucker-punch. Except this time, you can see it coming from a lot further
off.
Last, there is the awesome array of talent in Beautiful, directed by Sally
Field and starring Minnie Driver, Kathleen Turner and Hallie Kate Eisenburg.
The dream here is a young woman's, of becoming Miss America. But life
happens while she's hatching beauty queen plans and she discovers what's
important and what's not. As the tag-line says: "Sometimes you have to give
up the life of your dreams, to discover the dream of your life."
* There will be a new ArtSpoken next week
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