The National Arts Festival in Grahamstown ended with a cold, somnolent mist falling over the town. The last stragglers in the media office sat drinking whiskies and vodka-and-limes while watching traffic leaving the town.
The Reptile World van in Cathedral Square packed up the pythons to leave the town for good because they feel intimidated by the surrounding vendors (‘It’s time we go” sighed the tepid, middle-aged blonde woman collecting the R5 entries, while I perused the green and black mambas).
The final night left a number of remaining festival-goers wandering up High Street between the Long Table and Jazz Café feeling rather lost, looking for some eleventh-hour excitement. Post-festival blues set in, leaving the landscapes and creations of the past 10 days lingering and fading in tired brains.
Rain in a Dead Man’s Footprints, cancelled on the last night because of the weather, was one of the most extraordinarily beautiful and memorable productions of the festival. The piece, performed as open-air street theatre, is an exploration of the myths and lives of the /Xam, an extinct community of the Western Cape who were brutally murdered and driven from their homes by trek boers in the 19th century.
Directed by Mark Fleishman and featuring Jennie Reznek as well as the Jazzart Dance Theatre, Rain in a Dead Man’s Footprints uses documentation collected by Lucy Lloyd and Wilhelm Bleek, as well as the poetry of Stephen Watson.
Rhythmic, meditative, sad and yet uplifting, Rain intertwines narratives from different time periods, mythical and historical. The lack of clarity in this respect only slightly mars the power of the imagery and performances. Tall figures on stilts, their heads the skulls of buck, are images of old sorcery. Dancers with white body paint create movements resonant of the swirling of dust and water, death and regeneration. Rings of fire and background video imagery work to create a night space that is ritualistic and absorbs the audience deeply in its vision.
Chanting and poetry (‘There is silence now where we would sing”) merge with Neo Muyanga’s excellent musical score, which is based on the textures and idioms of San music and also includes elements of jazz and contemporary South African music. The work is an act of recollection and memory that includes within it the loss and negotiation involved in such a process to stunning effect. Rain in a Dead Man’s Footprints is being performed at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town from July 28 to 31.
Another blue production with lasting life is Black and Blue created by the Fortune Cookie Theatre Company — the producers of Baobabs Don’t Grow Here — and featuring Danny-Boy Mooi and Sylvaine Strike. The piece, one of this year’s fringe hits, is the eccentric tale of Mrs Swart, an agoraphobic old lady who, after the suicide of her husband, is left in a world of inner ramblings, tea cups and underwater nightmares where schools of Lucky Star pilchards swim by.
She is saved by Jackson Siboiboi, an exuberant gardener who leads her into the sunshine and sunflowers, where together they create a blue garden filled with plumbagos, giant pansies, arum lilies and agapanthuses. The piece fails (perhaps thankfully so) to explore the social and political dynamics it raises. However, it remains a gentle, funny and beautifully performed piece, bringing in elements of clowning and physical theatre from whose imaginative bubble one sadly surfaces.
Black and Blue will be performed in Johannesburg as part of the 969 Festival (969km from Johannesburg to Grahamstown) taking place at the Wits Theatre from July 14 to 24.
The 969 Festival is a new event in Johannesburg that seeks to bring a selection of some of the shows on at Grahamstown to those who were unable to make it. The 969 Festival also features, among others, Lara Foot Newton’s powerful but difficult Tshepang, exploring the scourge of baby rape in South Africa, as well as Portia Lebohang Mashigo’s Staircase: One Way Up!.
Mashigo, this year’s winner of the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Dance, shows potential in bringing together elements of contemporary youth culture with choreographed dance, but her work lacks consistency and one wonders, in the light of past winners such as Gregory Maqoma, whether she is ready for this award.
When it comes to singing the blues, Nontuthuzelo Puoane, this year’s winner of the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Music, was one of the highlights of the Joy of Jazz Festival. Performing with her group from the Den Haag Conservatory in The Netherlands, where she studies, as well as with Marcus Wyatt later in the week, Puoane came across as relaxed and charming.
Her vocal range is powerful, without straining, and her choice of tracks broad, with the highlight of her show being a vibrant and moving version of Lakutshon’ Ilanga. Puoane, who was a student in the National Youth Jazz Festival in recent years, testifies to the continued importance of the festival in building new talent, and her presence will be one to watch in coming years.