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/ 30 August 2006

Italian women’s claim to name

Italy’s male lawmakers, who occupy more than five out of six seats in Parliament, will face demands from their female colleagues for a change in the law that would have far-reaching effects on the family. Women MPs have tabled 13 Bills to try to change the law on surnames, which even Italy’s conservative judiciary has criticised for being outdated.

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/ 30 August 2006

Annan to press Israel to lift blockade

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan will urge Israel to lift its air and sea blockade of Lebanon and discuss the deployment of UN peacekeepers when he meets Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Wednesday. Annan, in Jerusalem after visiting Lebanon, is trying to strengthen a two-week-old truce that ended a 34-day war between Israel and the Lebanese Hezbollah guerrilla group.

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/ 30 August 2006

A Young Turk in Sinatra’s playground

Michael Buble has already done remarkably well in bringing the style of the crooners of olden days to a new generation. Now the young Jamie Cullum sets down the same path on <i>Twentysomething</i>, keeping to the jazzy, easy-listening style that has been given a shot in the arm with the popularity of the likes of Norah Jones, Buble and Diana Krall, writes Riaan Wolmarans.

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/ 30 August 2006

‘A little bit of freedom’

Artist Beezy Bailey celebrates his two decades in fine art production with a solo exhibition at Rosebank’s Everard Read Gallery. It marks a return to Johannesburg for the artist who grew up in Gauteng, but who has become a fixture in the Western Cape. The multi-disciplined Bailey is no stranger to controversy. The <i>M&G</i> dispenses the Qs and Bailey the As.

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/ 30 August 2006

Hit but still jumping

<i>Tapsula</i>, a new Market Theatre production, puts pantsula dancers in tap shoes and transforms tap from a sleek dance form to a gyrating surge of force with furious arm swinging and determined stomping. Together they are like a herd of springboks in tap shoes – hit by a car, but still jumping, writes Benjamin Joffe-Walt.

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/ 30 August 2006

Looking in, watching out

What would be an appropriate metaphor to reflect the state of South African theatre in the first 10 years of democracy? Perhaps it would be <i>At Her Feet</i>, a play that was rejected by the National Arts Council (NAC), which suggested that playwright Nadia Davids rewrite her script to include other racial groups, only for the play in its original format to win two prestigious Fleur du Cap awards a few weeks later, writes Mike van Graan.

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/ 30 August 2006

Flexing imagination

The development of contemporary dance has often been hailed as one of the more remarkable artistic achievements in our new democracy. And times are changing for dancers, once considered the enfants terribles of the arts industries, writes Jay Pather.

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/ 30 August 2006

The last empress

Cixi, the last empress of China (1856 to 1908), is one of those historical figures people love to be nasty about. But the tide of opinion now seems to be turning. New read <i>Empress Orchid</i> is a further, feminist step on the road to her rehabilitation, writes Julia Lovell.