Liese van der Watt On show in Johannesburg No one ever speaks of “alternative” English or “dissident” Xhosas. And yet, descriptive phrases about alternative musicians, rebel poets and dissident academics are still used wherever Afrikaners, and what is assumed to be their homogeneous culture, is a topic of review. The reasons for this are of […]
Lauren Shantall If A Midsummer Night’s Dream focuses, in part, on the near-disastrous consequences of the generation gap, then director Jesse Knott’s version provides a streetwise, youth-based antidote to the problem facing today’s theatre: how to draw new audiences. She has dramatically revolutionised the original. Located in a dream world that is harrowingly familiar, the […]
European ballet and African dance forms are connecting, writes Phillip Kakaza The sun was too bright for a winter afternoon – not for me, a son of Africa, but for the Birmingham Royal Ballet dancers currently on tour in South Africa. And the English dancers’ interaction with 20 young South African dancers in a match-box […]
Neil Manthorp in Amsterdam Cricket It is funny that we call ourselves a sports-crazy nation. There has never been a sports event in South Africa that has commanded, or even demanded, that the whole population sits up and takes notice. The Rugby World Cup final is an over- used example of when this was supposed […]
Andrew Muchineripi World Cup Seventy years after Frenchman Jules Rimet “sold” the idea of a quadrennial football championship to a surprisingly sceptical world, the country of his birth has reached the final for the first time. Semi-finalists in 1958, 1982 and 1986, Les Bleus finally realised the dream by coming from behind this week to […]
Fiona Macleod `Sustainable development” of natural and cultural resources for the benefit of current and future generations is the main thrust of the draft National Environmental Management Bill, now up for public debate. Individuals and organisations have until July 29 to submit comment on the Bill, which the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism is […]
The extraordinary breadth and variety of the Standard Bank National Arts Festival is both its strength and a disadvantage, writes Alex Dodd from Grahamstown Try putting the contents of the Internet onto a piece of A4 paper and you’ll get a feel for the Standard Bank National Arts Festival in Grahamstown 1998. Eclectic is a […]
The dark genius of trip-hop grew up on mean streets. Most of his friends are still trawling them. Tricky revisits his roots with Kamal Ahmed They call me Tricky for particular reason They say I’m loud Why should I hide? The clouds that linger above Knowle West are not quite grey. If a paint company […]
Andrew Clements CD of the week Some of the most successful American operas of the 1980s and 1990s have been documentary pieces, perhaps encouraged by the success of John Adams’s Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer. Stewart Wallace’s Harvey Milk comes from very much the same stable: it was premiered in Houston in […]
Suzy Bell In the light of the West’s insatiable hunger for exotic titbits to feed its cultural appetite, it is inspiring to come across a cross-cultural fusion where integrity has not been compromised. Music for a Harmonious World is a unique collaboration of the Seventh Day Adventist Student Association (SDASA) Chorale, an amateur gospel group […]