\nFestival\nhadn\u2019t even started and we had to chop and change, dodge and dice.\nStandard Bank Presents, the tasty live teaser, showed\nwhat could be done in Cape Town and Durban, but before it hit the\nstraps in Jozi, Comrade Cyril had his say. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nThose\nfolks on the hill, the National\nArts Festival<\/strong>,\nalways held a card up the sleeve, a Plan C, but that didn\u2019t mean it\ndidn\u2019t mean more work for them. We applaud, we throw roses,\nknickers if you want them. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nThere\nis no livelihood that has been more damaged\nby the pandemic than\nthe arts\n(call it an industry, I will bite\nmy thumb at you).\nA\nwhole ecology of creative endeavour has been devastated, both by\nchance and by wilful neglect and incompetence. Artists\nhave been klapped. And yet, despite all the hardships and obstacles,\nartists are moving through the loss of live performance, grappling\nwith it and finding whatever ways they can to get their hands into\nyour chest. There\nis so much work on the National Arts Festival programme to get\nexcited about. In\nthe midst of an arts apocalypse, the heart will still beat. And as\nlong as it beats, so do we; living our history, making it as we go,\ntrying to reach through screens to each other. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nWhat\nyou need to know is that from tomorrow (8 July), there\nare\nshows that are live-streamed, which means you have to pay\nthe ticket, make the\ndate and arrive at the venue (your computer), and there are shows\nthat you can view any\ntime you want to between 8 and 31 July. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nThe\nfull programme, in all its various elements, is on\nnationalartsfestival.co.za<\/a>.\nLog in, and you can follow the buttons to book shows and view your\ncalendar and all that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nSo\nja, well, you wanna get excited?\nI mean, Nthato\nMokgata<\/a> has\nput something together, and best of all, it has the worst name: Afro\nJazz Giants Hip Hop Tribute<\/em><\/a>.\n<\/em>This\nbra\u2019s\ngot the 2020 Standard Bank young artist award for music, so if\nanyone is gonna pull off what he says he\u2019s gonna pull off, then\nSpoek\nMathambo\u2019ll do it<\/a>.\nWe\u2019re\ntalking hip hop doing Mzansi\u2019s jazz songbook. Or vice versa.\nRemember Miles\nDavis did a hip hop album with Easy Mo Bee<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nWhen\nLesego Rampolokeng<\/a> writes a libretto for an Oratorio\nof a Forgotten Youth<\/em><\/a>,\nyou kinda sit up in your chair and start looking at the details.\nThese\nare that it\u2019s a The\nBrother Moves on project with Wits School of Arts, Resonance String\nQuartet, Vivacious Sounds Choir, all led by Mandla\nMlangeni<\/a>\n\u2013 he who was Standard\nBank young jazz artist in 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nOf\ncourse, there\u2019s the jazz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nAlways,\nthat jazz, that ssfsticated cat. As usual, we\u2019re talking the stars,\nwe\u2019re talking art made sound, sound made art, capable of waves that\ncan pulsate your mind into a stratosphere of lateral connections.\nBokani\nDyer<\/a>, Feya\nFaku<\/a>, and\nSisonke\nXonti<\/a> all leading bands of their peers, with cross-continental\ncollaborations. Brilliant\nbrews,\nwith names new to this critter, such as Siya\nCharles<\/a>, who won\u2019t be new much longer. Nor the Neil Gonsalves\nTrio, Richard\nBona<\/a>, nor Melvin\nPeters<\/a> who\nhas been around for decades and\nmay be more familiar to KZN cats. Of course Jitsvinger, who\nwas jas<\/a>,\nat the Standard Bank Presents live gigs in Cape Town, will be online.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nWe\nmiss that DSG hall and expectantly shuffling in in our coats and\nbeing a room with 300 other people digging the vibe as much as us,\nand can\u2019t wait to be able to do it again, however strange it now\nseems, but last year we discovered it was also incredible to able to\nlisten to the latest contemporary live recorded South African jazz\nwhile we were, like washing dishes or something. And yeah, we\u2019re\nlooking forward to that new in our midst right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nAll\nof the above are view on demand, but Zilin:\nFor the First and Future African Sonic Stars<\/strong><\/em><\/a>,\nis<\/strong> livestreamed\non 9 July<\/strong>, as is Asanda\nMqiki<\/a> on 11 July<\/strong>. We\u2019ve been\nblown away by her before<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nTony\nMiyambo is the most\nincredible actor<\/a>. He can stand in front of a photocopier and make\nyou feel something. He\u2019s\nat fest this year in\n<\/em>Commission\nContinua<\/em><\/a>,\na work he started with equally brilliant Phala Ookeditse Phala as\npart of The <\/a>Centre\nfor the\nLess Good Idea<\/a>\nlaboratory of geniusness.\nThere is not likely to be a more nail hitting on the head production\nfor this time, for if you have not at least some inkling of the Zondo\ncommission, then how did you get to be reading this? There\u2019s\na live\nstream on 11 July<\/strong>\nand I\nsuspect Tony might just save the day for all of us. I mean the day of\nour political reckoning. At the very least, I\u2019ll vouch he\u2019ll help\nus see it through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nWith\nand elbow shake from Iceland to keep the sense of live performance\nalive, is the live stream of Hedy!\nThe Li<\/em>f<\/em>e\n& Inventions of Hedy Lamarr<\/em><\/a>\nwhich you should kick yourself if you miss. It\u2019ll\nbe streamed in real time on 10 July from a live performance in\nReykjavik. The play has won 17 awards for its portrayal of Hedy\nLamarr, who\nwas a 1930s film star who did not allow herself to get stuck in the\nmirrored world of glamour. She\nalso invented things, like an\nearly version of radio frequency\nhopping<\/a>, and\nimprovements to aircraft aerodynamics. Lamarr was posthumously\ninducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nOne\ncollaboration\nwho last year proved<\/a>\nthey can bring new creativity into our isolated worlds is Francois\nKnoetze and\nAmy Louise Wilson.\nAmy\u2019s\nkinda famous as an actress and won the Distell playwright award in\n2020 for Another Kind of Dying, which as Covid-19 clamped down, had\nto pivot to film in order to be shown at last year\u2019s vNAF, to\ncritical acclaim<\/a>. Which means AnotherKind<\/em><\/a>,\n\u201ca funeral for\na piece of theatre which never existed and a celebration of the birth\nof a new hybrid artwork between the digital and the live\u201d is bound\nto be a programme highlight. AnotherKind<\/strong><\/em>\nstreams live on 15 July<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nYou\ncan trust Aaron McIlroy to bring levity to the situation. If this\ncrazy comic actor from KZN wasn\u2019t doing the virtual thing, he might\nhave you breaking Covid distancing by inadvertently \u201cclutching\nthe leg of your neighbour in sheer mirth\u201d<\/a>. He\nlivestreams\n<\/a><\/strong>The\nApology<\/strong><\/em><\/a>\non 17 July<\/strong>\nabout an ad exec who \u201cunleashes\nthe most politically insensitive song and dance act at a national\npeace conference\u201d and then crawls into a hole. Think, maybe, like\nArd Matthews\nroyally screwing up Nkosi Sikelel\u2019 iAfrika<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nCertainly,\nwe are not going to miss Faith Kinner having read Artuad and coming\nat us as Anti\nWi\u2019oekal<\/a>. Eee! I haven\u2019t seen anyone wrestle with the Theatre\nof Cruelty since\nGopala Davies\ntried it out in 2016<\/a>.\nSo much promise, particularly as Artaud also wrote The\nTheatre and the Plague. <\/em>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nWe\u2019re\nspoilt\nwhen it comes to people who can speak with the body, There\u2019s\nnot a lot of dance on the programme, but there is\nLulu\nMlangeni. As Standard\nBank young artist for dance, she\u2019s\ngiving us the\ngospel of movement with Kganya\n\u2013 Light<\/a>. It\u2019s bound to be 60 minutes of feeling.\nLulu was central to slipping beneath our defences, \u201cmoving\nus into a space of active feeling and understanding\u201d where we …\n\u201cno longer fail to imagine the pain, yet are released<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nWhat\nwith the developers about to pour\nconcrete over Khoi sacred land in Cape Town<\/a>, Gat\nInnie Grond, Wond in my Siel<\/a> <\/em>seems\napt. This \u201coff-centre dance narrative\u201d tapping\ninto Khoi and San ritual promises\nto be a first of its kind. It\nmight need a descriptor of its own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nAlso\ncheck out M<\/em>ommy\nMommy…<\/em><\/a>\n, a livestream on 14 July that just may prove Thamsanqa\nMajela and\nTebogo\nGxubane\u2019s\nchops. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nUnmute\nDance Company is\npresenting\nTraces\nof Memory<\/em><\/a>\ncommemorating the\nlate Themba\nMbuli, whose work we\nadmired<\/a>. I\u2019m\nsure it will be sad. It will also be celebratory, and necessary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nThe\nabove are noted purely by subjective chance, it\nis by no means a \u2018best of\u2019. Rather, it is a teaser inviting you\nto delve into the programme. We have not even touched on The\nFringe<\/strong><\/a>,\nwhich we promise we will try provide a guide to, soon as we can. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nThere\nare about 100 shows at the National Arts Festival, which has created\nthe stage<\/a> on which\nwe\ncan participate across time and space with our\nartists\u2019\napplication of imagination and skill and knack of making sense of us.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nArt\nisn\u2019t going to save the\nworld,\nbut it will give meaning to the falling-apart. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n We’re here to write about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Photo: A scene from Ndinxaniwe, performed in Cape Town on 25 July as part of Standard Bank Presents. Photographer: Mark Wessels.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a9 2021 The Critter. This article is licensed under a\u00a0<\/em>Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\nAnnouncements:\n<\/strong>\n<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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