NATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL 2012

The 38th National Arts Festival in Grahamstown will once again showcase the best in South African and international art across every genre from 28 June to 8 July this year.

The Main programme's core is the cutting edge work of the 2012 Standard Bank Young Artist Award winners who continue to challenge and explore new directions as they establish their artistic voices. The winners will be presenting a varied and exciting programme of work in drama, dance, music, jazz and visual art.

Princess Zinzi Mhlongo (2012 SBYAA winner for Drama), whose skills as a strong director have won her several accolades, will make her debut as a writer at this year’s Festival with her first play-script, Trapped Following the premiere of her work in Grahamstown, she will leave for Austria to present this work as one of four young theatre-makers invited from around the world.

Other Theatre highlights include the Fugard Theatre making its debut on the Festival’s Main programme with a world premiere of Athol Fugard’s newest play, The Blue Iris, directed by Janice Honeyman. The visceral struggles of contemporary South Africa are laid bare in internationally acclaimed, South African-born, director Yael Farber’s explosive new adaptation of August Strindberg’s classic Miss Julie, set in the remote beauty of the Eastern Cape Karoo. Shame, guilt, class, sex, lies and race are all provocatively stirred together in the Playhouse Company’s production of David Mamet’s fast-paced play, Race; while Voices Made Night, adapted from short stories by Mia Couto and directed by Mark Fleishman, will reflect Magnet Theatre’s orientations as a creative, innovative and sophisticated African theatre company. Writer Craig Higginson and director Malcolm Purkey collaborate with Neil Coppen to create Higginson’s latest play, Little Foot, a boundary-challenging multi-media event that promises to be a unique piece of storytelling. Abrahamse & Meyer Productions, in partnership with Artscape, bring their new production of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream to the 2012 Festival.

There are also a few productions that will make their way to Grahamstown from international stages. Independent theatre company, KickstArt (by special arrangement with the Creative Artists Agency, New York) will present the South African premiere of John Logan’s 2010 Tony Award-winning play, Red, directed by Steven Stead. The Italian-based company, Scarlettine Teatro takes the audience into the world of the comic book where the actors interact with the characters and become part of the story in their production of Manolibera.

An exciting aspect of this year’s Festival programme is the launch of the French/South Africa season in Grahamstown, staged with the support of the French Institute in South Africa, the Embassy of France and the South African Department of Arts and Culture. The launch sees several productions premiering, across several genres. Ster City, an exciting multi-disciplinary production by French theatre-maker Jean-Paul Delore, is the featured production in the Theatre programme.

In I Love You When You’re Breathing, the Handspring Puppet Company will give audiences the unique opportunity of seeing a puppet deliver a meta-theatrical address, using comedy and generous amounts of self-reflexive humour to give insight on the nature of puppetry, the process of creating life in the object, and the role of the audience in making meaning.

A Season of Solo Plays will feature five productions by some of South Africa’s top established and up and coming directors and performers, including Pieter-Dirk Uys, Thembi Mtshali-Jones, Omphie Molusi, Nick Warren and Nicky Rebelo.

Standard Bank Young Artist for Dance, Bailey Snyman has firmly entrenched his reputation for creating work that is poetic, challenging and visually provocative. Inspired by Andre Carl van der Merwe’s novel Moffie, Snyman has created a dance-play that will explore and expose the fears, anxieties and denialism of gay people in the military. He delves into both historical and contemporary understandings as he considers the challenges of being gay in the military.

Contemporary Dance has a much bigger footprint at this year’s National Arts Festival with the Transnet Great Hall being enhanced as a second dance venue for the Main programme. Richly textured by a number of international influences, the programme kicks off with Vincent Mantsoe’s Opera for Fools. French choreographers Mathilde Monnier and Jean-François Duroure created Pudique Acide in New York and Extasis picks up this work and intensifies the data. The two pieces will be presented in a double bill that will give an insight into their wild invention. !Aïa is a transversal work between art, culture, science and traditional wisdom created by the internationally renowned Taliipot Theatre company from Reunion.Inter.Fear is an artistic co-production between South African choreographer and performer, Athena Mazarakis and Spanish choreographer, performer and artistic director, Hansel Nezza. Cindy van Acker’s two solos, Lanx and Obtus examine the connections between body and spirit, sound and rhythm with almost scientific precision. Rhythms of the Eastern Cape produced by the Eastern Cape Department of Sports, Recreation, Arts & Culture highlights the vibrancy of the sub-tribes of the Eastern Cape – amaBhaca, abaThembu, amaKhoisan, abeSuthu and amaMpondo. Young cutting edge choreographers will show their creative mettle in Re-Fresh while classical ballet enthusiasts should flock to Cape Town City Ballet’s Giselle accompanied by the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra.

The Music programme is headlined by Standard Bank Young Artist for Music, Kelebogile Boikanyo, who will enchant audiences with a vocal recital that includes, amongst others, works by Verdi, Gershwin, Mozart and Handel. A member of Opera Africa, audiences are encouraged to catch this fast-rising star who is earmarked to hit the international scene in the near future.

The KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic Orchestra will present a concert of fantasy and favourites to celebrating the cultural exchange between France and South Africa with an all-French programme, pairing two Romantic masterworks of Camille Saint-Saëns with the unjustly neglected Symphony of Paul Dukas. Daniel Boico conducts and François du Toit (piano) is the soloist. The Gala Concert conducted by Richard Cock is inspired by anniversaries, and features works by Massenet, Debussy, and Edward German, as well as the 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky. Central to the programme is Standard Bank Young Artist Kelebogile Boikanyo and the outstanding marimba player Magda de Vries.

In African Romantics, the End of Time Trio present works by Max Bruch and Peter Klatzow. Ensembles from the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra will present a variety of works while Colossus is a daring programme of large chamber works ranging from the hauntingly beautiful to the intensely powerful. Included in the programme is the world première of composer David Plylar’s new work entitled Colossus. Three’s Company explores music for three players Géza Kayser (violin), Liuben Gardev (cello), David Smith (keyboard), from the Baroque and Modernist eras.

The innovative mallet percussion duo Duo FourIVTwo with classical marimbist Magda de Vries and vibraphonist Frank Mallows, play an inspired repertoire of newly commissioned works by some of South Africa’s internationally acclaimed composers. Two Trios and a Quintet, featuring Hilton Schilder, Errol Dyers, Steve Newman, Greg Georgiades and Ashish Joshi, shows the scintillating musicianship of the ensemble drawing from a pan-African musical menu and other influences from the cultural Diaspora settled in and spread out of Africa.

In Ancient Inspirations, a programme of music inspired by the original inhabitants of South Africa, The Chanticleer Singers together with Duo IVFour2 (Magda de Vries and Frank Mallows), present works by South African composers Peter Louis van Dijk, Peter Klatzow and Hans Roosenschoon.

Louis Armstrong & Friends features stunning arrangements of Armstrong classics with fine performances by Prince Lengoasa (trumpet & vocals), Veramarie Meyer (mezzo-soprano) and Nicholas Nicholaidis (tenor) and is conducted by Richard Cock. Soul of Fire is a genre-bending production conceived by Zanne Stapelberg and Kathleen Tagg juxtaposing classical Spanish songs by Montsalvage with the instrumental tangos of Astor Piazzola in new, original arrangements, to the magical energy of Spanish Zarzuela.

The ATKV present Ave Maria and Hallelujah/Alleluia, a selection of works with a youth choir, musicians and soloist Minette du Toit-Pearce. The Los Angeles Children’s Chorus – lauded as “one of the world’s foremost children’s choirs” (Pasadena Star News), and described by critics as “hauntingly beautiful”, and “one heck of a talented group of kids” promises to move and delight South African audiences.

Pierrot Lunaire, a song-cycle for soprano (Teresa de Wit) and instrumental quintet (End of Time Ensemble) has long been recognised as a key 20th-century chamber composition, as important in its revolutionary aims and musical influence as Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and Strauss’s Elektra. Owing to its literary and technical complexity, it has been rarely performed in South Africa.

Sounds Like Fun is a relaxed and enjoyable way to bring the family together and to help pass the symphony tradition from one generation to the next. With the popular and very charismatic Festival maestro, Richard Cock, at the baton leading members of the KZN Philharmonic, Sounds Like Fun is designed to introduce children and their parents to the wonders of a symphony concert.

Richard Cock will also present a performance-lecture designed to demystify classical music and build on his sellout lecture at the 2011 Festival.

Mikhael Subotzky, the 2012 Standard Bank Young Artist for Visual Art will present an entirely new body of work, centred on a four-channel film installation, produced specifically for the National Arts Festival and a national exhibition tour. Photographic, video and installation works will complete his exhibition Retinal Shift, which investigates the practice and mechanics of looking, in relation to the history of Grahamstown, the history of photographic devices, and Subotzky’s own history as an artist.

The trend set by Subotzky of breaking away from conventional spaces and inter-linking exhibitions with each other, and with site specific performances, is one of the most exciting aspects of this year’s programme. Making Way curated by Ruth Simbao forges new pathways physically, socially and conceptually. The exhibition includes installation, photography, print, painting, video, animated film, and performances by Randolph Hartzenberg, Doung Anwar Jahangeer, Athi-Patra Ruga and Gerald Machona, to create conceptual pathways between three venues: the Alumni Gallery, the Provost and Fort Selwyn. Maureen de Jager’s Maria’s Story engages with a particular period in South Africa’s history, comprising two-dimensional works on steel, sculpture, video and an artist’s book, the mixed-media exhibition traces a story that spans four generations.

In Venus at Home, curated by Les Cohn, artist Usha Seejarim uses everyday materials to engage with issues of identity. Cedric Nunn’s Call and Response, curated by Jacob Lebeko and presented by Seippel Galleries features his photographs from the late 1970s to the present day, presenting a view of a previously unknown African world. Clare Menck’s exhibition of her work from 1990 - 2010, A Hidden Life Exposed, is very much a documentation of her own personal life; and My Freedom, My Expression presented by the Eastern Cape Department of Sports, Recreation, Arts & Culture visually captures 100 years of struggle through paintings and photographs. Re-Imagine Concrete is presented by PPC and celebrates the past 21 years of PPC’s commitment to support artists who work with concrete as a medium.

Festival audiences will be able to immerse themselves in an exciting and adventurous array of Performance Art presented on theatre stages, in museums, galleries and unusual public spaces (taxi ranks, libraries, and car parks). The innovative and cutting edge group of performance artists are headlined by Steven Cohen who is no stranger to the European festival circuit but will make his first appearance on the National Arts Festival stage together with Nomsa Dlamini, his 90-year-old co-performer in The Cradle of Humankind.

Brett Bailey’s Third World Bunfight company has maintained its position at the forefront of South African performance throughout its 16-year history, and has a strong international presence. This year he will be exploring the theme of human zoos where, between the mid 19th Century to the Second World War, people from the non-Western world were exhibited, in his production Exhibit A.

Presented as part of the French / South Africa Season, the Cien Non Nova Theatre Company will make its South African debut with two productions: Vortex and Afternoon of a Foehn. Both are highly innovative pieces of work which utilise an artificial wind chamber to delicately and magically manipulate plastic dancers.

Discharge by 2011 Standard Bank Encore Award winner Gavin Krastin will transform audiences into refugees who are among the very last survivors of a horrific, nameless global catastrophe.

Well-known for his provocative work poised between visual art and contemporary performance, Athi-Patra Ruga will create a new site-specific work at the Festival that will engage with the Provost—a jail based on a panopticon design—and the camera obscura at the Observatory Museum.

Doung Anwar Jahangeer, a Mauritian-born architect/artist/performer living in Durban, will lead his audience on a CityWalk that grapples with the site of Grahamstown—a city with a complex history of colonialism and violence—that is currently the subject of reflection as the city ponders on the 200 years since its founding. Three Days is an installation and performance in which Randolph Hartzenberg will explore the unease that results from humankind’s misdirected acts; and Gerald Machona’s From China, With Love, will explore China's rise as an industrial superpower, and its complex history of trade and new economic ties with African states.

Free performances will be available everyday during the 11-day Festival in the Public Art programme. Presented as part of the French / South Africa Season and inspired by the 30’s French ‘Nounouche’ children’s comic books, Toni Morkel, Nadine Hutton and Fred Koenig present Nounouche – The Sideshow which will stop at a variety of contrasting places catching the public by surprise and inviting them in to come in and play. St Philip’s Church in Fingo Village is the site for the story of Princess Emma – Ukazazi, a site specific performance about a woman’s search for identity , the ambiguities of colonialism, and the painful process of dealing with change.

Using song, dance and interactive storytelling, Lunchbox Theatre will weave a bit of magic to conserve the natural environment in The Tree Show. Audiences will be mesmerised by the intensity and panache with which The China Fujian Art Troupe of dancers, acrobats and musicians play Chinese traditional instruments and come together to create breath-taking spectacles. Some 25 cartoon characters will end the Festival with frivolity, fun and spectacle in the closing street parade.

The Standard Bank Young Artist for Jazz 2012, Afrika Mkhize, represents the exciting new face of South African jazz. Steeped in South Africa’s musical heritage he displays a fresh, international perspective that places it in a new light. He is a pianist with serious jazz chops who has the versatility to play music from across the spectrum, from African grooves to hip-hop to straight-ahead jazz, and in any company. For his first performance, showcasing his own compositions, he has chosen a band of young Turks from across the country and adds a special guest, flautist Eddie Parker, a significant voice in British Jazz and well-known to South African connoisseurs for his flute solo on “Angola”. His second gig brings together a vibrant group of young musicians from Johannesburg to pay tribute to the compositions of Bheki Mseleku and other influential African composers.

Other highlights on the programme for the Standard Bank Jazz Festival include a once-off performance by Mango Groove; and performances by Ernie Smith, McCoy Mrubata, Morris Goldberg and Andy Narell. The Guy Butler Theatre will resonate with the amazing vocal talent of Sibongile Khumalo in her reflection on a 20-year musical career titled Reflect.Celebrate.Live using choral voices, a jazz band and a string quartet under the creative direction of James Ngcobo.

The Standard Bank National Youth Jazz Festival celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2012 with a suitably powerful line-up of musicians and teachers, brought here not only to perform for the audiences of the National Arts Festival, but also to inspire the 350 young South African jazz players gathered in Grahamstown – our national jazz future. We celebrate two decades of jazz development with a blow-out performance of some of those who have been teaching and performing at the NYJF, putting together some of Europe’s leading performers with young South African talent.

The National Arts Festival is sponsored by Standard Bank, The Eastern Cape Government, The National Arts Council, The National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund, City Press and M Net.

Bookings for this year’s “11 Days of Amaz!ng” open in May. At today’s media launch CEO Tony Lankester reminded those present that the average ticket price of R60 was thanks to the support of the festival sponsors. Otherwise tickets – particularly on the Main Festival – would be in the region of R8,000 each. A sobering thought, indeed.

Tickets available through Computicket. Booking kits from selected Standard Bank Branches, selected Exclusive Books and Computicket branches from May. For more information on the programme, accommodation and travel options visit www.nationalartsfestival.co.za. Also join the National Arts Festival group on Facebook for all the latest news, or follow us on Twitter.