Swan Lake will never be the same for me again and I mean that in a good way!!! It is to my mind one of the dullest ballets there is. But this!!! Is awesome. There is a wonderful comic skit at the beginning explaining the story that really tickled me. Dada's use of the bodies she was working with brought the swans so much more to life that the old style ballet version ever did. The tutu's also ceased to be just costumes and were transformed into lively, expressive tailfeathers. In amongst all this she has weaved in issues around gender and sexuality in a very clever way giving the audience something to think about too... Dada Masilo is my new ...

I tend to forget what physical theatre is all about. I go see these shows that have people wind-milling their arms and jumping over other peoples’ backs and repeatedly falling down and getting up and none of it makes any sense. At some point I start wondering if I ‘just don’t get it’. Then Athena Mazarakis comes along with Elev(i)ate2 and reminds me that if I ‘just don’t get it’ it’s because they didn’t give it to me. Athena not only restored my belief in the relevance of physical theatre, she also restored my belief in myself. She is a joy to watch. She is concise, she is clear, she hands you her heart and trusts you not to break it. And if ...

By Dion van Niekerk This is what I like to see on stage – humility, honesty and an acute awareness of one’s craft and skill. I and others from Grahamstown remember Lucy Hind as a student and young performer way back when. She was a talented dancer with excellent technical skill. We were proud to stand on the shores and wave her on as she sailed off to find her place in the world. In this show, Extra-ordinary, she returns to town to report back on the journey she has taken. It has clearly been a journey of bittersweet self-discovery. Lucy has had the joy of meeting her one-time hero, and had the disappointment of discovering her hero to be flawed. But beyond that ...

The black and white theme runs through the entire production of PJ Sabbagha’s Zebra. The title, the use of barred lighting, the costumes, even the floor on which they dance is striped in black and white. Of course, in a South African context, this is heavily loaded and I tried hard, but it was difficult to see the dance without looking at it in terms of racial dynamics. It wasn’t made any easier by the fact that the opening scene is a black guy trying to greet a white guy, but being ignored. His friendly overtures soon become more aggressive and the dance begins. Although the dance moved into obscurer territory and (in the words of the programme - I won't pretend ...

The unreserved standing ovation from the packed Victoria Theatre was like watching a rolling mass action of spontaneous joy. And Mâ Ravan’ deserved every single handclap.   It is a wonderful, wonderful theatrical achievement, an exquisite pleasure to watch.   The cast of four dancers who hail from the Indian Ocean islands of Mauritius, Réunion and Madagascar, enact a homage and ritual to the ancestors who were wrested from their families and homelands, and sold as slaves.   The dancers are breathtakingly superb, with bodies that had all the young women in the row behind me making appreciative exclamations, until eventually Andrew Buckland – who was sitting next to me and was equally spellbound – politely asked them to shut up. more_link_text Related posts:Carmen: Simply superb! It’s a ...

Inner Piece is not only physical theatre, it is physical theatre which is both conceptual and complex - a Chinese bangle to twist your mind.   Director Juanita Finestone, together with writers Leonard Praeg and Dion van Niekerk, are a very, very clever trio. Far cleverer than I could dream of being. Which is what makes this "piece" so good. But it also means it could be too clever by half. But half of this performance is better than most wholes you might see this week. more_link_text Related posts:It’s a man’s world This is why you watch physical theatre Extraordinary Extra-ordinary

Body of Evidence hurt. It made me angry, made me want to leave. But as the lights came up after the last waves of James Webb’s surreal amplified sounds of bodily organs receded, and the manic, incoherent ranting of the performers subsided, I realised that in the face of this production I was merely a mouse herded through an intricate maze of passages – akin to the skin, bone, muscle and sinew projected throughout the performance – into a dead end where all I could do was applaud in order to secure my freedom. more_link_text Related posts:You wanna know what to see? Carmen: Simply superb! Alice goes Afro-gothic

I could get a thesaurus out and string a long list of glowing adjectives together to describe Dada Masilo’s interpretation of Bizet's Carmen, but the description that immediately springs to mind is: simply superb! The way Masilo moves is breathtaking, and that’s not to take away from the rest of the dancers, who all come to within a hair’s breadth of her mastery of the body, creating a work of dance that, for over an hour, never lets up in its capacity to absorb the audience. more_link_text Related posts:Faster, faster, faster! U jus’ goddu, goddess… Sweet Jesus It’s a man’s world