Countdown to the Virtual National Arts Festival
The Virtual National Arts Festival opens on Thursday 25 June with a diverse and adventurous programme bringing the Festival into the homes of audiences for the first time ever.
“Work that started as ideas, turned into discussions and are now full pieces is being uploaded to the Festival website for audiences to experience in just a few days’ time,” said VNAF Artistic Director Ruceraseethal. “Our team is nothing short of phenomenal, to bring to life something which was, just a few chaotic weeks ago, only a vision. We now have an online festival reflecting artists from diverse backgrounds and disciplines.”
The programme will take place on the Festival website www.nationalartsfestival.co.za and will consist of a daily Curated Programme of shows, workshops and events; and a special Virtual Fringe section with multiple performances to choose from and links to shows happening outside the Festival’s secure environment.
Passes cost from R80 a day with a special price of R600 for an all-access pass for the entire 11 days. Virtual Fringe events will be individually ticketed and there will be a free-to-browse Virtual Gallery as well as a Virtual Village Green where Festival-goers can browse crafts and handmade wares. The Standard Bank Jazz Festival remains an integral part of the Festival experience in the online iteration too.
“The Virtual National Arts Festival won’t replace the live Festival experience and we will return to our home in Makhanda as soon as we are safely able to,” said
CEO Monica Newton. “But this year of unexpected challenges has also brought us an extraordinary opportunity to experiment with new forms…we hope that bringing the Festival to the convenience of people’s screens will help lift our spirits during these times and present the artistic works that inspire, challenge and reveal new perspectives.”
There are around 250 shows currently – and growing.
Collaborations in Performance
Performance artist, Oupasibeko has collaborated with filmmaker Nicola Pilkington in The Rebirth Of Iqhawe, exploring the potential to hybridise Sibeko’sbutoh-inspired performance practice into the film form. Scored by Geoffrey Diver.
Shortlisted for the CASA Award for Womanidentified Playwrights 2018, A Howl In
Makhanda is reshot for the VNAF, bringing a more intimate lens to the stage for this very topical play. In Qondiswa James’s semiautobiographical work, two black and two white South African teenagers at an elite allgirls boarding school break the rules and find the disciplinary board deals with each of them differently. The play catalogues the struggle and resistance of girlhood, and makes visible the normalisation of criminalising of black bodies.
Shmerah Passhier offers a Virtual Reality short film The Eye Is Blind That Cannot See described as an African Science Fiction and homage to Credo Mutwa (1921-2020), with Albert Ibokwekhoza taking the lead. Inspired by a mythical African-cyborg being of Credo Mutwa, the viewer is teleported into the centre of the pupil of a cyclops’ eye forming braided connections to African womencyborgs north, south, east and west of the 360 degree VR camera.
The Music Plays On
In Ponte Maputo Durban, pianist Sibusiso Mash Mashiloane from Durban and multiinstrumentalist Matchumezango from Maputo have reinterpreted each other’s works. The music pulls worlds once parted by colonialism together in a celebration of sound.
Cape Town based Atiyyah Khan and Grant
Jurius present Future Nostalgia which emphasises listening and education through sound, Xolilemadinda opens the Makhanda based Blk Power Station’s doors online and Nyege Nyege Festival in Jinja, Uganda takes us on a tour through music subcultures on the continent.
Liso the Musician brings her individual flair to a musical style she has coined Ancestral Jazz. She has joined forces with music video director and cinematographer Motion Billy to create Zaf ’ingane, a theatrical, story and spiritual performance. Award winning stage and screen actor Tshamanosebe, will make a cameo appearance.
The much lauded Wits Trio - Zantahofmeyr on the violin; Susan Mouton on cello; and Malcolm Nay on piano – will be presenting some of Beethoven’s chamber music in Beethoven 250 Years Later. Jill Richards and Waldo Alexander will also mark the 250th year of Beethoven’s birth with Beethoven 250.
The Texture Of Silence explores the interface between composed and improvised music and visual art. It brings together various indigenous southern African musical instruments, jazz language, graphic notation for music and the visual explorations of artist Mzwandile Buthelezi. With Cara Stacey and Keenan Ahrends.
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