Neolektra leave their audience spellbound
THE “Band of Immortals” which prefers to be known as Neolektra took audiences on the journey of a lifetime at their first National Arts Festival performance this week.
Neolektra blends strings, percussion and synth sounds taking their audience on an epic journey.
They opened with composer and violinist Naomi Tagg’s composition, which she compiled with Vitali Zavondskyy – a Russian born, Canada-based musician.
“I’ve never met him, and we’ve written two pieces together,” Tagg said after the show. “He just gets me, and it’s so cool working with him because we’ve never met – except online.”
Neolektra presented epic-themed titles at their National Arts Festival debut performance, which were, in order: the film ), (From and ending with which is from the video game called was an epic sound fusion which exploded into flowing into another dimension of reality – listening to the skies colliding as fed into a perfect rendition of Desplat’s Wong
This futuristic band of “immortals” may very well have come to haunt mortals with an impossible-to-forget sound – the sort which is remembered intrinsically.
Neolektra invokes a nostalgic feeling from a future yet to be seen, something this world remembers vaguely off the shores of the memory banks.
The is one of Tagg’s own compositions which achieved optimum effect in transporting the audience. This epic mythical quest of a sound is what makes epic films epic. Tagg also composed the tear-jerker
which is a soothing sound with perfect pitch.
“The title is a starting point,” Tagg said of the group’s music. “You’re given the title, the track is and it’s for the listener to create their own story.
“In you can see the different soldiers marching, you see the sadness on the battlefield, the loss and the destruction and the total devastation. It’s for people to take it wherever they really want to take it because the sky is the limit, your imagination is limitless,” she said. DADA Masilo’s Giselle was everything that makes theatre during its run at the National Arts Festival.
The internationally acclaimed, award-winning choreographer took audiences’ breath away with an enchanting and contemporary production, leading a most auspicious cast through her awe-inspiring adaptation.
Giselle is a romantic ballet in two acts, first performed in France in June 1841, showing Masilo’s remarkable timing.
Timing is one of the most immaculately done features in this version of Giselle, which ran from June 29 to July 1.
The traditional ballet is about a peasant girl named Giselle, who dies from a broken heart after she discovers that her lover is actually a married man.
In Masilo’s version of events, Mbali (meaning “flower”), a poor black girl, falls hopelessly in love with a white Caucasian prince, who is married to an African queen, who commands power with her sturdy poise and powerful facial expressions.
Mbali dies from a broken heart when she learns this, and the audience sees Masilo defy the odds of nature with her flexibility, speed and agility and – once more – timing, which she keeps expertly by using the technique of “shouting” – which directors use to keep count.
This exceptionally talented director elicited laughter from well-timed expressions from the cast, who wove a lyrical path of physical brilliance through every audience member’s heart. The magic behind Giselle lay in its African humour: catchphrases which trigger nostalgic chuckles before a leap, a twirl and a “Ha!” as the cast move together in fluid unison.
Masilo breaks conventions, staging two scenes in this play where she’s stripped: the first time by her mother, to shame her for loving an “other”; and the second time when she discovers she had been taken for a fool, and dies from a broken heart – laying bare and broken on the floor in the Rhodes Theatre.
In the second act, Mbali’s African ancestors resurrect her, and she and the African ancestors avenge her death, haunting the prince to his own demise. Rich in metaphors, meaning and substance – Dada Masilo’s Giselle was easily one of the best productions on show at this year’s festival.