The coolness of 76 End St
SEE ISICATHAMIYA: A CAPELLA WITH CHOREOGRAPHY
Each week Marie-Lais looks out for the unusual, the unique, the downright quirky or just something or someone we might have had no idea about, even though we live here. We like to travel our own cities and their surrounds, curious to feel them out. This week she’s in August in April.
This was simply 76 End Street when no one really thought of it as cool. Today I’m hearing the word incessantly. Part of what’s drawn me to August House’s Open Day is an isicathamiya performance by Phuphuma Love Minus. It’s like a capella but with fine choreography and drama.
Artists I knew had space more than studios here, about eight years ago. Some of it was used for pottery, some for fabric painting and much of it for sleeping. I believe Gibson Kente was in charge but I didn’t ever meet him here.
Seven of the isicathamiya group wear sleek black suits, one pure white, all with super-shiny shoes and accordion-stripy ties. They start up on the 2nd floor with a swoon of echoing musical voices. I first saw this world-famous group taking part in a Robyn Orlin ballet that featured “swankers”.
They weave their narrative and progress between studio spaces and from one floor to the next. We swarm in pursuit.
I pass an artist friend on the stairs, saying: “I like the way you work, with a glass of wine and notebook.” I’ve been juggling pen, book and the glass of Pandora’s Box that inexplicably came from a bottle, for more than an hour, realising I’m drinking booze on an empty Sunday tummy.
The final part of the performance resonates throughout the 4th floor, beginning in a huge studio containing a dais on which could be some installation of a free-standing bath and a washbasin complete with towel against a flimsy wall – where the men find room to dance and perform before they wend away again for a last piece at the end of the floor.
August House’s Open Days are a thrill, close to an overload of sensory excitement, without even including the 55 studios of art over five floors. It’s also the vibrancy of the people who attend, gorgeously whacky or wholly individual.
Open Days happen at least three times a year.
Bursting out, we find End Street milling with slow metal and an overflow of enthusiastic creative huddles. Stretched out in a dazzle of light is a fadedly, gloriously worn Mark VI Lincoln O TINE T, as the remaining letters claim.
August House may be cool but out here it’s wild.