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Culture There are many cultural influences at work in Cape Town, which makes the city a particularly interesting one for the arts. However, much like the rest of South Africa, Cape Town is still trying to leap a cultural hurdle, as far as organised cultural events go. In the past, homegrown talent has been locally regarded as somehow inferior to international cultural imports – an attitude that still persists in some sections of the public. There is also the issue of an apartheid hangover and the resulting perceptions that cultural institutions are white-orientated and out of touch with the people at large. Yet another problem is purely logistical – the segregation laws of the past coupled with an inferior transport system have conspired to make cultural events quite literally inaccessible to large sections of the public. Nevertheless, time, several cultural projects and the natural buoyancy of cultural expression are slowly breaking down these barriers and Cape Town is coming into her own as a culturally rich and diverse city. Cape Town’s two biggest contributions to South African culture have probably been in the fine arts and in the unique Cape jazz style, epitomised by musicians like Abdullah Ibrahim, Basil ‘Manenberg’ Coetzee and Robbie Jansen. All major cultural events can be booked through Computicket (tel: (083) 915 8000; e-mail: info@computicket.com; website: www.computicket.com). Tickets for Artscape events are available through Artscape Dial-A-Seat (tel: (021) 421 7695). Listings information can be found in the Friday editions of the daily press – The Cape Argus and Cape Times. These are both subsidiaries of The Independent and listings can be found online (website: www.iol.co.za). The monthly publications, Cape Review and Citylife, are excellent sources of information and listings for cultural events in and around Cape Town. The Mail and Guardian (website: www.mg.co.za) has cultural listings for Cape Town. Other websites with listings include www.artthrob.co.za, www.ananzi.co.za and www.capetowntoday.co.za. A good online events guide is www.capetownevents.co.za. Music: The Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra (website: www.ctpo.org.za) performs regularly at the City Hall, Grand Parade (tel: (021) 465 2029), as well as various other venues – details are published in the local press. The city’s two major cultural centres are the Baxter Concert Hall, Main Road, Rondebosch (tel: (021) 685 7880 or 680 3989, for bookings; website: www.baxter.co.za), and the Artscape Theatre Centre, 1-10 DF Malan Street, Foreshore (tel: (021) 410 9800 or 421 7839 or 5470; fax: (021) 421 5448; e-mail: artscape@artscape.co.za; website: www.artscape.co.za). Both feature regular opera from the Cape Town Opera (website: www.capetownopera.co.za) and classical music, as well as jazz and popular music. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats was recently produced with great success at Artscape. Performances also takes place at the South African College of Music, Main Road, Rondebosch (tel: (021) 650 2640). Further afield, the Spier complex, Lynedoch Road, Stellenbosch (tel: (021) 809 1100; e-mail: info@spier.co.za; website: www.spier.co.za), is now well established as one of the Cape’s major performing arts and music centres, with an annual arts festival from November to March (tel: (021) 881 3190). Shows performed at this festival have gone on to achieve considerable international acclaim, such as The Mysteries, an African interpretation of the mystery plays. Theatre: Besides the Baxter, Artscape and Spier complexes (see Music above), which all host regular and varied theatrical productions, the Theatre on the Bay, Link Street, Camps Bay (tel: (021) 438 3301; website: www.theatreonthebay.co.za), is the city’s other major theatre. The Little & Arena Theatre is part of the University of Cape Town drama department, located at 37 Orange Street (tel: (021) 480 7129; website: www.uct.ac.za/depts/drama/location.htm), is another increasingly popular venue for theatrical performance. There are also frequent amateur and professional performances in the many community halls dotted throughout the city – the daily press provides details and updates. Dance: Cape Town’s premier contemporary dance company, Jazzart (tel: (021) 410 9848 or 9828; fax: (021) 419 1907; e-mail: dance@jazzart.co.za), stages regular performances at Artscape Theatre Centre, DF Malan Street, Foreshore (tel: (021) 421 5470; website: www.artscape.co.za), and other venues. Visiting national and international dance and ballet troupes frequently appear at the Baxter, Artscape and Spier complexes (see Music above). Film: Although Cape Town has a huge film and television industry, locally made feature films mainly come out of Johannesburg. The South African film industry, although packed with new talent, is yet to receive the necessary funding and attention it deserves to truly take off. Nevertheless, one of the city’s favourite pastimes is cinema. Every major shopping centre has a cinema complex showing mainstream movies, either run by Ster-Kinekor or Nu-Metro, with advance booking through Computicket (tel: (083) 915 8000; e-mail: info@computicket.com; website: www.computicket.com). Ster-Kinekor outlets are located in various shopping centres, including Blue Route, Tokai Road (tel: (021) 713 1280) and Cavendish Commercial, Cavendish Square, Dreyer Street, Claremont (tel: (021) 683 6328/9). Nu-Metro cinemas are located at N1 City, Louwtjie Rothman Street, Goodwood (tel: (021) 595 1820/1), and Victoria Wharf, V&A Waterfront (tel: (021) 419 9700/1). Arthouse and independent films are equally as well catered for, with Ster Kinekor’s Cinema Nouveau outlets located at Cavendish Nouveau, Cavendish Square, Dreyer Street, Claremont (tel: (021) 683 4063/4), and V&A Nouveau, Kings Warehouse, V&A Waterfront (tel: (021) 425 8222). The Labia Theatre, 68 Orange Street (tel: (021) 424 5927; website: www.labia.co.za), is the city’s oldest and most Bohemian arthouse movie theatre. Another popular arthouse spot is the Art Independent Armchair Theatre, 135 Lower Main Road, Observatory (tel: (021) 447 1514). Lovers of giant-screen movies are able to visit the IMAX Theatre, BMW Pavilion, V&A Waterfront (tel: (021) 419 7365; website: www.imax.co.za). Cultural events: There are many cultural events that take place throughout the city. Among the scores of food and wine festivals, flower shows and dogs shows, there is the annual summer Maynardville Shakespeare Season, which takes place at the Maynardville Open Air Theatre, Wynberg (tel: (021) 400 2507), from December through to March. One of the most popular annual cultural events of the season is Kirstenbosch Summer Sunset Concerts (tel: (021) 799 8783), held on the lawns of Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens amphitheatre at 1730 every Sunday, December-March. Crowds of over 5000 picnickers start gathering from early afternoon, to enjoy an eclectic evening of classical, ethnic, jazz and popular music. Often the musical style is irrelevant, as many turn up to enjoy the vibe, sunlight and spectacular setting. The September Cape Town One City Festival is a fairly new event (established in 1999) on Cape Town’s cultural calendar, celebrating the diversity of the city’s people through music, dance, drama, film and other cultural and religious events featuring local artists and personalities. The oldest and arguably the most quintessentially Capetonian cultural event is the Kaapse Klopse or ‘Coon Carnival’ – despite the controversial moniker and many attempts to re-label the event, the name sticks. This carnival originates from the days of slavery in Cape Town, when the Malay slaves paraded through the streets on the Tweede Nuwe Jaar (Second New Year). Nowadays, it is organised by the Cape Minstrel Association (tel: (021) 418 5614; website: www.espafrika.com) and is largely the mainstay of Cape Town’s ‘coloured’ community, those decended from the Malay slaves, who dress up in elaborate costumes and paint their faces to march in a noisy, jazzy, jubilant and colourful parade through the streets of Cape Town, past the Grand Parade to Green Point Stadium, where prizes are awarded for the best costumes. This is a particularly pertinent event, seeing as it stood the test not only of time but also of apartheid oppression. Literary Notes Ever since Sir Francis Drake describe the Cape Peninsula as ‘the most stately thing and the fairest cape in all the whole circumference of the earth’, Cape Town has featured strongly in international literature. Most often, the city has been used as a metaphor for the system of apartheid and as a symbol of white oppression in black Africa. However, since the release of Nelson Mandela and the end of apartheid, Cape Town has become a symbol of freedom and democracy, with many of the major political works on South Africa – by figures such as Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and Govan Mbeki – written in the city. The writer who has, perhaps more than any other, defined South African literature is J M Coetzee – twice winner of the Booker Prize for literature. His novels, which include Disgrace (1999), Foe (1986), Waiting for the Barbarians (1980), The Life and Times of Michael K (1983) and Dusklands (1974), go to the very heart of the South African psyche and delve deep into the political and social landscape of the country. Coetzee was born in Cape Town and is professor of English at the University of Cape Town. Another literary figure at the university is André Brink, three-time winner of South Africa’s premier literary prize, the CAN Award, twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize and winner of the 1980 Martin Luther King Prize and French Priz Medicis Etranger. Brink’s eight novels include Looking on Darkness (1974), Rumours of Rain (1978), A Dry White Season (1979) and An Act of Terror (1991). South Africa’s premier playwright, Athol Fugard, based his powerful two-man play, The Island (1973), on the political incarcerations on Robben Island. Lesser known internationally but the unofficial king of Cape Town musicals, David Kramer penned a magnificent memoir of Cape Town’s darkest moment when he captured not only the grief, hatred and confusion of the relocations but also the spirit and wonder of this tragic area in his musical, District Six (1987). Kramer has recently achieved acclaim for his musical, Karoo Kitaar Blues (2002), and has exported his work to London stages. Another lesser known Capetonian writer who has caught a remarkable and peceptive glimpse of the city is Menán du Plessis, in her novel, Longlive! (1989), about a group of students in a politically turbulent Cape Town during the 1980s. On a more factual level, in A Mouthful of Glass (1998), Dutch writer Henk van Woerden documents with clarity and remarkable sensitivity the events that took place in Cape Town, when Demitrios Tsafendas stabbed the then Prime Minister, Hendrik Verwoerd, in the chamber of the South African Parliament in 1966. |
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