some of my hats

My hats are getting on my nerves. Not the hats themselves as much as the hassle of choosing what to wear based on which hat will go with the outfit, whether one can go through to the night in that hat or it is exclusively daytime and anyway, in most of them can see I am bald/balding (still - still a fair amount of stubble but not for long.....)

Am contemplating dropping them altogether..... dunno.....

The truth, however, is that my biggest hassle right now is that it is day three from my second chemo treatment and I still feel nauseous as hell. I wish it would pass already. Want to feel better. Want to go to dance umbrella. Already missed Nimrod Freed's productions and know it's not the end of the world but would like to see Boyzie Cekwana's show tomorrow night and attend the Gala night on Friday. Let's see.....



ROBYN SASSEN'S REVIEW OF NIMROD FREED'S SHOW AT THE 2009 FNB DANCE UMBRELLA: ©Artslink.co.za


My View by Robyn Sassen - Triple Bill (Freed & Pesa) - 03/03/2009 - Artslink.co.za News

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My View: Triple Bill (Freed & Pesa)

Provocative grouping of works with Sello Pesa and Nimrod Freed, leaves you simultaneously amazed, unmoved and blown away.

Triple Bill, featuring “On Guard No Guard” choreographed by Nimrod Freed/Tami Dance Company (Israel), with music by Balkan Beat Box, Hendle, Pink Floyd and the soundtrack of “Mood for Love”, lighting design by Revital Teva and Freed and costumes by Itzik Gabai and Freed. Performed by Shani Britner, Elinor Chertok, Merav Dagan, Itzik Gabai and Yoav Grinberg.

“Same But Not Different” choreographed by Sello Pesa/Ntsoana Contemporary Dance Theatre with music by Yann Costa, Andrea Boccelli and Sarah Brightman. Performed by Humphrey Maleka, Brian Mtembu, Bonolo Ratshidi and Fanny Skura.

“Window” choreographed by Nimrod Freed/Tami Dance Company, with music by Phillip Glass, Pink Floyd, Beth Gibbons, Young Guards and Timo Mass and lighting design by Martin Adin and Freed. Performed by Shani Britner, Elinor Chertok, Merav Dagan, Itzik Gabai, Yoav Grinberg and Gil Kerr. Wits Theatre, Braamfontein. Until March 3.

A provocative if uneven triple bill featured on the first Monday of Dance Umbrella, offering an aesthetically untrammelled set of values, but an abstraction of social discourse that dangerously courts with the utterly obscure, while it offers a fresh and bracing take on chastity and sensuality.

“On Guard, No Guard” bills itself as questioning the obvious, but the cassocked dancers evocative of thirteenth century Franciscan tradition are startlingly far from obvious and as the work unfolds, this element of aesthetic and conceptual and real surprise evolves. The first word that came to my mind was “penetenziagate”, a word used by a monk with a sinister heretic past in Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose. Indeed, heretic thought, deed and self-flagellation is not amiss in this overtly sexual work which deals with the chastity of religious convention with a dynamism, purity of form and an acuteness of collaborative movement that we have not seen on our dance stages for a long time. Here we have a body of dancers so attuned with one another that there is no preference that one can indulge in watching: each shines in his or her sense of self and sense of conviction. No one slips out of focus. In “Dying, Dying, Dead”, Dada Masilo dares to go bare, cocking a snoot at conventions surrounding topless black women and the sexuality of dancers, but this toplessness speaks primarily of vulnerability; here we have Shani Britner engaging with her toplessness blatantly; covering her exposed breasts in response to the violent and hysterical reaction of cassocked dancer Itzik Gabai. It’s a tightly conceived, utterly mesmerizing and highly evolved piece of dance, which leaves you clamouring for more.

Bracketed by the two Israeli works, that by Sello Pesa is .....

The third item on the programme, Freed’s “Window” is a remarkable foray into the possibilities of unclichéd poetry with the body. Erotic toughness seems par for the course with Freed’s oeuvre, which smoothly blends physicality with lyricism, resulting in intimacy juxtaposed with rawness, correlating with oblique references to strife and war, with the use of music, from Pink Floyd, in particular. In one element to the piece, a German song is sung by Beth Gibbons. The context of the material in relation to Elinor Chertok’s circumnavigations around it in a red dress powerfully evokes between-the-wars Germany in its sense of emotional and sexual freneticism. It’s dance created on the delicate cusp of a world about to change identity; the abstract elements of this beautiful piece play into these ideas without literalness, but with fervour. “Window” simply takes your breath away.