The Gordon Institute for Performing and Creative Arts (GIPCA) is celebrating the culmination of a valuable artistic year with the Beautiful Project, to be held at UCT’s Hiddingh Campus and the Cape Town City Hall on 9 and 10 December.
This unique two-day event calls into question the definitions of “beauty” and “ugliness”, with some specific reference to the African continent, through music, film, theatre, culinary experiences and conversations.
Leading cultural commentator and critic Sarah Nutall, editor of the prize-winning book Beautiful/Ugly: African and Diaspora Aesthetics, will give the keynote address from which the event takes its thematic inspiration. Nuttall is recognised locally and internationally as a prominent voice in the on-going debates on cultural theory, particularly for her fresh perspective on the contemporary South African context. Here, she takes a closer look at exoticism in the context of women and race, particularly through the work of Harlem Renaissance performer Josephine Baker, and Johannesburg-based artist Mary Sibande.
Creative explorations of the notion of “aesthetic” will take place in various forms over the two days. On Friday, the emphasis is on the feminine, while on Saturday the focus is drawn to issues of masculine identity.
Dancer-choreographer Nelisiwe Xaba will perform They Look At Me And That’s All They Think. Fresh from London’s Dance Umbrella, it probes the ideas of beauty and the gaze, using the story of Saartjie Baartman as allegory. The piece is also conceptualised as a parable of Xaba’s own artistic journey from Soweto to the Eurocentric world of contemporary art.
The theatre work of Nicola Hanekom takes on a different approach to the notion of beauty and women’s bodies. With Hol, a work directed by Fred Abrahamse that is performed almost entirely on a treadmill, Hanekom investigates the pressure and consequences of notions of beauty and excellence. Hol is a project of the Artscape New Writing Programme and Spring Drama Season, 2011.
Rounding up the Friday evening programme, acclaimed musician Neo Muyanga will present new improvisations, together with acoustic arrangements of material off his newest record dipalo. The album was released in October 2011 as a supplement to the cultural journal, the Chimurenga Chronic. Produced using counting and proportion games as inspiration for the music, the album is titled using the Sesotho term for ‘mathematics’. Muyanga will perform on vocals, piano and guitar.
On Saturday afternoon three films explore versions of beauty, mainly through the masculine. The Adonis Factor, from the director of The Butch Factor and producer of various E!Online’s True Hollywood Story, looks into stories of the “buff” and the “unbuffed”, illustrating the roots, stress, addiction and consequences of body obsession. Glitterboys and Ganglands is Lauren Beukes’ peek behind the drag curtain at Miss Gay Western Cape. The Importance of Being Elegant by George Amponsah and Cosima Spender looks into one of the most unusual clubs in the world, the Congolese Le Sape (Society of Ambience and People of Elegance/Societe Ambiance urs et Persons Elegants) whose members, the Sapeurs, are fiercely devoted to expensive designer clothes and have elevated fashion to the status of a religion.
On Saturday evening, the grand finale of the Beautiful Project, The Beautiful Feast, an eight-course ‘processional dinner’ takes place at Cape Town’s magnificent City Hall, prepared by theatre director and chef Peter Hayes, who predicts that “… it will be the kind of night you dream about ”. This unusual experience promises a night when food, art, dance and theatre interweave and reflect each other’s peculiarities. The evening includes collaborations with James Webb, the UCT choir, Julia Raynham, Fiona du Plooy and Gaetan Schmid. References to Capote’s (in)famous ‘Black and White Ball’ not unfounded, it is suggested that guests dress in a manner befitting the occasion. Count on being led to a room for the main courses with an expert on architecture talking about the ‘beautiful building’, or for dessert being led into one of the rooms blindfolded and fed some dreamy sensation while a choir sings softly into one’s ear …
The Beautiful Project takes place at UCT’s Hiddingh Campus and the Cape Town City Hall, 9 – 10 December 2011. For the full programme, visit www.gipca.uct.ac.za or contact the GIPCA office on 021 480 7156 / fin-gipca@uct.ac.za. Tickets for Friday 9 December are R40 and available through the GIPCA office. The film screenings on Saturday 10 December are free of charge. Tickets for the Beautiful Feast on 10 December are R80 and available through Computicket.
Author: Fiona Gordon
Website: http://www.gipca.uct.ac.za
