Artist Profiles

Map of Africa

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Nigeria

Ama Ata Adioo, Playwright & Novelist

Ama Ata Aidoo (originally Christina Ama Aidoo) was born in Abeadzi Kyiakor, March 23, 1940 Gold Coast, now Ghana. Her father was a chief of Abeadzi Kyakor, a political individual. Because of her father's position, Aidoo grew up in a royal household with a clear sense of African traditions. She graduated from the University of Ghana in 1964. In the early 1960s Aidoo worked with Efua Sutherland, founder of the Ghana Drama Studio. While still studying, she started to publish poetry. Aidoo's work falls into various genres: fiction, drama, and poetry. Often her stories deal with the role of women in the process of change. "Isn't it clear that the African man alone isn't able to cope with out relationship with the West and the rest of the world," she has said.


From the beginning, Aidoo has based her plays more or less on earlier tradition. She gained first notice with the play The Dilemma of a Ghost (1965), which concerned the problem of conflict between traditional culture and Western education and values. In the story a young man from Ghana, Ato Yaweson, who was educated in the United States, returns home and brings with him seeds of conflict. The play premiered at Commonwealth Hall's Open-Air Theatre, University of Ghana, in March 1964. It received mixed reviews, but was successfully produced in Accra, Lagos, Ibadan, and elsewhere. Border Crossings, in association with the National Theatre of Ghana, will tour Dilemma of a Ghost in the UK in the autumn of 2007 (see Events & Seminars page for tour details).

Her second play Anowa (1970), based on the legend of a girl who defied her parents in choice of her husband, was produced in Britain in 1991, in the same year when her second novel CHANGES appeared. Changes won the 1993 Commonwealth Writers Prize for the Africa region.

The plays discuss the social problems of gender roles and capitalism imposed on an agrarian society. The Dilemma of a Ghost features a strong woman married to a weak man who becomes corrupted by his own greed. When he decides to own slaves, she loses her mind because her values and love have been corrupted beyond her capacity of acceptance. In the contemporary setting of Anowa, on the other hand, the strong female protagonist is an African American who marries into a Ghanaian family. Her pivotal argument with his society is her belief in her right to delay childbirth. A side issue, which would provide an element of hilarity onstage, is that she smokes and drinks. The real issue of the play, however, is the imbalance of the day-to-day marital relationship: caught between the strong wills of mother and wife, the husband doesn't know who he agrees with. He wants whatever is easiest, not being able to make his own moral choices.

For further information see the following weblinks:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/africabeyond/africanarts/17676.shtml

http://www.thecore.nus.edu.sg/post/africa/ghana/aidoo/aidoov.html

http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5012

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/aidoo.htm

Biyi Bandele, Playwright & Novelist,

Biyi Bandele was born in 1967 to Yoruba parents in Kafanchan, northern Nigeria. He spent the first eighteen years of his life in the northern region of the country, being mostly at home in the Hausa cultural tradition. Later on, he moved to Lagos, then studied drama at The Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, and finally left for London in 1990.

Biyi Bandele is one of the most prolific writers of Nigerian origin living and working in Great Britain today. Bandele's skills as a playwright are in great demand by theatres all over Britain, among others the Royal Court Theatre and The Royal Shakespeare Company. He was the Arts Council Resident Dramatist with Talawa Theatre Company at the Cochrane Theatre in London from 1993-94, a writer-in-residence at the Royal National Theatre Studio in 1995, and Royal Literary Fellow at the London College of Printing for 2001/02. He has also received a number of literary awards. With an unpublished play he won the International Students Playscript competition of 1989. His drama Two Horsemen was selected as the best new play at the London New Play Festival in 1994.

His plays are: Rain; Marching for Fausa (1993); Resurrections in the Season of the Longest Drought (1994); Two Horsemen (1994), selected as Best New Play at the 1994 London New Plays Festival; Death Catches the Hunter and Me and the Boys (published in one volume, 1995). Brixton Stories, his stage adaptation of his own novel The Street (1999), premiered in 2001, and was published in one volume with his play, Happy Birthday Mister Deka, which premiered in 1999.
In 1997 he adapted Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart for the stage, and in 1999 wrote a new adaptation of Aphra Benn's Oroonoko, produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company.

For further information, see the following weblinks:

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/politicaltheatre/story/0,,951822,00.html

http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5872

http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth56892222165d521178TgL308BB1E

Chuck Mike, Producer & Director & Artistic Director

Chuck Mike was born in Brooklyn New York and has lived in Nigeria since 1976. A practical disciple of Wole Soyinka and former MacArthur Foundation Fellow, he is a distinguished actor, producer, director and theatre activist of enormous energy. Chuck is producer of four festivals/seasons of theatre for Collective Artistes Festival of Theatre Arts Nigeria (CAFTAN). He is founding director of the performance Studio Workshops (Nigeria) and Collective Artistes (Nigeria and UK). His forte is 'devising’ Theatre for Development. Spaces of work range from villages across Southern, Western and Eastern Africa to The Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center (USA), West Yorkshire Playhouse, The Royal Court (UK), MUSON Centre, and The National (Nigeria). Some of his main stage credits include: The Gods Are Not to Blame, The Lion and the Jewel, A Raisin in the Sun, Fences, Home, The Crucible, Makbutu (after Macbeth), Tegonni (after Antigone) and Death and the Maiden. His most recent plays in the UK were The Lion and The Jewel (Barbican/UK Tour), It’s Just a Name by Don Kinch (Birmingham Rep), Trojan Women/Women of Owu adapted by Femi Osofisan, (UK Tour), Sense of Belonging devised by himself with the Performance Studio Workshop (Arcola), Things Fall Apart (World Tour) and Nigerian adaptation of Yerma (UK Tour) both adapted by Biyi Bandele. The latter went on to win the Barclays TMA theatre award for best supporting actor after a successful Edinburgh Festival run. Chuck also shares his off season time with teaching and has taught or conducted workshops at various institutions across the globe some of which include the universities of Ife and Ibadan (Nigeria), Leeds, Oxford and The Royal National Theatre Studio (UK), Smith College and New York University (USA) and the University of Toronto. Currently he holds an Associate Professorship at the Department of Theatre and Dance, university of Richmond, Virgina, USA.

For further information, see the following weblinks:

http://www.collectiveartistes.co.uk/index.html

Wole Soyinka, Dramatist, Novelist & Poet

Wole Soyinka was born on 13 July 1934 at Abeokuta, near Ibadan in western Nigeria. After preparatory university studies in 1954 at Government College in Ibadan , he continued at the University of Leeds, where later in 1973, he took his doctorate. During the six years spent in England , he was a dramaturgist at the Royal Court Theatre in London 1958-1959. In 1960, he was awarded a Rockefeller bursary and returned to Nigeria to study African drama. At the same time, he taught drama and literature at various universities in Ibadan, Lagos and Ife , where since 1975, he has been professor of comparative literature. In 1960, he founded the theatre group, "The 1960 Masks" and in 1964, the "Orisun Theatre Company", in which he has produced his own plays and taken part as an actor.
Soyinka was arrested in 1967 when he tried to act as mediator for a ceasefire between the Nigerian federal government and the Biafran rebels, who wanted to secede from Nigeria . He was not "anti-Biafran" enough, according to the Nigerian government, who proceeded to imprison him for two years for his efforts. He spent most of his time in solitary confinement, where he wrote his vitriolic memoir, The Man Died, in between the lines of books smuggled into the prison. After his release he entered a period of voluntary exile. He lectured at universities, and wrote, directed, and produced plays in Europe and West Africa . He also founded the culture and criticism magazine Transition in Ghana. He returned to Nigeria in 1975, but left again in 1983 when he learned there was "a price on his head." Since then Soyinka has been in and out of exile in accordance with the ever-changing political environment of Nigeria. When asked where home is, he replied, "in my head," and when asked what he misses about Nigeria , he said, "the smell . . . especially the smell of the bush when I go hunting."
In 1986, Soyinka won the Nobel Prize for Literature. He has published more than thirty works of drama, fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. His best known plays, written in English and performed mainly in West Africa and Europe, include A Dance of the Forests, The Bacchae of Euripides, The Swamp Dwellers, Kongi's Harvest, The Road, The Trials of Brother Jero, Death and the King's Horseman, and The Lion and the Jewel. His non-fiction books include The Burden of Memory, The Muse of Forgiveness, The Open Sore of a Continent, and the beautifully crafted memoir Ake: The Years of Childhood. Soyinka is currently the Woodruff Professor of the Arts at Emory University in Atlanta and a Fellow of the W.E.B. DuBois Institute at Harvard.

For further information, see the following weblinks:

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1986/soyinka-bio.html

http://www.thecore.nus.edu.sg/post/soyinka/soyinkaov.html

http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/Elberg/Soyinka/soyinka-con0.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2004/lecturer.shtml

Cape Verde

Cesaria Evora, Singer

A native of the island nation of Cape Verde, Césaria Évora is known as the country's foremost practitioner of the morna, which is strongly associated with the islands and combines West African percussion with Portuguese fados, Brazilian modhinas, and British sea shanties. Évora began singing morna at age 16 after meeting an attractive young guitarist. Her talent soon had her performing all over the islands, and in the late '60s two of her radio tapes were released as albums in the Netherlands and Portugal, respectively.

However, Évora never left her country, and gave up singing in the mid-'70s owing to lack of profit. In 1985, at the age of 45, she decided to return to music and traveled to Portugal to record two songs for an anthology of female Cape Verdean singers. This led to subsequent recording sessions in Paris, which resulted in four albums from 1988 to 1992. Her international fame grew, and she toured Europe, Africa, Brazil, and Canada, with stops in the United States to perform for Cape Verdean audiences. In the autumn of 1995, she mounted her first large-scale American tour; subsequent recordings include 1997's Cabo Verde and 1999's Mar Azul and Cafe Atlantico.

With Évora now a certified international star, the new millennium didn't see any loss of momentum for the singer and she continued to record and tour the globe. Her 2001 release, Sao Vicente, featured numerous collaborations, including appearances from Bonnie Raitt, Orquesta Aragón, and Brazilian superstar Caetano Veloso. Already a well-televised figure in Europe, her growing popularity in North America led to an appearance on The David Letterman Show; a DVD, Live in Paris; the reissue of her 1974 album Distino di Belita; and the 2004 Grammy for Best Contemporary World Music recording for Voz d'Amor. The same year she was recognized by French culture minister Jean-Jacques Aillagon as an Officer des Arts et des Lettres. After another extensive tour, in 2006 Évora released Rogamar, much of which was recorded in her hometown of Mindelo. ~ Steve Huey, All Music Guide

For further information, see the following weblinks:

http://www.cesaria-evora.com/

http://www.caboverde.com/evora/evora.htm

Zimbabwe

Tsitsi Dangarembga, Author, Playwright & Film Director

In 1959, Tsitsi Dangarembga was born on the African continent in what was formerly referred to as Rhodesia, now called Zimbabwe, in the town of Mutoko. Although born in Africa she spent her childhood, ages two through six, in Britain. She began her education in a British school but after returning to Rhodesia with her family, she concluded her early education, her A-levels, in a missionary school in the City of Mutare. Later, she went back to Britain to attend Cambridge University where she pursued a course of study in medicine. Dangarembga was not destined to stay in Britain; after becoming homesick and alienated she returned to her homeland of Rhodesia in 1980 just before it became Zimbabwe under black-majority rule.

Although she returned to Rhodesia she still continued her educational pursuits. She began a course of study at the University of Harare in psychology. During her studies, Dangarembga held a job at a marketing agency as a copywriter for two years and was a member of the drama group affiliated with the university. This is where her early writing was given an avenue for expression. She wrote many of the plays that were put into production at the university. In 1983 she directed and wrote a play entitled The Lost of the Soil. She then became an active member of a theatre group called Zambuko. This group was directed by Robert McLaren. While involved in this groups she participated in the production of two plays, Katshaa! and Mavambo.

While involved in theatre she also explored porse writing. In 1985, she published a short story in Sweden entitled The Letter and in 1987, she published a play in Harare entitled She No Longer Weeps. Her real success came at age twenty five with the publication of her novel Nervous Conditions. This novel was the first novel to be published in English by a black Zimbabwean woman. In 1989, this novel won her the African section of the Commonwealth Writers Prize. Prior to this award she had won a second prize in the Swedish aid-organization, SIDA, short story competition. After Nervous Conditions was published in Denmark, she made a trip there in 1991 to be part of the Images-of-Africa festival. Dangaremba continued her education in Berlin at the Deutsche Film und Fernseh Akademie where she studied film direction. She graduated from the German Film and Television Academy with distinction. While in school she made many film productions, including a documentary for German television. In 2000 she returned to Zimbabwe with her husband and children to work full time at her production company, Nyerai Films. Nyerai Films has produced several documentaries distributed by The Cinema Guild. Her feature film work includes credits on most of Zimbabwe 's features, including Neria, More Time, Flame and Everyone's Child which she wrote and directed, her most recent credit. It has been shown worldwide at various festivals including the Dublin Film Festival.

Dangarembga is the author of several plays, as well as of the internationally acclaimed novel Nervous Conditions, which she wrote at the age of 25. Nervous Conditions, her debut, was immediately recognized as a seminal piece of literature and was hailed by Doris Lessing as one of the most important novels of the twentieth century. At the time the American novelist, Alice Walker, wrote: "I'm delighted to recommend this remarkable novelist...One feels that her voice - cool, sardonic, wise - is not simply that of a contemporary African woman, but of an ancient one...A voice that says, with nary a genuflection in any direction, that if Africa is to survive, it must transform itself from the heath outward."

For further information, see the following weblinks:

http://english.emory.edu/Bahri/Dangar.html

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/tsitsi.htm

http://web.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/hum211/dangarembga.htm

http://www.thecore.nus.edu.sg/post/zimbabwe/td/dangarembgaov.html

South Africa

Lebo Mashile

Lebo Mashile is an award winning poet, performer, actress, presenter and producer. She sprang into notoriety as a spoken word artist in 2002, through her own blend of hip-hop inspired poetry.

Her lyrical and gutsy poems focus on the issues of gender, identity, love, spirituality, sexuality and the socio-political condition in South Africa.

By combining performance poetry with hip-hop, house and R&B, Lebo speaks with a sense of urgency, rawness and humour about life in the new South Africa.

www.lebomashile.com.

GREIG COETZEE

Since leaving teaching at the end of 1995, GREIG has been active as a playwright, director and performer.

He performed his first play, White Men with Weapons, at major theatres all over South Africa. This production also formed part of the Woza Africa: After Apartheid Festival in July 1997 at the Lincoln Center in New York. During 1998 the play was performed by invitation in Belgium, Holland, Australia and Singapore. GREIG was invited back to Belgium where he performed another of his works, The Blue Period of Milton van der Spuy, in October 1998. He has been commissioned to write five plays by European producers: a radio play for BBC Radio 4, two plays for B&R Productions in England, and two for The Internationale Nieuwe Scene, a Belgian theatre company.

In July 2000 he opened a solo show, Breasts – A Play about Men, at the Grahamstown Festival in South Africa. In August 2000 White Men with Weapons had it’s British premiere at the Edinburgh Festival earning GREIG two more awards – Best Actor on the Edinburgh Fringe and a Fringe First Award for the production. His first large-cast play, Seeing Red, premiered in May 2001 at the Playhouse in Durban before touring to other venues in South Africa.

Early 2002 GREIG toured theatres in Germany and Holland performing his solo work. He premiered a new play, Happy Natives, at the Edinburgh Festival, followed by a season in London’s Soho Theatre, and tours in England, Belgium and South Africa throughout 2003.

More information can be found on Greig's C.V.

Peter-Dirk Uys

Pieter-Dirk Uys born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1945, has been in the theatre since the mid-1960s. Closely associated with both the Space Theatre in Cape Town and Johannesburg Market Theatre during the 1970s and 1980s, he has written and performed 20 plays and over 30 revues and one-man shows throughout South Africa and abroad.

His plays ‘Paradise is closing down’, ‘Panorama’, ‘God’s Forgotten’, ‘Faces in the Wall’, and ‘Just like Home’ have been performed internationally, and his one-man shows ‘Adapt or Dye’, ‘One Man One Volt’, ‘You ANC Nothing Yet’, ‘Truth Omissions’, ‘Live from Boerassic Park’, ‘Dekaffirnated’, and ‘Foreign Aids’ have been presented in the United Kingdom, Denmark, Germany, Holland, USA, and Canada. His performance of ‘Foreign Aids’ at La Mama received the Obie Award in New York in 2004.

He has been seen on SATV since the late 1970s in a variety of programmes, including a special called ‘An Uys up my Sleeve’, ‘One Man One Volt’ which was to be screened prior to the 1994 Election but held back for ten months, ‘You ANC Nothing Yet’ in 1996 and ‘The Great Comedy Trek’ in 2004. The series featuring Nowell Fine in a saga from 1976 to 2004 - ‘Going Down Gorgeous’ screened towards the end of the last century. 'Foreign Aids' was recently screened on Aids Day 1 December.

More can be found on Peter-Dirk's website

Third World Bunfight

THIRD WORLD BUNFIGHT (TWB) is a non-profit South African performance company which has maintained its position at the cutting edge of performance throughout its 10 year history. The company is resident on the Spier Estate near Cape Town, and is directed by multi-award winning playwright, Brett Bailey.
TWB is committed to making provocative, uniquely African theatre works of high quality that challenge stereotypes of Africa. Working with a diverse range of African performers TWB tells the stories of Africa, uses and fuses the performance forms, music and design modes of Africa, and presents these works both locally and abroad.
TWB's award winning theatrical, musical and ritualistic productions have toured throughout South Africa (in English as well as isiXhosa versions), in other African countries, as well as extensively in Europe and in Australia. These productions include BIG DADA, iMUMBO JUMBO, IPI ZOMBI? and THE HOUSE OF THE HOLY AFRO.
During the past 10 years TWB has trained and worked with several hundred black performers – including children – in the Western and Eastern Cape Provinces, in Gauteng, as well as in Zimbabwe and Uganda. Specialists have been brought from Holland, Cote d'Ivoire, the USA and Zimbabwe to work with these performers. Development, training and employment of performing artists and gifted learners from South Africa's previously disadvantaged communities are central to the ethos of the company.

More information about Third World Bunfight can be found on their website .

Bongani Linda

Bongani is a South African man whose girlfriend was gang raped and who subsequently committed suicide. Bongani, in his anger, confronted one of the rapists.

"In that anger, I killed him. I was arrested."

Bongani was remanded in custody for about 24 months, during which time he started a theatre group to address men directly and help them understand that sexually assaulting women and children is not acceptable.

When the trial eventually took place, Bongani was acquitted.

In an interview Bongani said "Thank God I was acquitted, because [the] charges were dropped against me. [But] after that, I got very worried [about] what kind of a society is this because, in fact, it just did not end then. Rape became a popular crime in our townships, and, you know, still today it’s still like that. It’s sky-high. It’s crime number one.

"The reason I ended up taking the law into my own hands in the 80s was not because I wanted to, but it was because I was frustrated.

"I was weak because I took a very short route - a short route to revenge which is something that is unacceptable. You cannot rectify a wrong with another wrong.

"But rape is a man’s problem, more than anything. It’s a man’s problem, and I’m worried because it’s still fashionable."

Today, Bongani believes that there’s nothing as frustrating as not trusting the law itself. He uses theatre, and has trained as a counsellor, to help get the message across: that men need to do something to stop violence against women and children.

Theatre has played a very important role in popular education right from the days of apartheid, [when] protest theatre was used as a tool to inform international audiences [about] what was happening in the country. I was influenced so much by that era, by protest theatre, and I actually learnt from that time that theatre is the best medium to reach out, to inform, to educate, to train, to empower young people.

"You take their reality, you put it on stage, you make them feel part and parcel, you portray them on the stage and then they get entertained, they get hooked to the story. From there you speak to them, you address them in a workshop situation.

"We make them grow and realise that what they did was wrong. [The actors in my troupe] are in a family of ex-offenders that have learnt from their previous experience and they have actually grown to say what we did in the past was wrong. It takes an experienced criminal to educate a would-be criminal that crime does not pay."

More information can be found at hatchling.com.

Mpumelelo Paul Grootboom, writer and director

Mpumelelo Paul Grootboom (1975) was born in Meadowlands, South Africa. Although he initially registered at university, he soon realised that it wasn't for him, and so embarked on a career that straddled his passions for film and writing by working as a writer for television and theatre. A meeting with John Rogers of Bataleur Films in 1993 proved to have a tremendous impact on his career, and Rogers became Paul's confidant and mentor. He introduced Grootboom to Aubrey Sekhabi, with whom Grootboom has since written many plays. In addition to his writing, Grootboom also directs. His directorial credits include A Midsummer Night's Dream, Cards, King Lear and In This Life. Since being appointed development officer at the South African State Theatre in Pretoria in 2002, he has focused exclusively on writing, directing and producing, often with community groups. In 2005, Grootboom received the Naledi Standard Bank Young Artist Award for theatre, an accolade presented to emerging young South African artists in recognition of their unique talent and excellence in their chosen discipline. In the same year he was also awarded the Naledi Theatre Award for Theatre Directing for Relativity: Township Stories. In 2006, under an abbreviated title, Township Stories toured the UK to great critical acclaim, winning a Herald Angel Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and being nominated for a Manchester Evening News Award for Best Visiting Production. In May 2007, Telling Stories, written and directed by Grootboom, was performed at the KVS Theatre in Brussels as part of the prestigious Kunsten Festival des Arts 2007. Township Stories is due to travel to Australia on tour in early 2008.

For further information, see the following weblinks:

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/edinburgh2006/story/0,,1854717,00.html

http://www.artsmart.co.za/drama/archive/1244.html

http://www.chico.mweb.co.za/art/2006/2006sept/060901-show.html

John Kani, actor & playwright

John Kani is an actor, director, and playwright internationally recognised for his work in theatre and films. Theatre credits include: Nothing But The Truth (world tour); Sizwe Banzi is Dead (National Theatre/West End); The Island (National Theatre - Evening Standard Award nomination/West End/world tour); Waiting for Godot (Old Vic); “Master Harold” … and the Boys (National Theatre); My Children My Africa (National Theatre - Olivier Award); Playland (Donmar Warehouse).
Theatre credits for Johannesburg’s Market Theatre include: The Blood Knot, Driving Miss Daisy, The Native Who Caused All the Trouble, Othello, The Lion and the Lamb, Sizwe Banzi is Dead, The Island, Waiting for Godot, The Death of Bessie Smith, Playland, Duet for One, My Children My Africa (AA Life Vita Award), Hedda Gabler, Dance of Death, and the Shakespeare compilation Ladies and Gentlemen, Shakespeare!.
As well as acting in Sizwe Banzi is Dead and The Island, John also co-wrote the plays with Athol Fugard and Winston Ntshona. John won the 1974/75 Tony Award on Broadway for Best Actor for his performance in the productions. Directing credits include: Goree, Blues Africa Café, Kagoos and The Meeting (Market Theatre, Johannesburg). Film credits include: The Wild Geese, The Grass Is Singing, Marigolds in August, Victims of Apartheid, An African Dream, A Dry White Season, Sarafina, Saturday Night at the Palace (Taormina Golden Award at Milan International Festival), Kini and Adams, The Ghost and the Darkness, The Final Solution.
John is the recipient of numerous awards for his contribution to South African art and culture, as well as several Honorary Doctorates. Nothing But The Truth won Fleur Du Cap Awards for Best Actor, Best Director and Best New South African play in 2003.

For further information, please see the following weblinks:

http://www.info.gov.za/aboutgovt/orders/2005/kani.htm

http://www.ispa.org/ideas/kani.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/africabeyond/africanarts/19069.shtml

http://www.whoswhosa.co.za/Pages/profilefull.aspx?IndID=3081

Mark Fleishman and Magnet Theatre

Mark Fleishman (Director and Managing Trustee) is an Associate Professor and Head of the Drama Department at the University of Cape Town. He is an award winning director and has directed all of Magnet Theatre’s productions since THE SHOW’S NOT OVER ‘TIL THE FAT LADY SINGS. He also functions as a writer, not only of theatre texts but has published many academic articles, mainly on South African theatre.

Magnet Theatre was formed in 1987 to produce Jennie Reznek's first one-person performance, CHEAP FLIGHTS. It re-emerged in 1991 to produce THE SHOW'S NOT OVER 'TIL THE FAT LADY SINGS in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Grahamstown, Pietermaritzburg, Windhoek, London, Brighton, Manchester, Glastonbury, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Hong Kong and Stockholm. Although Magnet Theatre has only two continuous members: Jennie Reznek and Mark Fleishman - other performers join the company for different projects.

2007 production of Cargo is the seventh collaboration between Magnet Theatre and Jazzart Dance Theatre. It uses performance to re-imagine the archive of slavery at the Cape and to bring it to the attention of a wider audience, while linking the past to our present reality. Both companies are renowned for their powerful and poignant work, destroying clichés and social stereotypes through the language of physical movement and expression.

More information can be found on the Magnet website

Vincent Mantsoe, Choreographer / Dancer

Vincent Mantsoe hails from Soweto, South Africa. During his formative years he danced with youth clubs practising street dances and trying to imitate the dance moves seen in music videos. At the same time he woke everyday to the sound of the drum his mother played to greet the Ancestors. A descendant of a long line of Sangomas (traditional healers), Mantsoe participated in traditional rituals involving the use of song and dance. It was not until he began his training at Johannesburg's Moving Into Dance Company that Mantsoe was able to merge these two distinct dance forms into his own style that he describes as Afro-fusion. Mantsoe's work draws on traditional African dance forms with a contemporary approach from modern, ballet and Asian forms such as Tai Chi, Martial Art and traditional Balinese dance.
Mantsoe has performed at international venues and festivals such as: House of World Culture (Berlin, Germany); across Africa; Dance Umbrella (Johannesburg, South Africa); Dance Umbrella (London, UK); Harbourfront Center (Toronto, Canada); National Arts Center (Ottawa, Canada) The HK Cultural Centre (Hong Kong, China); and in the U.S. at the Kennedy Centre WD, Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, MN), the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (Newark, NJ), Bates Dance Festival (Portland, ME), and Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival (Lee, MA) Japan Kyoto, Kyoto Art Center and Art complex, African Tour and many more.

Mantsoe is the recipient of the 1995 Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year Award; First Prize at Dance Encounters of Contemporary African Dance in Luanda, Angola; the 1996 FNB Male Choreographer of the Year; and the Fifth and Sixth Recontres Choreographiques Internationales awards for Independent Choreographers in 1996 and 1998 Paris France. In 1999 he received the FNB VITA award for Choreographer of the Year and Most Outstanding Performance by a Male Dancer as well as the Prix de Peuple at the Festival International de Nouvelle Danse in Montreal Canada. In 2001, he won the FNB Vita Choreographer of the Year and Best Male dancer in the contemporary style. In 2007, he worked with British-based dance company ACE Dance & Music as a choreographer for their latest production, Skin.

For further information, see Vincent Mantsoe's website and the following weblinks:

http://www.multiartsprojects.com/artist_index.php?artistid=12§ionid=112

http://www.ballet-dance.com/200402/articles/interview-vincentmantsoesekwati20040100.html

http://www.acedanceandmusic.com/

Gregory Maqoma, Choreographer / Dancer

Maqoma received a scholarship to study at the Performing Arts Research and Training Studios in Brussels in 1999, under the direction of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. It was here that Maqoma created the Vuyani Dance Theatre, a project-based dance company intended to represent and combine the many cultures, backgrounds and tastes that enrich South Africa. He began his formal training with Moving into Dance, a Johannesburg-based dance school and company, in 1990. A year later he was accepted into the company as a dancer, where he created his first piece of choreography in 1994, earning him the FNB Vita Pick of the Fringe award. In 1998 he created Layers in Time, funded by the Young Choreographers Grant. The company's first work, Rhythm 1.2.3., premiered in Amsterdam in 2000 and earned Maqoma the FNB Vita Choreographer of the Year Award. In 2003 Maqoma was named Choreographer of the Year and listed in the star top 100 in Nigerian newspaper This Day.

South African choreographer and dancer Gregory Maqoma is one of the most talented choreographers to emerge from the new generation of South African artists. His most recent solo work accompanied by four exceptional South African musicians which was showcased in the UK at Sadler's Wells was more than a success. Maqoma has developed the live music with four musicians of South African origin who specialize in distinctive instrumental intonations using sitar, violin, cello and percussion. The evening Beautiful Me is a trilogy of works created by and with choreographers who inspire Maqoma, including Sadler's Wells Associate Artist Akram Khan, Faustin Linyekula and Vincent Sekwat Mantsoei. Khan, Linyekula and Mantsoei have each contributed their own choreographic material, movement, music and text towards the realization of Beautiful Me, born out of Maqoma's curiosity with their individual choreographic language, connection to tradition, and style. Beautiful Me is an extension of the material provided by the choreographers which Maqoma has studied and mastered to reflect his own choreographic landscape, while creating a true reflection of his chosen artists through his own body. Founder member and artistic director of Vuyani Dance Theatre, and winner of numerous international dance and choreography awards, Maqoma presented two pieces at Sadler's Wells Lilian Baylis Theatre in March last year: Beautiful, a duet that reunited Maqoma with former dance peer, Shanell Winlock, now of the Akram Khan Company, and Beautiful Me - Part Of, which at the time was an evolving work-in-progress and is now part of his new trilogy of work Beautiful Me.

Maqoma has been variously described as a ‘visionary', ‘the gentle enfant terrible of South African Dance' and ‘an original post-modern African Renaissance man'. He is fast gaining a major international reputation for his intriguing and appealing choreographic style.

For further information, see the following weblinks:

http://www.vuyani.co.za/

http://www.adad.org.uk/metadot/index.pl?iid=22809&isa=Category

Ivory Coast

AFRICA D’IVORI

Rosazul Concerts in Barcelona presents dance, percussion and vocal ensemble AFRIKA
D’IVORY. The company was created in 2000 includes dancers and percussionists
From the Côte d’Ivoire National Ballet, who are currently living in Barcelona.

The company reflects the cultural richness of the Ivory Coast in a performance that combines dance (initiation, seduction, war and spiritual dances), chants, extravagant costumes and audience participation in an energetic show, which transports the audience to a West African village.

Since their first performance in Barcelona in 2000, Africa d’Ivori has been presented in Benin, Burkina Faso, Portugal, Belgium, France, Italy and Martinique, as well as having toured extensively in Spain.

For further details, please contact:

Nicolas Bavoil
Manager d'artistes sur l'espace francophone
Rosazul Concerts
Tel ++ 34 93 224 01 17
Fax ++ 34 93 224 01 18
concerts@rosazul.com
www.rosazul.com

Compagnie TchéTché, contemporary dance

An all-female dance troupe from Africa's Côte d'Ivoire, Compagnie TchéTché was founded by Béatrice Kombé in 1997 to "show that woman is not the weaker gender." 10 years later, the company has emerged as a valiant symbol of female energy, passion, and strength. Its name meaning "eagle," TchéTché reconfigures notions of African womanhood through a signature style of dancing at the edge of physical danger, juxtaposed with arresting stillness.

For further information, see the Compagnie TcheTche website and the following weblinks:

http://www.multiartsprojects.com/artist_index.php?artistid=15§ionid=128

Guinea

N'Faly Kouyate

N'Faly Kouyate was born in Siguiri and grew up in Conakry, the capital of Guinea. While growing up N'Faly enjoyed the music of Harry Belafonte (who his father liked to listen to), and also Aretha Franklin's early gospel songs.
Between 1983 and 1996 N'Faly performed with several important troupes, including the University Troupe of Conakry.
In 1994 N'Faly moved to Belgium and worked with Jeunesses Musicale to educate children about the Mandingue culture. At this time he formed his ensemble Dunyakan (The Voice of the World) which fuses storytelling, jazz, dance and traditional West African music. True to the band's name and what it represents, the members come from different countries of the world. They made their first recording, simply entitled Dunyakan, in 1997. Generally N'Faly leads the band on kora and balafon and vocals while the other 6 musicians, one of whom is N'Faly's wife, Muriel, play djembes, percussion, guitars and double-bass. The newest member of the band, Mady, who plays guitar, is N'Faly's nephew. Dunyakan's performances are highly enjoyable with irresistable and inspiring polyphonies. Their 12-track CD, N'Na Kandje, was released in 2001 while a new one is scheduled for 2007. In 2004 they were on a North American tour and on stage at WOMAD Reading. Dunyakan's memorable appearances in 2006 were at the Bucharest Francophone summit, at the Yehudi Menuhin Foundation in Brussels and they performed for Princess Astrid of Belgium at the Centre Tropique d'Anvers. Catch latest news, photos and detailed biographies of Dunyakan members at their web site: Dunyakan
N'Faly teaches Mandingue history as well as kora, balafon, African polyphonies, dance, doundoun and djembe at his school, Cadence Mandingue.
Back in 1997 N'Faly was invited to join the fusion band Afro Celt Sound System that blends African and Irish sounds, now known as Afro Celts. With them N'Faly has performed at numerous international festivals such as Glastonbury, WOMAD, Montreaux and Montreal: no doubt there are many more in the pipeline! Afro Celts have toured all over the world and have recorded many albums on which N'Faly features, some of which have been nominated for international awards. In 2002 the band received the Listeners' Choice Award at the BBC Radio 3 World Music Awards.
In 2005-6 he performed several times with Urban Trad, including at an anti-racism event in Brussels and features on Urban Trad's single Diama Den. N'Faly and percussionist Renzo Spiteri from Malta performance together for the President of Malta and also at the Sori-WOMAD festival in South Korea in 2006.