August 11, 2003
By Tammy O'Reilly
ACCLAIMED Finish choreographer and dancer Jyrki Karttunen will link up with three of South Africa's major dance talents to perform in the New Dance Festival to be held at the Wits Theatre later this month.
Karttunen's multi-media presentation, entitled Keiju (Fairy), will be just one of the dance presentations on the festival programme, from Friday 15 August to Saturday 23 August. He joins local award-winning dancers Gregory Vuyani Maqoma and Nkululeko Ntombela on the festival bill.
"This fusion of dance with multi-media is exceptional," says event coordinator Georgina Thomson. "At one point it looks as though there are four people on stage when it's actually the image created with the use of videos."
The event, organised by Arts Unlimited, promises to be an exciting development for contemporary dance in the country. "There are already more and more artists using multi-media in South Africa. It's going to be huge," says Thomson.
Keiju tells of a character torn between the worlds of reality and fantasy, according to Thomson. "Keiju is an ambiguous character, who has been catapulted into a timeless no man's land between the work of flowers and everyday reality without being able to hold on to either."
Karttunen, who has performed in many major contemporary works, created Keiju for the 2002 Kuopio Dance Festival in Finland.
The festival also showcases a double bill - Double Tot - of two new works by local artists Gregory Vuyani Maqoma and Nkululeko Ntombela.
Maqoma, founder of the Vuyani Dance Theatre Project and winner of last year's Standard Bank young artist of the year award, has choreographed a piece called Ketima, while Ntombela has created a piece called One Drop.
A collaborative effort between South African Moeketsi Koena and Madagascar-based choreographer Gabriella Saranouffi, Blame Me Blind, brings the issue of HIV/AIDS to life through the combination of visual images with dance.
Soweto-born Koena is the artistic director of the Izalo Dance Theatre based in Johannesburg and provides a platform for dancers to express themselves on social issues that are pertinent to them.
Tickets for the festival are available from Computicket at R65.00.
For more information contact Georgina Thomson on (011) 4824140 or log on to www.artslink.co.za/arts.
