Day 4: Shoulder's Broad, Head Up High, Walk Tall

    

        I love the decor of the fast food places around here. Had some KFC and also went to this cute lil cafe. For dinner we went to a restaurant called spurs. the decor was amazing and they also did happy birthday songs in Zulu. I have video footage :-)

There's lots of art here, I love it =D

       

8 minuets

I went out last night and got my first experience of the social scene in Grahamstown. First thing I noticed is that they looooove house music. I went to this spot called Equilibrium (EQ) which has an all black crowd, complete with sketchy and creepy guys as well. The music was really good and I had so so much fun dancing, they even played Wiz Kid (Nigerian music). The students I've becoming really cool with were making sure creepy guys couldn't dance on me, lol it was quite entertaining.

So for the shows, we saw three today: Desert crossings- a dance, Abnormal Loads- a play and 8 minuets, also a play. I absolutely loved 8 minuets, it is hands down the best performance I've seen so far (hence the title, it was one of the phrases in the play). Abnormal Loads was really good too, it's received lots of awesome reviews and the writer has received some award of some sort for it. Desert crossings was also superb. Its a modern dance piece and wow it was a full house. The groups is actually known internationally so it was really cool to get this exposure. All in all, 5 stars for the performances today.


Desert Crossing

Day 3: White prostitutes and classical music

Finally moved in!!!!! Stayed up last night having a convo with some students here. So we're staying at Rhodes University out in Grahamstown and so far the people have been reaaaally nice. The area is like a university city, almost like Penn in a way because its the university and all these shops surrounding it. Unfortunately that's all they have. There's nothing else cause its right in the middle of nowhere...BUMMER. It's really nice though, the scenery is beautiful.

Later:

We went to see a dance performance: The Anatomy of Weather. It was a contemporary/ modern dance piece, my FAV type of dance. It was really interesting I must admit and one thing I love about it is its abstractness. It gave room for discussions because the dance and the story being told could be interpreted in different ways. To sum it up, it's basically a metaphor for the different stages of relationships, or seasons of relationships- the flirting and happy beginnings that goes on in Spring, to the heartbreaks and loneliness in Winter.

The second show we saw was classical music by Ben Schoeman. It was a piano recital by a white south african who according to my professor is recognized internationally. Honestly my first thought was, this was not what I came to South Africa for. I have nothing against classical music, but to me, I don't see anything African about classical music. It screams European to me, and rightly so. The guy played pieces by well known European composers and although he played a piece by a South African composer he had to read the sheet music for it, while for the others he played from memory. That was interesting in itself. What does that say about classical music as it relates to South Africa? European classical music is clearly engraved in the mind and has been adapted more as a culture than classical music by South African composers.

As I walked into the theater for The last pro of yeoville, I was struck by the amazing scenery and props on stage. They had sketches of (cross sections) of female body parts, bright colors- reds and oranges, it was all so pleasing to the eye. The play was about a white prostitute who moves to an all black neighborhood to continue her business, she's getting too old for work which is what influences her relocation to this area. The storyline is interesting because the time period was during apartheid era, so this was introducing the idea that in prostitution, black and white were equal- color does not matter. Hence a white woman doing prostitution in a white neighborhood was simply business.

Pictures of the set: