watch: Mjaivo Jaiva takes over the streets of Joburg
Hundreds of dancers took to the streets for International Dance Day celebration. Picture: Screenshot/Facebook
Hundreds of dancers flooded the streets of Johannesburg this Friday, 16 May, for Mjaivo Jaiva, a celebration of International Dance Day.
The Johannesburg Inner City Partnership (JICP), in collaboration with Moving Into Dance (MID) and the Maharishi Invincibility Institute (MII), hosted the event starting at the Magistrate's Court in Main Street, Johannesburg.
Although International Dance Day is officially marked on 29 April, the celebration was moved to line up with South Africa's public holidays, allowing for greater participation and public engagement.
ALSO READ: WATCH: ULTRA South Africa celebrates 10 years of dance music
Mjaivo Jaiva for International Dance Day
More than 1 000 dancers, choreographed by the renowned MID team, turned the pavements into lively stages filled with joy, music and shared creativity.
JICP CEO David van Niekerk said collaborations like these are crucial for transforming the city from the inside out.
'This is more than a dance event – it's a living, breathing example of what happens when culture, creative expression and community power intersect. This is Jozi showing the world what it's made of.'
MID, a Newtown-based pioneer of Afro fusion and edudance since 1978, has trained hundreds of participants over the past weeks in a choreographed routine that speaks to identity, movement and inclusion.
'This is dance for everyone. Whether you know the choreography or just want to move your body, we invite you to join in – follow the rhythm, feel the vibe, or simply soak up the spirit of Mjaivo Jaiva,' said Nadia Virasamy, CEO of MID.
MII, a non-profit educational hub in the inner city since 2007, brought its own cohort of students to join the performance.
NOW READ: Not just 'Lazy, rich housewives'! Louise Volschenk claps back at Afrikaans critics on The Mommy Club
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Maverick
5 hours ago
- Daily Maverick
The Barber of Seville is an operatic funny business
For Cape Town Opera's latest production, leaning into physical comedy has proven liberating. It's that narcotic moment of creative bliss, that point at which all the elements of a production magically coalesce, producing something far greater than the sum of its parts. Getting there, though, seldom comes without side-effects. For theatre director Sylvaine Strike it's been three weeks of voluminous ear worms. She'd experienced a similar phenomenon while working on the musical Spring Awakening, but Strike says that directing her first opera has produced in her head an after-hours aftermath of unrelenting music and top-volume voices unlike anything she's encountered before. 'It's been relentless,' she says. 'I tried driving home in silence – because that's what I need after a full day of rehearsals. But it didn't stop in the car. It didn't stop in the shower. It did not stop when I climbed into bed. I had severe insomnia from it. I heard the music and singing constantly.' Not that listening to it first-hand, in the rehearsal room, has in any way been unpleasant. Far from it: 'It's glorious to be in the presence of those voices,' Strike says. It's when it's stuck in your head that it's unforgiving. The opera is The Barber of Seville, Italian composer Gioachino Rossini's comic masterpiece, and the ear worms are as much down to the addictive beauty and hypnotic power of the music Strike has been hearing all day, every day for three weeks, as it is a consequence of her obsessive dedication to the work. It's been a mighty task. Aside from shaping the opera she has been consumed by the challenge of fashioning the singers from two casts into formidable physical comedians. Part of the encouragement was to shift the focus outwards. 'I asked the singers to make each moment about the other person in the scene,' says Strike. 'Whether it's the rich and handsome count you're falling in love with or the young woman you want but can't have because you're an old fart, I said make it about that person… Once they took the licence to not focus on themselves, they started to play.' The other encouragement was to not take themselves too seriously. To have fun and embrace the comedy. Once this freedom had been unlocked, a momentous transformation happened. I witnessed the results of the singers leaning into this newfound playfulness during their final day in the rehearsal room, a week before opening at the Theatre on the Bay on 5 August. Rehearsing that afternoon was the so-called Red Cast: the dashingly handsome Innocent Masuku (the London-based South African tenor who made a name for himself by reaching the finals of Britain's Got Talent last year) in the role of Count Almaviva; local superstar soprano Brittany Smith as an utterly enchanting Rosina; ebullient baritone Thando Zwane as Figaro, the titular barber who is in fact a hustler who'll do anything for money; and a hilariously self-aware Conroy Scott as the aforementioned old fart, Dr Bartolo, who schemes of marrying the much, much younger Rosina. Each of them was sublime – as was the rest of the cast of colourful characters, and the all-male chorus, who at one point spontaneously began dancing, one of the many natural expressions by the performers in response to the music that Strike decided to keep in the show, 'because it's their truth in that moment'. It was the Cape Town Opera company like never before: having the time of their lives, not only singing their hearts out, but expressing the opera's hilarity with their entire bodies. It was enthralling to say the least, everyone consumed by the magic of the music, the madcap comedy fully embodied. Watching them play, having fun as they sang and leaned into the ridiculousness of the comedy, I completely forgot that I don't understand Italian. The story came alive, crisp and clear and compelling. 'I just told them to own it,' says Strike. 'Own the joy! Own the hilarity! For God's sake, it's a farce!' Own it they do. While the story's way more convoluted than your average opera and can cause confusion because of its strange twists and turns and Almaviva's various disguises, Strike has made it so visually vivid that even a Rossini virgin will follow the action without knowing a word of Italian. 'I was obsessive about sculpting every moment in order to make the meaning clear,' she says. Strike, who trained at the Lecoq School in Paris and has practised physical theatre for decades, draws on a rich tradition of embodied comedy that goes back to Commedia dell'arte and draws on a range of movement techniques, even tai chi. 'It's a lot to ask of them,' Strike says. 'Comedy is terribly, terribly hard. And they're singing at the same time, so there's the technique required to deliver the vocals while performing the comedy.' Her approach is to give the performers agency. 'I'm not a director who tells you what to do,' she says. Instead, it's been up to each singer to find the physicality of their character. Strike says the process has been incredibly liberating, giving the singers new tools with which to connect to their character's truth. 'It's not cerebral in any way,' she says. 'Just take the thinking away and sing with the entire body.' Apart from giving the singers licence to play, Strike has also added a meta layer to the performance by bringing accompanying pianist Jan Hugo, who is also the show's musical director, into the opera. His role? Rossini himself, composing in real time. 'We're not going to pretend that there isn't a piano accompanying them, because I think that's disrespectful to the pianist,' Strike says. 'And I love the idea that Rossini is there with us, creating the opera as it unfolds.' It is not only respectful, but has created an opportunity for comic interaction between Rossini and the singers who are performing his opera. It's especially fun in those moments when the performers get a chance to express their exasperation at the extreme demands Rossini placed on the singers. And it's true, Rossini's schtick was writing extremely demanding songs. It's a bel canto opera, meaning that it's very expressive and literally packed with 'beautiful singing', with a lot of trilling up and down the scales, arias that build and build at pace as though they exist to showcase the extreme potential of the human voice. It's music designed to show off the agility, speed and prowess of the singers who are required to perform some hardcore vocal gymnastics. Some of the songs feel like a comedic, galloping race to a finish line that refuses to appear. Never mind the absolute loveliness of the melodies. The opera's opening night in Rome in 1816 was a disaster, although not because of the material. It's believed that a rival composer who had created another opera based on the same play had hired hecklers to boo the premiere performance. When Rossini stepped out to conduct the orchestra, his outfit apparently attracted laughter, and then not only did a black cat at some point pad across a stage full of superstitious opera singers, but one of them fell on his face and broke his nose. The show continued but there was blood everywhere. Despite the unmitigated fiasco of opening night, it's become perhaps the most-produced and best-loved comic operas yet made, and its music, undoubtedly well ahead of its time, has influenced and infiltrated popular culture in myriad ways (from Bugs Bunny's Rabbit of Seville to an episode of The Simpsons, several of the songs are widely recognisable). Rossini's genius is irrefutable, and he wrote operas like a machine, composed two a year for 19 consecutive years and retired by the age of 40. He was just 24 when he dashed off The Barber of Seville – in under three weeks, according to most musicologists. 'It's just ridiculous,' Strike says of the pressure Rossini must have felt to meet his commission deadline in time for the singers to learn their parts and pull the show together. The composer was known in his day as Señor Crescendo, attributable to the manner in which his music would repeatedly build and then come down. 'It must have been like pop music to audiences when they first heard it,' Strike says. 'It's witchy music. It's wrong. The cadences are out. It's pushing the boundaries. Utterly revolutionary for its time.' Watching the rehearsal, witnessing the hilarity and properly comprehending the music for the first time, what struck me was how 'mathematical' Rossini's compositions are. In his madcap imagination, he must have calculated the comedy so precisely in order to make it work as an effect of the music which so cleverly and clearly conveys the mounting madness of the farcical plot. 'It is mathematical,' Strike says. 'He wrote comedic moments into the music. It's like Beckett, so timing-based. You sort of hear Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, that chase-scene music of silent-era movies… He was inventing a kind of music for comedy that would eventually become definitive.' Strike believes the music fits the 'complicated puzzle' that is at the heart of the comedy. 'It's complex and intricate and it's the nature of farce, which involves confusion and disguises and the mistaken identities and the pursuit of something.' And, apart from a comedic sensibility that was avant-garde for the time, Rossini seemed to also have a taste for parody. There are instances in The Barber of Seville where he appears to laugh at the institution of opera itself to some extent, poking fun at the form while simultaneously expanding its possibilities, revelling in the potential to play and experiment and push the boundaries. 'There are these moments when Rossini simply decided there was going to be 'more', and then some more again,' Strike says. 'And so some of the songs are florid and embellished and they go on and on, really testing the singers. 'That's why in this production we have comedic moments in which we see the singer's frustration because an aria just never ends. It's a dig at the reverential way people saw opera – and still do today. Rossini was evidently having a laugh while milking it in the most extraordinary, genius way, because the compositions are so fine and beautiful. And because he could. As though he was saying, 'Screw you all, it's not actually all that serious. We can have a laugh at the opera.'' And Rossini is laughing to this day. No doubt rolling in his grave as those ear worms persist 200 years after conjuring them into existence. DM
Eyewitness News
a day ago
- Eyewitness News
Prince Harry cleared of 'bullying' in African charity row
LONDON - The UK's charity watchdog Wednesday cleared Britain's Prince Harry of accusations of bullying in a row with an African charity he founded, but deplored that the bitter internal dispute was played out in public. The charity Sentebale was at the centre of an explosive boardroom dispute in late March and April when its chairperson, Sophie Chandauka, publicly accused Harry, the youngest son of the UK's King Charles III, of "bullying". Days earlier, Harry and co-founder Prince Seeiso of Lesotho had announced they were resigning from the charity they established in 2006, after the trustees quit when Chandauka refused their demand to step down. Harry, also known as the Duke of Sussex, launched the charity in honour of his mother, Princess Diana, to help young people with HIV and AIDS in Lesotho and later Botswana. After its months-long inquiry, the UK-based Charity Commission "found no evidence of widespread or systemic bullying or harassment, including misogyny or misogynoir at the charity," it said in its conclusions published Wednesday. But it "criticised all parties to the dispute for allowing it to play out publicly" saying the "damaging internal dispute" then "severely impacted the charity's reputation". It added there was "a lack of clarity in delegations" and added this led to "mismanagement in the administration of the charity". It has issued the charity with a plan to "address governance weaknesses". Harry said in an April statement that the events had "been heartbreaking to witness, especially when such blatant lies hurt those who have invested decades in this shared goal". Chandauka had accused Harry of trying to force her out through "bullying (and) harassment" in an interview with Sky News. In one example, Chandauka, who was appointed to the voluntary post in 2023, criticised Harry for his decision to bring a Netflix camera crew to the charity's polo fundraiser last year, as well as an unplanned appearance by his wife Meghan at the event. The accusations were a fresh blow for the prince, who kept up only a handful of his private patronages including with Sentebale after a dramatic split with the British royal family in 2020, leaving the UK to live in North America with his wife and children. "Moving forward I urge all parties not to lose sight of those who rely on the charity's services," said the commission's chief executive David Holdsworth, adding improvements should now be made. Harry chose the name Sentebale as a tribute to Diana, who died in a Paris car crash in 1997 when the prince was just 12. It means "forget me not" in the Sesotho language and is also used to say goodbye.
IOL News
2 days ago
- IOL News
ACDC Dance Intersect 2025: a celebration of global dance in Cape Town
Anderson Carvalho Dance & Choreography (ACDC) is a Netherlands-based Non-Profit Contemporary Dance Foundation founded by acclaimed Brazilian-Dutch choreographer Anderson Carvalho. Image: Anna Lenartowska Cape Town is poised to resonate with the vibrant energy of international dance as the ACDC Dance Intersect 2025 takes centre stage from 2 to 4 October at the prestigious Artscape Theatre. This remarkable event is not only a celebration of dance but it embodies a rich tapestry of cross-cultural collaboration, showcasing both classical and contemporary ballet performances that promise to leave an indelible mark on audiences. At the heart of ACDC Dance Intersect 2025 lies a spirit of artistic exchange. This year's festival will feature the esteemed Greek National Opera Ballet making its South African debut, alongside renowned choreographers and dance companies from the Netherlands, Brazil, and various African nations. Produced by South Africa's own Elvis Sibeko, the event is an ambitious initiative led by internationally acclaimed choreographer Anderson Carvalho, the founder of Anderson Carvalho Dance and Choreography (ACDC). Its goal is to unite audiences and artists through the universal language of dance. 'Dance Intersect is not just a performance - it's a meeting point for cultures, ideas, and bodies in motion,' Carvalho expresses. Infusing his Brazilian heritage with classical and contemporary forms, he aims to initiate new dialogues through movement, encouraging an exchange of stories and techniques that broaden artistic horizons. 'We are here to spark new conversations through movement; to show what's possible when we listen to each other through art,' he adds. Cape Town, a city imbued with a rich cultural history and dynamic creative energy, serves as the ideal backdrop for this celebration. Audiences can anticipate a captivating array of performances, including neoclassical pieces, Afro-contemporary fusions, and avant-garde ballet, all delving into themes of identity, transformation, and unity. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Next Stay Close ✕ Anderson Carvalho is an internationally acclaimed choreographer, dancer, and creative director whose dynamic career spans Europe, South America, Asia, and Africa. Originally from Brazil and now based in the Netherlands, Anderson has collaborated with leading dance institutions, including the Greek National Opera Ballet, DOX Utrecht, and Dansmakers Amsterdam. Image: Marko de Beer Elvis Sibeko, the producer known for his innovative blend of traditional African storytelling with contemporary performance, remarks: 'This is a moment of pride for South African dance. We're not only sharing our stories but expanding our artistic vocabulary through collaborations with world-class performers. It's a new chapter for cultural exchange on the continent.' Among the programme highlights are:
