The Chance Muse: Infecting the City - Edgy Dangerous and Contagious....

Infecting the City is a celebration of public art, in all it's glory and many manifestations.

Taking place throughout Cape Town's Central City, it is the only festival of it's kind on the continent - an we are just 10 minutes from all the action!

The 2012 programme has been curated by a really cool guy called Jay Pather - above - who we chatted to at various performances - and is presented by the Africa Centre and the University of Cape Town's Gordon - thank you Donny! - Institute for Performing and Creative Arts

A public arts festival committed to making art freely available to everyone. The Festival hosts a range of site-specific art, artistic interventions and performance art in the central part of the City

Or as the ITC blog blogs: "Infecting the City is presented by the Africa Centre, a non-for-profit organisation that creates a platform for exploring contemporary Pan-African artistic practice as a tool for social change. Infecting the City is an integral part of the city, challenging audiences to notice hidden spaces and perspectives of Cape Town and providing an arts and cultural voice in Africa, for Africans."

The Festival works with Cape Town's artistic and cultural community to present public art which celebrates the artistic traditions and contemporary practices of the diverse communities within South Africa and to explore Cape Town's "Afropolitan" reality. Each year the Festival takes on a social issue or theme which the participating artists respond to.

This amazing dance group led by the stunning Dada Masilo performed Death and the Maidens at an outdoor venue in the ampitheatre of the SA Museums or Iziko as it is known

It was a truly shocking piece asking questions such as what drives women to madness, suicide and even murder? In this astonishing and moving performance, Standard Bank Young Artist Award Winner Dada Masilo scrutinised the complex histories and motivations of tragic heroines from a female perspective.

With a company of women performers, including members of the Tshwane Dance Theatre, Masilo based her work on Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman’s celebrated play "Death and the Maiden"

The setting was remarkable - early evening on the steps at the top of the Company Gardens


"Taking as her starting point the poignant music of Franz Schubert, Masilo create a fresh vocabulary of movement that fuses existing dance techniques to explore female anguish, desolation, oppression, marginalisation and, even, retaliation. "


Masilo’s “maidens” are not victims, and death is not necessarily masculine - though that is the guise he appears in most often

In Death and the Maidens, Masilo engages with myths and stereotypes - particularly striking in the depiction of the long red tresses of this femme fatale and in the contect of AIDS in Africa


Costumes were minimalist - skimpy velvet leotards over brigh coloured bras - the models' own

With a matching collection of impossibly high sexy shoes

Killer heels bringing new meaning to the term stiletto - originally a sharp knife

This dark and edgy piece was performed by: Dada Masilo, with Kristin Wilson, Liyabuya Gongo, Laura Cameron, Ipeleng Merafe, Bafi kile Sedibe and Nicholas Aphane

The audience was both horrified and enthralled

As the mood altered from fear to humour and back again

This nifty young photographer was everywhere

A group of young kids watching the performance in total silence

'Death' is finally killed in the end -


Which I guess makes the women take on the role of the Grim Reaper?

The strength and poise of these young women was remarkable as they challenged gender stereo-types, violence and male dominance still sadly prevalent in SA

Ending with some serious and thought-provoking nudity

No maidens in distress - pretty pink crowd pleaser and stripy Bag Lady applaud the dancers

Then we were led through the Company Gardens on a magical mystery tour....

By some fabulously costumed young men such as the all lit-up Bottle Boy who sported nothing more than a pair of y-fronts and a train of plastic bottles filled with fairy lights

And some handsome dudes in suits and shades with ironically 'whited-up' faces

And this adorable 18th century courtesan in pink satin bodice

The Bottle Man again in pensive mode

Ushering us into the Rose Garden

Where in the twilight shadow of Lion's Head we were treated to a fine performance of

The Rake’s Progress by UCT OPERA. Excerpts from Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, inspired
by Matthew Wild’s 2011 production, re-imagined as a promenade event at sites across the CBD

A game of chance -with musical direction by Kamal Khan, this tale of urban moral corruption finds fresh resonances for Stravinsky’s neoclassical score, as his witty take on 18th century London collides with contemporary Cape Town.


Opulent, overblown, outlandishly costumed libretto swelled alongside the rose blooms of the Company Gardens

A lone aria resonated along the full-length of Parliament Avenue


The Rake’s Progress with a Cape twist

That naughty Rake again - An encounter with William Hogarth’s paintings in 1947
inspired Stravinsky to commission the libretto for his first English-language opera. Collaborators W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman concocted a brilliant variation on Hogarth’s moral narrative: after mysteriously inheriting a fortune, Tom Rakewell leaves his sweetheart Anne Trulove, and begins a hard-partying “progress” through the brothels and mansions of London. This costs him his fortune, his true love and ultimately his sanity - ho hum what's new?