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Eclectic new opera mixes Bach with djembe drumsFranoise Gallet, Sunday Independent July 1998
Preferring to "stay away from traditional opera" and do "something different", Ndodana has created Uhambo as a "synthesis of art forms". Basing his work on the narrative poem Pilgrimage to Dias Cross by Guy Butler, Uhambo is conducted by Ndodana with the Cape Town Opera Orchestra, three soloists, the Diocesan School for Girls choir, an imbhongi (praise singer), and the American dancer Germaul Barnes. "Musically, Uhambo is an eclectic work, paying respect to all composers, such as Bach and Hannibal Loaumbe, who have walked the road before me, but also drawing on my own African rhythms. "Stravinsky's neoclassical approach in Oedipus Rex has been an influence and I have borrowed liberally from the the township music of the eighties, obviously stylising it to fit in with the music creating a more subdued, genteel toyi-toyi. "What unifies the work is the core African accent' in the musical language, and the instruments are used in ways which recreate sounds that resemble a kora or uhadi or djembe. It tickles me that in the music all the different cultures exist together." It is in this spirit of ecleticism that the dance reflects the "synthesis of classical and ethnic elements". "I enjoy seeing a big, tall black man doing pirouettes," Ndodana said. Barnes, who choreographed the dance, uses a "kaleidoscope of movement", drawing on a variation of styles such as those of Louis Horton and Martha Graham, his "own self-expressive movement", and the "statics of ballet". "I am trying to bring in the classical and the African, rooted in the groundedness that I feel more confident with," Barnes said. Barnes designed his costume to convey a sense of the "mixing of many different things: European, Asian, African, earth, sky and water". According to Ndodana, Butler's poem is "a pilgrimage into our past, conjuring up our ancestors and their collective wisdom to make sense of a senseless epidemic of carnage and brutal totalitarianism ripping the country apart." However, Ndodana
believes that it is "condescending" for an artist to preach. "I don't like
preaching, I like making art," he says.
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