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Culture

It is hard to pin down one cultural style or genre that typifies Cape Town. With its strong British colonial heritage, and equally strong Malay slave history, the city often seems to be struggling to find a cultural identity. Cut off from mainstream African influences by its geographical isolation, Cape Town nonetheless has a growing East and West African community who have brought their own influences to the city.

Perhaps Cape Town's two biggest contributions to South African culture have been in the fine arts, particularly painting and sculpture, and in the unique Cape jazz style, epitomised by musicians like Abdullah Ibrahim, Basil 'Manenberg' Coetzee and Robbie Jansen. All major events can be booked through Computicket (tel: (021) 430 8010).

Music:
The Cape Town Symphony Orchestra, and a new orchestra, as yet unnamed, perform regularly at the City Hall on the Grand Parade, and at other venues. Details in the daily press. The city's two major cultural centres, the Baxter Theatre in Main Road, Rosebank (tel: (021) 685 7880), and the Artscape Nico Theatre Centre (tel: (021) 421 7839) feature regular opera and classical shows, as well as jazz and popular music. Further afield, the Spier complex, set on a magnificently located wine farm on Lynedoch Road, outside Stellenbosch (tel: (021) 809 1100), is rapidly becoming one of the Cape's major performing arts and music centres.

Theatre:
Besides the Baxter, Artscape and Spier, the Theatre on the Bay, in Link Street, Camps Bay (tel: (021) 438 3301) is the city's other major theatre. There are frequent amateur and professional performances at one of the many community halls dotted throughout the city - the daily press, especially the Friday editions of the Cape Times and The Cape Argus, can provide details.

Dance:
The city's premier contemporary dance company, Jazzart (tel: (021) 410 9849), stages regular performances at major venues. Visiting national and international dance and ballet troupes frequently appear at the Baxter, Artscape and Spier.

Film:
Although Cape Town has a huge film and television industry, locally made feature films mainly come out of the industrial capital of Johannesburg. Every major shopping centre has a cinema complex showing mainstream movies, run either by Ster-Kinekor or Nu-Metro, with bookings through Computicket (tel: (021) 430 8010). For art and alternative films, Cinema Nouveau outlets at Cavendish Square in Claremont and at the V&A Waterfront, are the places to go. The Labia Theatre, in Orange Street (tel: (021) 424 5827; web site: www.labia.co.za) is Cape Town's oldest and most Bohemian art movie theatre. For lovers of giant screen movies, the IMAX Theatre in the BMW Pavilion at the V&A Waterfront (tel: (021) 419 7365; web site: www.imax.co.za) shows spectacular documentaries in the IMAX format.

Cultural events:
These are many and varied, but tend to be erratic, without a regular annual timetable. Scores of food and wine festivals, as well as flower shows, are held at various times throughout the Western Cape. The daily press carries full details. However, there are some constants. Every January, lovers of Shakespeare gather for an open-air season of plays, usually presented with a modern spin, in the wonderful setting of the Maynardville Open Air Theatre in Wynberg.

One of the most popular seasons of concerts are the Summer Sunset Concerts held on the open lawns of the Amphitheatre of Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens at 1700 every Sunday from December to March. Crowds of 5000 plus people start gathering from early afternoon, bringing blankets, picnic baskets, candles and wine for an eclectic programme of classical, ethnic, jazz and popular music.

The Cape Town One City Festival, held in September, celebrates the diversity of Cape Town's people through music, drama, dance, film and other cultural and religious events - all featuring local artists and personalities. Although only inaugurated in 1999, this festival has already entrenched itself as Cape Town's premier cultural event.

Literary Notes

Ever since Sir Francis Drake described the Cape Peninsula as 'the fairest cape in all the world', Cape Town has featured strongly in international literature. Most often, the city has been used as a metaphor for the system of apartheid, and as a symbol of white oppression in black Africa. But since the release of Nelson Mandela and the end of apartheid, the city has become a symbol of freedom and democracy, with many of the major political works on South Africa, by figures like Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Govan Mbeki, written in Cape Town.

But perhaps the writer who has, more than any other, defined South African literature, is J M Coetzee, twice winner of the Booker Prize for literature. His novels, which include Disgrace (1999), Foe (1986), Waiting for the Barbarians (1980), The Life and Times of Michael K (1983) and Dusklands (1974), go to the heart of the South African psyche, and delve deep into the political and social landscape of the country. He was born in Cape Town, and is professor of English at the University of Cape Town. Another professor of English at the university is AndrÉ Brink, three-time winner of South Africa's premier literary award, the CNA Award, twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize, winner of the 1980 Martin Luther King Prize and of the French Prix Medicis Etranger. His eight novels include Looking on Darkness (1973), Rumours of Rain (1978), A Dry White Season (1979) and An Act of Terror (1991).



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