Fiona Gordon: Fans parks and stadia around the city were not the only places where vuvuzelas were blowing in celebration on Youth Day.

Even the auditorium of the Artscape Theatre shared in some celebratory noise making, but this was for heroes of a different sort.

The Western Cape Education Department’s Arts Focus Schools put together a celebration of dance performance to showcase the talents of the dance learners from the Arts Focus Schools across the Western Cape.

The performers may be school-going, but this is no ‘school show’. The dance and production was of a consistently high standard, tastefully put together. The show was slick and these learners are definitely getting a true taste of the performance lifestyle in the magnificent facilities at Artscape and through their work with luminaries in the field for whom they have obviously grown to have enormous respect.

Jenny van Papendorp, Deputy Chief Education Specialist for Dance Studies in the Western Cape, is the woman who makes it all happen. ‘My Country, South Africa’, which played for three performances in the Artscape Theatre this week, is directed by the expert hand of Alfred Hinkel and features pieces with a ‘proudly South African’ thematic link.

Pieces are choreographed by Jazzart ‘Artists in Residence’ who work in the schools as part of a skills-development programme. It is plainly obvious that these artists are an inspiration to the lives they touch and that they have earned enormous respect and become multi-faceted role models for the learners; as are their school teachers, who bring the evening to an inspirational and immensely positive close with a dance which they themselves perform.

Our country has been obviously and beautifully united in the shared spirit of a common interest and goal. In the same way that sport can cross language and cultural barriers, the arts too can be a phenomenal medium for skills development of many kinds in the process towards the self-actualisation of our youth which is so important. The value of experience is immeasurable, but evident in the body of work presented and in the overwhelmingly heartfelt grateful thanks given to their mentors.

And that, surely, is what it’s all about.

The schools that took part were:
South Peninsula High School
Belhar High School
Wynberg High School
Eerste Rivier Senior Secondary School
Schoonspruit Secondary School
Cedar Secondary School
Chris Hani Secondary School
Alexander Sinton Secondary School
Worcester Secondary School
La Rosa Spanish Dance Theatre Trainees

Fiona Gordon
fiona@artslink.co.za

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