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Afrika! Afrika!
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O2 Arena, Peninsula Square, SE10 0DX
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- Austrian multimedia artist André Heller joined forces with choreographer Georges Momboye to bring together dancers, musicians, acrobats and contortionists from across the African continent to create a circus experience of occasionally unnerving physicality.
Richly carpeted walkways join the performance tent to others housing an art gallery, craft shop and cafés and food areas stocked by African chefs. The vast sides of the lofty main tent act as screens on which to project kaleidoscopic designs, gigantic shadows of the performers and stock African images. Lighting is used to dramatic effect, particularly in the opening number, when a single dancer is depicted in shadow only through a giant, drum-like screen. The band, a crashingly amplified 17-strong combo, accompany the acts in kind, whether they are tumblers from Tanzania or pot-jugglers from Ghana. With the music never letting up, the sense of energy transfers from one performance to the next, from an ensemble dance that fills the stage with leaping, stamping and somersaulting figures to a one-man show, when the focus shifts to the quite incredible shapes an apparently boneless body can become. This is Makaya Dimbelolo from Angola, an expert in ‘body bizarrerie’. The graphic shoulder folding and stomach hollowing he employs to fit through a stringless tennis racquet makes you wince, but that is as nothing to what the seemingly rubber woman, Nokulunga Buthelezi, a South African, puts herself through for our delectation. Differently impressive, in a ‘whoop in appreciation’, rather than ‘cringe-queasily’ way, are the top-speed unicycling basketball team from the USA, the French breakdancers, who spin like streetwise Catherine wheels in formation, and the vertiginous pyramid-forming acrobats from Tanzania and Gabon. With muscular versions of the plate-spinning (nine washing-up bowls rotate in time) and trapeze (the strapping Jean-Claude Belmat’s strappado art high above the stage) familiar from our rather weedy (if very much cheaper) homegrown big tops, this is souped-up circus that demands a response.
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Details
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O2 Arena, Peninsula Square, SE10 0DX
- Bookings 0844 847 1717/ Visit Website
- Category: Performance
- Times: Tue-Fri 8pm, Sat 3pm & 8pm, Sun 11am & 3pm
- Price: £35-£65. Extended
- Tube: North Greenwich
2 comments
it was simply breath taking. i shouted Wo! wo! it was a show i havent seen before. Full of energy and well organised. Africa is endowed with unique talents and i tell you something great is coming from the continent that will shake the entire world
Let's go to see Afrika Afrika this weekend! What do you think?