Afrovibes Festival 2012

October 2012

Afrovibes is a biennial festival of cutting edge theatre dance and music from South Africa.

Afrovibes began in the Netherlands in 1999, and in 2010 it came to the UK for the first time.

In October 2012 the festival will visit new venues as well as the three orignal partners, The Albany, Contact and The Drum,  spending a week in each venue and giving audiences the chance to immerse themselves in the best of contemporary performance from Southern Africa.

Central to the festival is the specially created Township Cafe, a space that serves African food and drinks, hosts events and acts as a hub for festival activities. It serves as a meeting for UK artists and audiences to directly engage with the visiting South African performers, through post show talks, workshops, debates, late night music events and jamming sessions.

The programme for the 2012 festival will be announced in April.

 James Ngcobo , Artistic Director of Afrovibes 2012 writes:

"Since the birth of democracy in South Africa, 17 years ago, the political and cultural landscape has gone through an evolution which has brought a big sense of adjusting to that which is new, to untapped territory -  and this has been a daunting task. Yet our artists and story tellers have kept going, adapting to this new era even though there was this sense of, what do we write about now that the adversary of Apartheid is gone? There has been a sense that there was a void in our narrative, but this was proved wrong by those who continued to scratch the surface and stories have been jumping out just as they have always done.

Afrovibes will be looking at South Africa today and telling stories from and about a country that is taking calculated steps everyday to find its own and distinctive voice.  As the people of old have always said that ‘when the sun takes its journey over the sky, tell your stories for the sun will be a witness to that".

To read a recent interview with James Ngcobo click here

For more information please click here