Bovim Ballet shakes things up

If you, like me, have trouble con­vin­cing friends and fam­ily to accom­pany you to the theatre to watch bal­let then I have some excit­ing news. Bovim Ballet presents SwingTime from 7–18 October 2009 at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town.

Why is this dif­fer­ent you are ask­ing, will we not just be see­ing men in tights? Most def­in­itely not, Sean Bovim, dir­ector of Bovim Ballet has shaken things up and made bal­let excit­ing, enter­tain­ing and most of all appeal­ing to one and all. Even those who are not inter­ested in bal­let will be delighted by this performance ...

I first saw SwingTime in 2003 when it was ori­gin­ally cre­ated and was abso­lutely blown away by the new style of cho­reo­graphy that puts bal­let back on the mod­ern stage and opens it up to be enjoyed by all audi­ences. This is not a pro­duc­tion where you will fall asleep, it will have you on the edge of your seats with the spec­tac­u­lar cos­tumes, vibey music and ener­getic, beau­ti­ful dan­cers. This will cer­tainly be a feast, not only for your eyes but your ears as well.

If you are won­der­ing what some of Sean Bovim’s cre­den­tials are you will be glad to know he won the Dance Indaba Fringe Award for Choreography in 1995, the National Choreographic Competition in 1999 and in 2005 SwingTime won a Naledi Award.

For the past 15 years Bovim’s work has graced staged all across South Africa as well as Europe, the United Kingdom and USA. His pre­vi­ous works Queen at the Ballet and Tango Nights have been received with great success.

This year’s SwingTime pro­duc­tion adds a new addi­tion to the cast with the voice of accom­plished vocal­ist, Francois Liliam. While your eyes are mes­mer­ised by the col­our­ful cos­tumes by  Klûk and CGDT and won­der­ful dan­cing of the cast from Bovim Ballet, your ears will be met with Liliam’s mel­low voice while he sings pop­u­lar songs such as Fever, Mack the Knife and many more.

Bovim has tweaked this pro­duc­tion by adding some new num­bers and chan­ging some of the exist­ing ones. You will enjoy this pro­duc­tion even more if you are a fan of the Big Band Era as this is where the story is set. The owner of a Swing Club, Mr Bojangles (per­formed by Grant Swift), tells a tale of dan­cing and romance and takes the audi­ence down memory lane of his time at the Swing Club.

Although Bovim’s cho­reo­graphy is tech­nic­ally chal­len­ging he works with such a won­der­ful com­pany of dan­cers that they make it seem effort­less. I have my ticket booked for Saturday 17 October and can­not wait to be dazzled again and I am quite sure this pro­duc­tion will inspire me to take up dan­cing again.

When?
7 to 18 October 2009: The show runs from Tuesdays to Saturday at 20h00 and Sundays at 18h00 and tick­ets can be pur­chased through Computicket or dir­ectly from the Baxter Theatre’s box office and cost between R120 and R150 a per­son. This is def­in­itely a magical even­ing you will remember.

Note:
Due to the shows pop­ular­ity Cape Town will be happy to know that the show has been exten­ded by 5 addi­tional per­form­ances start­ing on Wednesday with the final per­form­ance on Sunday 25 October 2009. Don’t wait any longer, book your tick­ets now!

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