Ntsiki Mazwai's performing a one man theatre show from collective poems on the Monday Blues stage... then we have the usual, live performances, comedy, poetry, jam sessions, good music... this is the type of session you can't afford to miss. See you Monday at Belvista, Troyville @ 19h00.
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Ntsiki Mazwai- biog
This is no languid butterfly, drifting aimlessly among forced, insipid blooms in an artificial hothouse. Ntsiki Mazwai is a hummingbird. Multi-hued. Bursting with the delight of life. Radiating energy as she drinks deeply of the rich blossoms that sprout wherever they find root, she pours these experiences out in a brilliantly coloured tapestry of poetry, dance and song.
Don't think her exuberance is a sign of superficial infatuation with "art" and "life". Young as she is, Ntsiki is no stranger to deep hurts, confusion, rejection and the cruelty of selfish relationships. The conflict of a culture in evolution, swinging from hip black street rap to western cannons of art and literature is reflected in her poems. This is not a woman who skates on the surface of emotion, but a sensitive being who feels the beauty and power of her art strongly.
Ntsiki is clearly conducting a love affair with words: words as poems, words as song, words as dance and wild combinations of all three. Her first foray into the excitement of her creativity was poetry. Then she realised that she could share those words and thoughts on stage and exposed an electrifying dimension of performance which she took to enthusiastically, finding another aspect of her personality and talents previously unknown. She embodies the issue of identity facing so many South Africans, shifting into "situational identities" rather than stabilising on a fixed, unalterable core identity as we strive to find a suitable merging of sometimes contrasting indigenous and western cultures, values and ideas.
From hugely successful beadwork to written poetry, from poems performed and danced to theatre and music, the constant underlying theme of Ntsiki's work is courage - courage to speak on painful or controversial issues with almost brutal honesty. "The book relates my journeys in a very personal way," she explains. "I want the work to help heal people so that they can tell their stories and then be brave to find their own voice and operate as full human beings, and not as the wounded spirits that fill our world."
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