Tweet

Bovim Ballet is proud to announce their next Cape Town season, SwingTime, taking place at The Baxter Theatre for a limited season from 7th -18th October 2009.

SwingTime - the perfect marriage between Broadway and Ballet, providing a high impact production and a visual feast that will entertain audiences of all ages.

Having recently returned from their very successful inaugural national tour of Sean Bovim's Tango Nights, Ballet Fans will be thrilled to hear that Bovim Ballet's next project will be the ever-popular SwingTime, originally created by Bovim in 2003.

Bovim will be updating the original production, adding new numbers to the work, and tweaking some of the existing numbers. This will be the first time that the audience can look forward to seeing SwingTime danced by Bovim Ballet, enhanced by a completely new set and dazzling costumes by Klûk and CGDT.

An exciting addition to the cast is accomplished vocalist, Francois Lliam (Blue eyes to Buble, Jesus Chris Superstar, We Will Rock You) who will delight audiences with his velvety vocals, singing popular tunes including Miss Jones, Fever, Mr Bojangles, Mack the Knife and others, while enjoying the visual artistry of the dancers’ romantic interpretations of these unforgettable classical hits.

SwingTime takes the audience on a nostalgic journey of the Big Band Era. The story centres around Bojangles, the owner of the Swing Club where it all happened. Bojangles' journey takes the audience back in time where romance was the order of the day, and dancing was a way of life for the young and young-at-heart. The audience will accompany Bojangles on his trip down memory lane, where he remembers his past loves and the shenanigans during his time at The Swing Club. The role of Bojangles will be performed by Grant Swift.

The audience can expect Bovim's technically demanding choreography, while at the same time being thrilled by beautifully created costumes, a fantastic collection of songs, and Bovim's talented troupe of dancers.

The audience can look forward to enjoying the inspiring local talent of Kerryn Howard, Tanya Futter, Kirsten Isenberg, Faye Dubinski, Simone Muller, Jennifer Middleton, Kristin Wilson and Nicola Marais. Male dancers include Grant Swift, Marc Goldberg, Shaun Brian Murphy, Ignatius Van Heerden, Devon Marshbank, James Bradley, Kyle Rossouw and Owen Manamela.

Bovim states, "The show fuses the jazzy rhythms of 1930's Broadway with the quick step demands of ballet en-pointe". I am excited to be working with this high calibre of dancers that have joined Bovim Ballet."

Over the past 15 years Bovim’s work has been seen all over South Africa and as far afield as the USA, Russia, Denmark, Spain, the Edinburgh Festival and Ireland, where Queen at the Ballet played to more than 30,000 people with standing ovations at every performance at the Point Theatre in Dublin.

Sean won the Dance Indaba Fringe Award for Choreography in 1995, the National Choreographic Competition in 1999 and his production SwingTime won a Naledi Award in 2005.

Reviewers of SwingTime at the Ballet had this to say about the inaugural production:

Glittering, Superb, Fresh, It's a Sure Bet - Star Tonight
Seductive, Enchanting, Pure Energy - The Argus
Joyous, Stunning, Visually and Aurally Delightful - Cape Times
Those torsos and hips... articulate and move in a wash of sexy physicality – Star Tonight.

Audiences are encouraged to book early as SwingTime has a strictly limited Cape Town season.

SwingTime runs at The Baxter Theatre from Tuesdays – Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 6pm. Tickets are on sale through Computicket or Baxter's Box Office (Tel 021 680 3993) and range from R120-R150. A 10% discount applies to students and senior citizens on presentation of valid ID, as well as group bookings of 10 or more.