William Kentridge, SIBYL

Part 1 The Moment Has Gone
Part 2 Waiting For The Sibyl

William Kentridge
With music composed and conceived by Nhlanhla Mahlangu and Kyle Shepherd

William Kentridge’s Sibyl is a performance for three dancers and choral ensemble of six, divided in two parts, part one being a twenty-two-minute film with live score entitled The Moment Has Gone and part two the forty-two-minute chamber opera Waiting for the Sibyl. Both performances comprise a singular programme of South African artist William Kentridge’s work – an evening in the theatre of visual and aural alchemy unlike anything else.

Waiting for the Sibyl unfolds in a series of 6 short scenes and incorporates signature elements of Kentridge’s visionary practice—projection, live performance, recorded music, dance, movement, and shadows cast on against a hand-painted backdrop—to tell the story of the Cumaean Sibyl, priestess of an oracle of Apollo. Unspoken in the opera, is the fact that the contemporary Sibyl is the algorithm that will predict our future, our health, whether we’ll live to eighty. But there is a way in which we are still fighting to hold on to the possibility of a human Sibyl: the desire we have for something other than the machine, to guide us in how we see our future.

The Moment Has Gone, which begins the program, is performed by Kyle Shepherd, one of South Africa’s leading progressive pianists and composers and an all-male South African chorus lead by Nhlanhla Mahlangu. The film incorporates City Deep, the latest in Kentridge’s series of Soho Eckstein films, and sequences of Kentridge creating the work. Made at the same time as Waiting for the Sibyl, The Moment Has Gone incorporates phrases and ideas that reappear in the chamber opera, and an appearance by Sibyl herself.

Last summer at SNFestival RetroFuture Edition, artist William Kentridge guided us on a virtual tour of his studio in Johannesburg and discussed his work Waiting for the Sibyl. This year, we’ll go one step further with a live experience that will let us all see Kentridge’s exquisite art firsthand.

You can find last 2020’s William Kentridge’ s studio visit here.

The SNF Nostos ID is required for this event. Admission on a first-come-first-served basis.
Event opens at 19:00.
Maximum number of participants:1085
6 years old and up.

Details of the program are likely to change in accordance with the latest COVID-19 health measures.