About

The dancing in other words / dansende digtersfees is an annual international poetry event, curated by Breyten Breytenbach and Dominique Botha.

This unique literary project comprises a week-long gathering, in the Western Cape, of internationally acclaimed literary voices, for discussion and debate, reading and writing, translation and travelling. The project culminates in a two-day festival at Spier Wine Farm.

The 2016 festival will take place on Friday 6 May and Saturday 7 May.

Spier

Spier believes that the arts can be a powerful tool for transformation. It supports arts projects that acknowledge our African arts heritage, protect its legacy and contribute to building its future.

Pirogue Collective

The Pirogue concept is an outgrowth of the need felt by Gorée Institute to shape and promote its culturally creative projects and programs, always informed by the guideline to imagine Africa in its complexity and richness and specificities along the way to modernity, premised on autonomy and self-sufficiency, creativity and transformation, and the virtues of dialogue.

The Pirogue concept is both the outcome and an expression of the need to travel, to be changed by the road traveled as a ‘beginner’ and yet never to be a stranger at destination. There is a positive dialectic between space and movement: the island and the Institute constitute the historical and physical environment that serve as ‘base’ where activities can be accommodated (the Print Studio, residences, workshops); Pirogue enacts the caravans to other places and across borders, be they physical or between traditions or cultures or disciplines of thinking and creation, to promote the ethical imagination of responsible and enabled and creative citizenship.

The Pirogue Collective initiates the processes (through publications such as the annual Imagine Africa, the Pirogue Poets series, and its website) that should provide tools for analysis and platforms for action, coordinates activities across genres and forms of expression (as through residencies and festivals or other presentations) in a celebration and promotion of the Diverse.

The Collective is a voluntary association of individuals. It is built on trust, a shared passion for excellence and the capacity of each member to bring original ideas, the means and the experience of action and a commitment to personal accountability to the table.

• Breyten Breytenbach
• Jill Schoolman
• Georges Lory
• Charl-Pierre Naudé
• Dominique Botha

Dancing in Other Words

Curator

• Breyten Breytenbach

Convenors

• Dominique Botha
• Annebelle Schreuders

Project Manager

• Marí Stimie