Rolex's surprising role in synchronising the arts - The Australian Financial Review

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The event, being held in the southern hemisphere for the first time, was preceded with a doubles tennis match between Rolex brand ambassador Roger Federer, his old friend and nemesis Rafael Nadal and Bill Gates and Daily Show anchor Trevor Noah at the city’s main stadium.

Federer and Gates won, but the fiercest competitor on the night proved to be the Cape Doctor. “Me and Raffa were giving each other smirks," Federer confessed later, "saying ‘it’s so hard to play right now but let’s not show it.’ ”

Buffeting winds became something of a metaphor at the event's first panel discussion, titled The Arts in Times of Polarisation.

Many misunderstood the Rolex program as being “about the old handing over to the new”, Harvard professor and scholar of post-colonial literature Homi Bhabha told the audience. “That is not what this is about, it’s not about handing over the torch. It’s about two artists over two generations fanning the creative fires together, while the winds of change shift and redirect the objects … in a set of uncertain conditions.”

Cape Town was looking particularly wild-eyed and gorgeous that weekend. On one side, great white clouds rolled off the edge of Table Mountain. On the other, an azure sea stared back at an azure sky. And in between, the moon grew fatter each night.

Kirstenbosch Gardens, Cape Town, South Africa. 

On the Saturday, participants picnicked in a riot of proteas, wattles and succulents at the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, hard up against the eastern slopes of Table Mountain. Later, a dinner to celebrate the eight 2018-19 mentors and protégés got into full swing in the lush, moonlit garden of the Baxter.

By then guests had been treated to rich proof of their pairings: the play Irish writer Colin Barrett has produced under the guidance of Colm Tóibín; the work Sengalese hip-hop choreographer Khoudia Touré had created under the eye of Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite. They had heard Nigerian architect Mairam Kamara talk about how the New York-based, Tanzanian-born architect Sir David Adjaye had influenced her work over the two years of the program.

It's tricky, but it's like we have a lot of little cooking pots on the stove.

— Phyllida Lloyd, director

On the next and final night, as a full moon finally landed in the garden outside, everyone gathered in the Baxter concert hall for the debut of Pulse, composed by American music protégé Marcus Gilmore under the mentorship of tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain, one of the architects of world music.

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As percussion-driven orchestral music, Pulse was as novel as it was beautiful. Then, as the orchestra withdrew from the stage and official proceedings ended, something else began to happen.

The 33-year-old American and his Indian mentor, who turned 69 that day, started messing around, improvising across an empty stage, Hussain bringing his tabla to a gentle simmer as Gilmore kept pace on his snare. Slowly but surely, the two found a rhythm, passing the solos back and forth, eye to eye.

Marcus Gilmore demonstrates his work to his mentor, Zakir Hussain. 

As a call and response, it was mesmerising, Then, without warning, they raised the temperature, then raised it again, until reality seemed to skip the rails and something else began to emerge. Performance in its purest form, it united an audience of former strangers in a moment in which something new was born of two very different traditions.

As 2020-21 mentorship participants, it's the turn of Lloyd and White to find their rhythm together. "I think the jump is going to come when we do or don't know whether we're going to be in the same room," says Lloyd. "It's tricky, but it's like we have a lot of little cooking pots on the stove."

Only weeks after her flying visit to Lloyd in London, White was "in the midst of one small show I love very much in Chicago" when the pandemic upended arts in the US. "We were in our second week of rehearsals and I had to go in and say, I'm sorry we're going to have to stop."

Whitney White. 

For White, who is making her name directing productions from Othello to the on-point What to Send Up When it Goes Down, about racialised violence in the US, it was "just an incredibly surprising pause".

For Lloyd, whose show Tina – The Tina Turner Musical was shut down in London and New York, it was "like one of those Road Runner cartoons where you're still going like a bit of a maniac even though you've gone off the edge of a cliff. In my case it has been an enforced sabbatical after 40 years of being on the hamster wheel."

For both, "the sense of damage to our industry, the art form, the young artists is overwhelming", says Lloyd. "The theatre is a really devastating picture."

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But personally, "there are so many things about being forced to stop in life that are potent and could be creative," she says. "It has given Whitney and I a chance to be in a conversation which, were both of us in rehearsal or one of us was making a movie and the other was in rehearsal, it would be so hard to find the space we've been able to find just for chats."

Even if it's on Zoom for now, "it's so good", says White.

"Especially because we're also having group meetings with the other mentors and mentees, which is unprecedented. Between that and Phyllida and me talking, and me stress texting her for acute advice ... it's transforming the decisions I make."

Spike Lee, right, and protege Kyle Bell. 

The others she is talking about include filmmaker Spike Lee, who is mentoring Native American filmmaker Kyle Bell, and Lin-Manuel Miranda, the composer, lyricist and actor behind the hit stage show Hamilton. He is mentoring Argentine director, screenwriter, cinematographer and film editor Agustina San Martínin.

"The fertilisation between all the protégés and mentors has been amazing," says Lloyd. "Rolex has driven bringing us together, and I really applaud them for it."

Brook Turner travelled to Cape Town as a guest of Rolex.

The Link Lonk


September 30, 2020 at 07:19AM
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Rolex's surprising role in synchronising the arts - The Australian Financial Review

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