31 Aug 2017

The ongoing fourth Gaborone International Music and Cultural Week (GIMC) is living true to its word as it has promised nothing less than life long-experience entertainment pleasure, which undoubtedly attracted a lot of people in and around Gaborone during the theatre  presentation on August 29.

 As expected, Mophato Dance Theatre, one of the two performing groups of the night, outdid itself when it played a theatrical rendition titled PULA, which won an outstanding ovation during the annual Berlin International Show and is still in great  despite the fact it has been staged on several occasions.

Pula musical play, which is mixed with dramatic dance, opens with a royal poet accosting the chief to send some loyal tribal men up the mountains to pray for rain and consult with the gods to bring the much needed rain.   

The village chief, whose dance moves painted a ‘happy cockerel’, at times goes on an eccentric dance trance as he restlessly prays for rain with occasional dance by beautiful maidens and acrobatic male dancers, with immense  energy. 

When the rain finally comes, it was all smiles from the villagers and their chief including the wild animals as they jubilantly gallop about and start to gestate and reproduce, while the vegetation becomes green and mouth watering from the abundant water everywhere. 

The play ends with a big tribal dance with a call for more rain to come to end bareness on the land.

The second play, which was performed by Tefo Paya aka Thabo Modise and Presley Chweneagae (of Tsotsi fame) aka Letebele depicts two brothers who were born in Mafikeng. 

Thabo however relocates to Ramatlabama in Botswana at the age of 15, leaving his brother and their alcoholic father desperately looking for him.

Letebele is sent by his father to go to Ramatlabama to look for his brother, who is now a rich and pompous man who cheats on his wife, with whom he has two children.

The prosperous truck business owner is a multi-millionaire, who has dreamt of owning a string of trucks while he was young and boasts of his riches and at time splashes lavish parties for his employees, who ironically are paid peanuts. 

On the other hand Letebele is a cattle herder and relishes the time when he is young and used to eat a lot of beef with his father to the extent that his father was diagonosed with gout.

The two coincidentally met in a police cells after Thabo was locked up for beating up his wife while Letebele was arrested for livestock rustling while on the trail looking for him. 

Before they recognise each other as they have long separated, Thabo is boastful and uncouth, but ends up receiving a good beating from Letebele. 

After their release the two  reunite and go back home, where they give their father a decent burial. He died immediately after sending Letebele to go and look for Thabo. ENDS