The festival is dominated by classical music, but there is some light relief in the form of weekend street festivals and some deliberately whacky street theatre. If you get tired of the music, there's always the wine to taste.
It's hard to believe that Evita Bezuidenhout, Bambi Kellerman, Nowell Fine and the ‘girls’ would consider holding a festival in Darling in September, when they could be upstaged by the West Coast daisies. Some of the acts may be a bit of a drag but they are a laugh a minute.
After you’ve oohed and aahed at the whales from the cliff-top walk and rambled through the multi-coloured spring daisies, you might like to turn your mind to matters cultural. Performing artists, including stand-up comics, dramatic actors and musicians, arrive en masse for the event and the many local visual artists use the occasion to exhibit their best work.
There’s more to culture than performance and painting. The 10-day Nederburg Arts Festival also celebrates the glorious natural environment of Knysna with various eco-outings, demonstrations of flower arranging and floral art and, last but not least, good food and wine.
Klein
Karoo National Arts Festival, Oudtshoorn,
AprilThis festival is more popularly known as the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees, or the KKNK. A celebration of alternative Afrikaner culture, it offers much more than tiekiedraai, squeezebox, boerewors and boeresport. Instead it showcases the best new Afrikaans drama, cabaret, poetry and music, as well as some old favourites such as Evita Bezuidenhout (aka Pieter-Dirk Uys) and David Kramer.
There is a good sprinkling of visual art, drama and dance at this festival, but the emphasis is definitely on superbly rendered contemporary music. Arts Alive, held at the Newtown Cultural Precinct, is just one of the projects attempting to revitalise the central part of Johannesburg.
This somewhat controversial exhibition of cutting-edge visual arts is one of the most Afrocentric events in South Africa. It is held biennially, in uneven years, although its future is uncertain.
This pleasantly sleepy town near Pietermaritzburg is a surprising place to see some of the finest drama in South Africa. The organisers scour the Standard Bank Festival and return with the very best. It’s certainly a lot less hectic than Grahamstown.
Second in size only to the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland, this is the biggest, the best and the oldest arts festival in South Africa. Thousands of culture vultures descend on Grahamstown for a two week feast of theatre, dance, music, visual arts and the best flea market imaginable. You can spot them by their glazed look and the dogeared programmes they carry.
The many artists who have retreated to this idyllic mountain hideaway in the Eastern Cape come together every year to create a weeklong festival with a difference. There tend to be more workshops than exhibitions or performances, effectively breaking down the barrier between audience and performer.