A unique gathering at the Baxter

William Kentridge, Peter Sellars and Wole Soyinka will grace the stages of the Baxter Theatre Centre in A Unique Gathering: Rolex Mentors and Protégés, a weekend of artistic exchange from 5 to 7 April, 2013.

Baxter's CEO and artistic director, Lara Foot, a Rolex protégée to theatre mentor Sir Peter Hall in 2004-5, has invited a group of mentors and protégés to Cape Town for a weekend of discussions and performances that will celebrate this extraordinary community.

William Kentridge, Peter Sellars and Wole Soyinka, all mentors in the Rolex Arts Initiative, will join some of the world's rising stars, all protégés under this philanthropic programme. Eight protégés will participate: Lara Foot (theatre, South Africa), Edem Awumey (literature, Togo) Maya Zbib (theatre, Lebanon), Anani Dodji Sanouvi (dance, Togo), Antonio García Ángel (literature, Columbia), Aurelio Martínez (music, Honduras), Josué Méndez (film, Peru) and Mateo López (visual arts, Columbia).

A one-to-one mentoring relationship in seven disciplines

The Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative was established in 2002. It brings artistic masters together with talented young artists for a year of creative collaboration in a one-to-one mentoring relationship in seven disciplines: architecture, dance, film, literature, music, theatre and visual arts. The Initiative's aim is to contribute to global culture by ensuring that the world's artistic heritage is passed from one generation to another.

The weekend's programme, which includes four public events, starts on Friday, 5 April, at 4pm with a workshop by South African visual and theatre artist William Kentridge, entitled Getting Started, in the Baxter Flipside. Kentridge, 2012-13 Rolex mentor in visual arts, will explore the origin of ideas and impulses and how they become artistic material. Tickets are R100 and R50 for students.

Later that day, Honduras-born singer and composer Aurelio Martínez will perform In concert with Neo Muyanga and friends, in the Baxter Concert Hall at 8pm. Tickets are R75. Martínez, the Rolex 2008-9 protégé in music, possesses one of the most powerful voices to emerge from Central America in a generation. A standard-bearer of Garifuna culture, which fuses African and Caribbean-Indian roots, he recently spent a year collaborating with Rolex music mentor Youssou N'Dour, who helped him connect to his African roots. He will perform with well-known Cape Town musician and composer Neo Muyanga and a band of local South African musicians.

On Saturday, 6 April, at 3pm, world-renowned American opera, theatre and festival director, Peter Sellars leads a workshop entitled Artists on the Front Line with two of the protégés. He will interview Togolese creator of dance Anani Sanouvi, and Lebanese theatre artist Maya Zbib in exploring how art and culture contribute to a healthy society. Under discussion will be themes such as: How do artists respond to conflict?, and: How can they be part of the solution?

Sellars was the theatre mentor for the Rolex Arts Initiative for 2010-11; Anani Sanouvi was the dance protégé for 2006-7 and Maya Zbib was the theatre protégé for 2010-11. This workshop will take place in the Baxter Flipside Theatre and tickets are R100 and R50 for students.

The public events come to an end on Saturday, 6 April at 8pm in the Concert Hall with Turning the World Into Material: William Kentridge, Peter Sellars and Wole Soyinka. Impulses behind the idea and the materialisation of an impulse: how does the world come into your work? Each of these iconic artists will respond to this question with reference to his own experience. Nigerian novel prize-winning author Wole Soyinka was the 2008-9 mentor in literature. Tickets are R180 and R60 for students.

Booking for A Unique Gathering: Rolex Mentors and Protégés,is through Computicket on 0861 915 8000, online at www.computicket.co.za or at any Shoprite Checkers outlet.