Opening Season Continues With Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Talk And Via Sophiatown Show This Month

The first season of Louvre Abu Dhabi’s public programmes continues with a lecture by Professor Salah Hassan about the pioneering Modern artist Ibhrahim El-Salahi on 18 April and South African Band Via Sophiatown (19-20 April) at the museum.

With the participation of future neighbouring museum, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi together with Louvre Abu Dhabi presentIbrahim El-Salahi: The Cosmopolitan Modernist on 18 April at 7 pm in the museum’s Auditorium. The talk explores one of the forefathers of Modern Art in Sudan and a key contributor to African Modernism. El-Salahi’s artwork is currently on display at Louvre Abu Dhabi’s Challenging Modernity gallery on loan from Guggenheim Abu Dhabi. His work highlights the artist’s defining contributions to the history of art as well as his current practice. Salah Hassan, Professor at Cornell University, discusses El-Salahi’s career and the 2012–13 retrospective he curated for the Sharjah Art Museum and the Tate Modern.

Via Sophiatown combines pantsula dancing, a sort of non-acrobatic but high-speed hip-hop, tap-dancing, stepping and gumboot accompanied by three live jazz musicians. By calling out, whistling, stamping feet and clapping, the audience will participate in this celebration full of dynamism. With beat of internationally renowned South African music, like Dorothy Masuka or Miriam Makeba, the show will feature couples dancing the tsaba-tsaba or kofifi, the ancestor of the pantsula. The company Via Katlehong Dance, takes its name from the township of Katlehong in East Rand, one of the disadvantaged areas where the urban pantsula culture was born. Sustained by a strong community identity, Via Katlehong Dance has an educational, cultural and social mission aimed at young South Africans. Like hip-hop in the United States and Europe, pantsula is a lifestyle involving fashion, music, dance, body language and speech.

Concluding the season on 2-3 May is a concert of popular Arab throwback music with a modern twist by Lebanese hip-hop enthusiast Rayess Bek and visual artist La Mirza in Love and Revenge. One mixes Arab popular songs while the other puts into movement extracts of Cairo golden age studios.

For more information on tours, workshops and for tickets to the upcoming public programme, visitwww.louvreabudhabi.ae. For talks, entry is part of your general admission ticket.

Season Programme:

Ibrahim El-Salahi: The Cosmopolitan Modernist

Date: 18 April

Time: 7 pm

Location: Auditorium

Via Sophiatown

Date: 19-20 April

Time: 8 pm

Location: Auditorium Plaza

Love and Revenge

Date: 2-3 May

Time: 8 pm

Location: Auditorium Plaza