MusicDance

15/09/2026

10/09/2026

MUSICDANCE CAPE TOWN 2026 — CALL TO PARTICIPATE
Calling independent music, dance and performing artists to join an intensive programme of workshops, collaborative rehearsals and live performances centred around interdisciplinary, real-time composition.

We explore what can happen when artists listen, respond and make decisions together in the moment. The relationship between performers becomes part of the material: every sound, movement and choice influences what comes next.

Working at the intimate .obs in Observatory, we create performances that are fragile and robust, spontaneous and structured — where audiences witness the work unfolding in real time.

We want to make participation as accessible as possible. The programme is self-sustained through a participation fee, but artists can recoup part or all of this fee by selling tickets to the performances — including tickets sold before the programme begins. This means that artists who may not otherwise be able to afford the fee can participate without needing to cover the full cost upfront, while also building an audience for their work.

This year’s team:
Artistic Direction: Manuela Lucia Tessi & Coila-Leah Enderstein
Music Facilitators: Garth Erasmus, Matteo Ringas & guests to be announced
Guest Artist: Thalia Laric
Production: Kayla van der Merwe, Gemma Paton
Photography: Tania Lea Vossgätter
Lighting & Visuals: Frans Mandilakhe Zunguze, Lutho Booizen

📍 Theatre Arts, Observatory, Cape Town
📅 21 November – 5 December 2026
⏰ APPLICATION DEADLINE: 16 SEPTEMBER
MORE INFO & APPLICATION FORM — LINK IN BIO

10/09/2026

MUSICDANCE CAPE TOWN 2026 — CALL TO PARTICIPATE
Calling independent music, dance and performing artists to join an intensive programme of workshops, collaborative rehearsals and live performances centred around interdisciplinary, real-time composition.

We explore what can happen when artists listen, respond and make decisions together in the moment. The relationship between performers becomes part of the material: every sound, movement and choice influences what comes next.

Working at the intimate .obs in Observatory, we create performances that are fragile and robust, spontaneous and structured — where audiences witness the work unfolding in real time.

We want to make participation as accessible as possible. The programme is self-sustained through a participation fee, but artists can recoup part or all of this fee by selling tickets to the performances — including tickets sold before the programme begins. This means that artists who may not otherwise be able to afford the fee can participate without needing to cover the full cost upfront, while also building an audience for their work.

This year’s team:
Artistic Direction: Manuela Lucia Tessi & Coila-Leah Enderstein
Music Facilitators: Garth Erasmus, Matteo Ringas & guests to be announced
Guest Artist: Thalia Laric
Production: Kayla van der Merwe, Gemma Paton
Photography: Tania Lea Vossgätter
Lighting & Visuals: Frans Mandilakhe Zunguze, Lutho Booizen

📍 Theatre Arts, Observatory, Cape Town
📅 21 November – 5 December 2026
⏰ APPLICATION DEADLINE: 16 SEPTEMBER
MORE INFO & APPLICATION FORM — LINK IN BIO

05/09/2026

More info
https://musicdance.net/capetown2026/
Application form
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdNzkteyTMcrQO_Fv45Bt3MvIcviQvg9eazlW9Bl56BIyCxTQ/viewform

20/08/2026

🎶💃 CALL FOR PARTICIPATION — MUSICDANCE 2026
Are you a music, dance, or performing artist interested in exploring interdisciplinary improvisation, collaboration and collective composition?
MusicDance Cape Town returns for its ninth year, bringing together independent artists from diverse genres and backgrounds to explore new ways of creating performance through music and dance.

📍 Theatre Arts, Observatory, Cape Town
📅 21 November – 5 December 2026
⏰ Applications close: 16 September 2026

Link in BIO

Artists with a performance practice are encouraged to apply. No previous improvisation experience is required. Artists are encouraged to bring their own artistic practice, background and style as the starting point for collective exploration.

In 2026, MusicDance Cape Town will be co-directed by Manuela Lucia Tessi and Coila-Leah Enderstein

SouthAfricanArtists DanceCapeTown MusicCapeTown

17/08/2026

Call to participate in MusicDance 2026
Deadline: 16 September 2026

The project will take place at Theatre Arts, Observatory, Cape Town,
21 November - 5 December 2026

MusicDance Cape Town is an intensive workshop and performance series for independent music, dance and performing artists supported by Theatre Arts since 2018. Now in its ninth year, MusicDance draws together performing artists from diverse genres and backgrounds to learn tools and practice interdisciplinary improvisation. Improvisation is used as a compositional method to collectively create performance. Audiences are invited to witness the forging of these new collaborations and unique expressions in music and dance performance.
This year, the project will be co-directed by dancer Manuela Lucia Tessi and musician Coila-Leah Enderstein, alongside a team of experienced artists.
MusicDance, besides being a training and performance programme, aims at laying the foundations for independent artists to meet one another and mutually inspire and support each other.

Application form, and more information on project, team, schedule and participation fee, see
LINK IN BIO

SouthAfricanArtists

Theatre Arts
Coila Enderstein
Kayla van der Merwe
Garth Erasmus
Matteo Ringas
FRANKO
Lutho Booi
shiftingpoint_studio

live interdisciplinary performance

22/12/2025

Grateful, humbled, and still vibrating from MusicDance Cape Town , from the question a nine-year-old asked “Why do you rehearse if it’s never the same?”, to the conversations that unfolded on stage, in rehearsals, in Q&As, bars, at home.

This project reminds me again and again that improvisation is a technique of deep listening, attuning to one another: dancers, musicians, light, space, audience. Together , through practice, we navigated questions of differences, representation, gender, queerness, cultural responsibility, presence, vibration, aliveness , for ethics that resist binaries in favor of nuance, range, and responsibility. I was also reminded that performance is not about self-expression alone, but about becoming an antenna, yielding ego, transforming sensation into composition, and creating conditions in which something can move through a room and leave audiences and ourselves changed.

This work exists because of extraordinary collaborators of this year’s edition who brought insight and expertise to the space: .art Friederike Wendorf, and to and Lutho for creating the visual magic of lights and projection, and whose energy was so bright and supportive.

Thanks to .obs for being the home and the base, and to Caroline Calburn for believing in it again and again and seeing it grow through the years.

And the group of talented and committed artists, some new and some returning. Thank you for this journey across generations, identities, disciplines and for your courage, care, disagreement, humor, history, and generosity into the space. Thank you for trusting the process, questioning it, stretching it, and inhabiting it so fully.
.parks23 .mayeza .saxophone, , Isabella Hulme, Gemma Paton

Beautiful photography by
And also a thanks to for being a guest and to the ones that were not able to join this year but whose presence was strongly felt in the room.

06/12/2025

Upcoming Wednesday Arts in Obs, 12-2pm a workshop-lecture by Friederike Wendorf, flutist. It's participatory. For dancers, musicians and all performers.
Sign up [email protected]
Cost: sliding scale R120/150

14/10/2025

Thrilled to announce the line up of artists that will join this amazing project this year at .obs

Artistic Direction:
(dance)

Team of Collaborating and Facilitating artists:
(piano), (percussion, seperewa, umtshingo, mbira, voice, dance), .art (dance and text), ( viola, electronics), (self-made, indigenous instruments, electronics and reeds), Friederike Wendorf (flutes)

Participating Artists 2025:
, , Zaria Moal, , , , .parks23 .mayeza , (dance)
Gemma Paton (dance and vocals) , (trumpet, bass) .saxophone (saxophone) , Isabella Hulme (saxophone), .space (dance and piano).

Lighting Design:
Photography:

There is a crowdfunding campaign, link in bio.
Please help realize this project, which is a breeding ground for long-lasting and meaningful collaborations and a community of practice that grows every year.
Help by donating or sharing
Thank you
❤️❤️✨

20/09/2025

MusicDance 2025
➡️ EXTENDED DEADLINE Deadline: 25th September

Call to participate in MusicDance 2025 at Theatre Arts from

📌29th November - 13th December

MusicDance Cape Town is a performance residency for dancers and musicians, supported by Theatre Arts since 2018. Now in its eighth year, the project draws together artists from diverse genres and backgrounds. The emphasis of the work is interdisciplinary and real-time composition.

Audiences are invited to witness the forging of exciting new collaborations and unique expressions in music and dance performance.

Application MusicDance 2025
➡️LINK IN BIO
https://musicdance.net/

The performance residency consists of an intensive period of workshops in which the participants are guided by the facilitating artists to practice the tools of interdisciplinary and real-time composition. The workshops lead towards the creation of performances.

Each performance consists of a programme of different short compositions of sound and movement, with a different constellation (grouping) of musicians and dancers. All the compositions are created in the moment, based on real-time artistic choices in movement, sound, light and presence.

More info, schedule and fees:
LINK IN BIO