From humble beginnings

“She came. She saw. She wrote it all down,” a poster attempting to sum up arts writer Adrienne Sichel’s 27 years in the biz, proclaimed.

But it was not simply writing it all down that earned her the fulsome retirement send-off which saw the whole arts industry in sincere and supportive attendance at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg in June.

Michelle Constant, chief executive of Business Arts SA, recalled the ubiquitous image of Sichel in the Festival’s newsroom, fingers violently ablur at her keyboard, her computer screen quivering with the speed and acuity of the words rushing through it.

Her career began at the coalface of ordinary journalism. 1970. The Argus Group. Sichel sips her coffee.

“I didn’t think the Star would employ me. I’d just completed a degree in english and drama; the Argus took me on as a cadet.”

It was about training from scratch in “real” journalism, and she did everything, including court reporting.

“That was the best training of for a theatre critic,” she grins, drily, “with all the drama of murder trials, etc.”

The beginning

Throughout the 1970s, Sichel moved through the media circuit, doing gigs for the Pretoria News and earning her stripes as a writer charmed with curiosity.

“I’d almost completely decided to leave the press for good” when the Star Tonight! offered her the arts beat.

“I accepted,” she remembers, “on condition that I would not touch ballet writing. I’d done ballet between the age of five and 13; I didn’t feel I’d be good enough to write about it, as I didn’t have enough experience.”

Two weeks later, an unforeseen absence of a ballet writer saw her in the press seats at the darkened auditorium, on opening night. The rest is dance-writing history.

But Sichel’s far from being a ballet writer only. Founder of Moving Into Dance Mophatong, Sylvia “Magogo” Glasser, has described her as “an innovator, an advocator, an informer, a reformer, a transformer…”

Dancer/choreographer Dada Masilo explained the fear Sichel inspired in her and her peers. “By the time we were 12, we had developed the confidence to give her a special nickname behind her back – Ketiwe, the ‘chosen one’, in isiZulu.”

In the 1980s, the challenges facing an art critic were not all that different from those facing artists in South Africa.

All pearls

“There was a critics’ circle at the time. People like Raeford Daniel, Percy Baneshik, Evelyn Levison meeting with these people was instructive for me. It was an institution, and established criteria of standards and professional practice.”

It was odd for a young arts writer “from the plaas” – her childhood was in Rustenburg – to cross paths with the likes of critic Marilyn Poole, for instance. “It was understood that if you went to the ballet, you wore pearls. All I had was denims.”

Sichel developed a reputation from the early days, and supporters and “my fair share of abusive readers!”

Through apartheid, and because of it, unprecedented mutations began to happen in dance language, forging the fusion between traditional and contemporary expression.

Practitioners such as Glasser were shunned by critics because of her innovations. Sichel was close at the mark to recognising what she was doing, and its power.

“It becomes your responsibility as a critic to know what constitutes these collisions,” she recalled about the passionate path she had embarked upon. “In being critical, you can only comment from a place of knowledge.”

Sichel was one who flagged choreographers such as Gregory Maqoma, Vincent Mantsoe and Steven Cohen for the potency and the value of their art.

A globetrotter

“I have been very lucky,” she says. “People do not realise the scale and impact of South African art on the rest of the world, least of all the politicians, who suffer from kamikaze humility.”

Sichel earned her respected status with her incisive and powerful writing, but also by her unrelenting curiosity, which took her deep into township dives and across the globe to research the field, as it were, be it Paris, central Africa or South America.

In 1987, alongside Marilyn Jenkins and Phillip Stein, Sichel made dance history in forming the Dance Umbrella. Its artistic director, Georgina Thomson, glowingly declared the Umbrella as the big diamond in Adrienne’s crown of achievements.

She recalled: “Adrienne instilled terror in me when first I met her in 1987. It was a case of: ‘make sure she gets the right seat!’ Don’t irritate her!” Twenty years association with her has mellowed Thompson’s fear into fondness and respect. “We will not leave Adrienne retired.”

“I am happy I have been able to educate people – because in educating people, you grow audiences,” she says. “Many of us give our all to the arts,” said Artistic Director of Sibikwa, Phyllis Klotz. “Adrienne helped to build the canon of South African performance.

In 1987, there was a new play on the Festival’s fringe, with three new performers. Most critics wrote along the lines of three nothings who should remain so. Adrienne spoke of striking gold.”

The play was Klotz’s Wathint’ Abafazi Wathint’Umbokodo, which articulated the women’s struggle for victory with a passion that broke ground in theatre. But for Sichel, this important production, which celebrated its 20th anniversary in a revival Festival season in 2006, would have died.

Break the rules

Sichel also mentions on how dance and visual culture have become blurred.

“Connecting the dots has been very fulfilling, but I’ve learnt that in South Africa, the creative industries have the courage to break all the rules. We have to redefine ourselves.

“But there are rules, which I always have stood by: firstly, show up on time. Secondly, be passionate – always be excited to see something new. Thirdly, don’t be frightened. During apartheid, we were working blindly.

It was scary, it was volatile, we were transfixed and scared, but we were proved right in recognising it.”

These were times when “community” was a dirty word, Klotz added. Sichel sidestepped the boundaries of political correctness and expectation, enabling dance to step with her.

“She is the critic of our generation,” theatre practitioner Dorothy Ann Gould summed it up.

A physically unfluttered Sichel, her blonde pony tail in strict place, smiled humbly as the afternoon drew to a close. “I’m not retiring,” she said. “Just changing gears”.

Adrienne Sichel is one of the Festival’s new committee members, holding the portfolio for theatre, dance and arts development.
A version of this story was first published in the SA Jewish Report