William Kentridge SIBYLMusik & komposition: Kyle Shepherd & Nhlanhla Mahlangu

A performance comprised of the 42-minute chamber opera Waiting for the Sibyl and the 22-minute film with live score The Moment Has Gone. 

In Waiting for the Sibyl, Kentridge tells a story about our desire to be more connected to the forces that shape our destiny. The work, which features nine dancers and singers and Kentridge’s signature combination of projection, live performance, recorded music, and shadows cast by live performers on a hand-painted backdrop, is inspired by the myth of the Cumaean prophetess Sibyl. She would write out a questioner’s fate on an oak leaf, only to mix those leaves with the fates of others, leaving you uncertain if you were learning another’s fate your own. In Kentridge’s reimagining of the myth, our contemporary Sibyl is the algorithm that predicts our life’s course. In the action on stage and on giant screens, objects and situations dissolve and reform, and a series of sentences are written down on paper, all elements pointing towards one inescapable question: What is to come?

The Moment Has Gone, which precedes Waiting for the Sibyl, combines sequences of the Kentridge creating the work with the latest in the artist's series of short charcoal animation films featuring his alter ego Soho Eckstein. Presented with a live piano score by Kyle Shepherd and an all male choir led by Nhlanhla Mahlangu, The Moment Has Gone was made at the same time as Waiting for the Sibyl and includes phrases and ideas that reappear in the chamber opera, and an appearance by Sibyl herself. 

Sibyl is part of the international Bergman Theatre Festival which due to the current pandemic has an alternative format.