Step into ballroom of 1960s with Kramer

Langarm, explores the ballroom dance culture of the 1960s.

David Kramer’s latest musical, Langarm, will be presented at the Fugard Theatre from Tuesday November 20.

Langarm is a story of love and intrigue set in the story-world of Cape Town’s ballroom dance culture in the 1960s, when the new apartheid laws were coming into effect.

In 1965 when Dinah Levin is widowed, she invites her nephew, Jeff, whose fiancé has just dumped him, to help her manage her late husband’s Canterbury Hotel. Here he meets the lovely, young ballroom dancer Angelina, and when she asks him to partner her in The Swaziland Ballroom Championships, he sees it as an opportunity to humiliate his ex.

Aware that he’ll risk arrest by flouting the law, he throws caution to the wind and agrees.

Jeff decides to rejuvenate the hotel by offering langarm dances. When Eddie Jephta, the leader of the Moonlight Serenaders langarm band, comes to play at The Canterbury Hotel, Dinah has to confront the secrets of her past.

“I have been wanting for many years to do a musical inspired by the langarm-ballroom bands from this time,” says David Kramer.

“I grew up watching my parents dancing to the music of these bands, and Langarm pays homage to the likes of the Johnny Lyners Blue Moon Jazz Band and Willie’s Starlite Orchestra.”

Tickets cost from R150 to R260 can be booked through the Fugard Theatre box office on 021 461 4554.