Years ago, as a young journalist, I received an unexpected invitation to lunch. It was from the queen bee of South African glossy magazine publishing, Jane Raphaely. The iconic “fearless female” practically created the magazine industry in SA, launching Fairlady and then proceeding to edit and publish the bible for sex-curious teenagers and young career women, Cosmopolitan.
She was our very own Helen Gurley Brown. Raphaely was going to be in Johannesburg and wanted to meet me. I was thrilled, intrigued and nervous. Was she going to ask me to edit that salacious glossy? Did I have to brush up on my knowledge of the Kama Sutra and some career-enhancing mantras for a fast track to the C suite?
As it transpired, she was not hiring. She was doing something else entirely. I was getting “Janed” — a term coined by another young journalist, Mandy Weiner, which referred to the multifaceted experience of lunching with Raphaely. Years later we discovered to our mutual amusement that Weiner was also on Raphaely’s lunch radar. What being “Janed” entailed was a subtle form of her self-appointed method of mentoring — disguised as engaging and charming lunch conversation. Eventually I did work for Raphaely as editor of one of her stable of magazines, Marie Claire, but the real relationship had been forged in that magical space where we met regularly for lunch and I got to pick her brains as she picked mine.
After spending a few days last month at the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative weekend at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City, I re-examined this relationship and thanked my lucky stars that I’d been fortunate enough to be “Janed”.
Rolex has been running its mentoring programme in a much more formal manner for 20 years and I’m sure that lunch is encouraged. Every two years it pairs four remarkable mentors with four protégés in the associated fields of the visual arts, film, literature, music and architecture and then creates enabling circumstances for them to riff off each other’s minds. The principal effect is the sparking of generative chemistry. There are no formal expectations of what the collaborations will produce.
Rolex is setting up a conducive environment for a creative meeting of minds. It facilitates regular meetings and engagement for the protégés and mentors and ensures ideas can be actualised. The projects generated are presented at the celebratory weekend and often further afield. But, inevitably, as a result of this subtle curation on the part of the Rolex team, the mysterious synaptic synergy that happens when you take a master of their craft and throw them together with a young person brimming with potential is sparked and a long-term relationship is forged.
I’ve witnessed the marvellous results for two rounds of the programme. The first was before Covid struck when the Rolex Arts Weekend was at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town. Lara Foot, the CEO and creative director and one of the first protégés, mentored by the late great theatrical genius Sir Peter Hall, hosted the global community of mentors and protégés.
This elevated thought festival experience remains for me a halcyon moment in human inventiveness and creativity, not just because of the remarkable, talented humans gracing the theatre in such understated fashion but because of the sad unfolding of two years of Covid less than a week after it ended.
I still marvel at the energetic beauty of the dance programme by Senegalese protégée Khoudia Touré, a pioneer in urban street dance, created in collaboration with her mentor Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite; and the wonderful insight into the dialogue between architect Mariam Kamara and her mentor Sir David Adjaye, and their plans for a new cultural centre in Niger’s capital, Niamey. Eavesdropping a conversation between cellist Yo-Yo Ma and Wole Soyinka over drinks remains one of the most joyous moments.
The programme has facilitated 58 pairings. From SA specifically, apart from Foot (2004-2005) the list includes William Kentridge (mentor 2012-2013); Nicholas Hlobo, who was mentored by Anish Kapoor (2010-2011); and classically trained Londiwe Khoza, who was mentored by acclaimed Israeli dancer-choreographer Ohad Naharin, former director of Batsheva Dance Company in Tel Aviv. Another South African is the new protégé for the (2023 -24) cycle, visual artist Bronwyn Katz, who’ll be mentored by the highly acclaimed Ghanaian sculptor El Anatsui.
In Brooklyn I realised that one of the most valuable attributes of the programme is that these mentors and protégés have a continued and sustained engagement with their broader community of fellow Rolex mentees and protégés. Much of this is ensured and encouraged through these weekends at which the acolytes meet in an ever widening and deepening like-minded community, spurring on new connections and collaborations. It’s the ultimate virtuous cycle.
This year in Brooklyn, the four mentors, Spike Lee, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Phyllida Lloyd and Carrie Mae Weems, were paired with four spectacularly talented young artists in their fields: filmmaker Kyle Bell; visual artist Camila Rodríguez Triana; theatre maker Whitney White; and visual artist Agustina San Martín. The results were inspired and inspirational.
FILMMAKERS
SPIKE LEE WITH KYLE BELL
Brooklyn is Lee’s hood, immortalised in his seminal films that changed filmmaking and put the borough on the international map. The Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative weekend is set on these streets in part to honour Lee.
He chose Bell because he was adamant he wanted to work with a young Native American filmmaker to redress the inequities of the past. “I grew up playing cowboys and Indians with cap guns and The Lone Ranger on TV. Later, as a film student, I watched the f***ed up films of John Ford and that racist John Wayne,” said Lee.
Bell presented two short films reflecting experiences in the Native American community, including the world premiere of a documentary called Lakota, profiling a young woman grappling with the effects of the suicide of her sister. Basketball is the common theme running through his work and a link with Lee. The intimacy and rawness of the storytelling made the presentation moving.
About the mentor relationship, Bell said: “Everybody can remember when they first saw a Spike Lee film and what that experience meant to them, what doors opened in terms of using your voice as a person of colour, the possibilities of making films outside the mainstream and the acceptable narrative of what’s centred on screen. Watching Spike telling these stories in the context of his culture in the location where he grew up empowered me to continue creating stories about the place I come from. Telling honest stories about the hard things my people went through means a lot to me.”
Bell’s honest communication made an impact on Lee: “He’s given me insight into what happened on the res (reservation) from broken treaties, shenanigans and skulduggery imposed by the United States on people who were on this continent first. It’s disgraceful.”
VISUAL ARTISTS
CARRIE MAE WEEMS AND CAMILA RODRÍGUEZ TRIANA
Weems is a groundbreaking American artist working in text, fabric, audio, digital and photography. Her Kitchen Table series redefined how we look at the complexities of womanhood, marriage and the nuclear family. She chose to work with Rodríguez Triana and viewed the process as an open-hearted dialogue between like-minded artists. “I love the way Camila works with her hands. She has the ability to work beautifully and intricately and she’s taken the notion of women’s craft and pushed it into a more conceptual range.”
Rodríguez Triana presented Patrimonio Mestizo, her first US solo show in mixed-media exploring her identity as a Mestizo woman from Colombia. It’s a heritage she identifies with physically through her genetic inheritance, but it was never acknowledged by white, black and indigenous communities. She reconstructed the ancestral Andean cosmology to explore our transitory existence between birth, death and the spiritual world. Through embroidery, photography, audio and installations the work draws the audience into a liminal space, which speaks to these themes and to colonial heritage in a moving, intimate manner. On her mentorship with Weems, Rodríguez Triana said: “This time in my life has been empowering but I see my career as a long road — many hours of work and a lot of persistence.”
DIRECTORS
PHYLLIDA LLOYD AND WHITNEY WHITE
The consummate British stage and film director, who brought us Mamma Mia and TINA — the Tina Turner Musical, chose to mentor White, an accomplished director, musician and composer in her own right. She says she learned to make good choices about what to work on when one is inundated with choice. “Phylida has had an incredible career. She worked on Mamma Mia in the theatre and then made the film Iron Lady. She powerfully and quietly takes up different spaces — that’s profound,” says White.
In the spirit of taking up different spaces she presented the world premiere of The Case of the Stranger — created in the vein of her work Macbeth in Stride as a stage concert combining Shakespeare’s words with her original text and music. The work is an impassioned argument for a compassionate refugee policy and is based on a passage attributed to Shakespeare that powerfully calls for a way to understand immigration and borders. It’s a celebration of human connections.
Lloyd said of the experience of working with White: “As a young artist you fear that if you turn something down, you’ll never work again. Part of my job as a mentor is to tell her that it’s fine to say no to some things. You’ll be asked again because you’re a great artist.”
THEATRE MAKERS:
LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA AND AGUSTINA SAN MARTÍN
Miranda’s show, Hamilton, has profoundly altered musical theatre in the past few years. Now he’s broadened his creative output to include film. His latest project is Disney’s The Little Mermaid. He wanted a protégé relationship that was equally broad-based — hence the choice of San Martín, an independent filmmaker from Argentina. She worked with him on his film directorial debut in precisely the collaborative way the mentor/protégé synergy is meant to be sparked. “Agustina was an invaluable sounding board during the process of directing my first movie, Tick, Tick... Boom. She’s a vivid, poetic, imaginative thinker.”
San Martín presented a magical and novel installation/film/documentary called Childhood Echoes, a meditation on memories evoked by childhood songs. The images of the interviews conducted with colleagues, strangers and Miranda were projected onto clouds with an original score. It was a deeply humane and immersive experience. On working with Miranda she said: “I’ve learned so many things. I’m now focused on creating a narrative for a broader audience. Lin-Manuel is a master of that.”
