About Ilona Frege

Biography

lona Frege is a choreographer, dance educator, director, movement coach, performer, and theatre and performance researcher, and is based in Cape Town, South Africa.  She has performed professionally, both as a dancer and an actor, including as a founding member of the ground-breaking First Physical Theatre Company in the early 1990s in Grahamstown, under the artistic direction of Professor Gary Gordon from Rhodes University.

Ilona holds the degrees B.Dram, from the University of Stellenbosch (1985), and BA Honours (Drama) from Rhodes University (1988), specialising in dance, acting, and voice and speech. She successfully completed reading for her MA (Music) in Dance at UCT (2019).

In addition to managing Frege Moves, Ilona also works as an institutional educator and professionally choreographs and performs.

Ilona has lectured in dance, drama, and movement at various tertiary institutions over the years, including:

• in a full-time capacity at the University of Stellenbosch (1989 – 1996);
• in a part-time capacity at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (1998 – 1999);
• in various part-time and guest teaching capacities at the University of Cape Town (2003 – 2019);
• in a part-time capacity at LAMTA (the Luitingh Alexander Musical Theatre Academy, in partnership with Pieter Toerien and Theatre on the Bay in Cape Town) (2019 – present); and
• at Byron Bure Academy of Theatre Arts (BBATA) as Drama and Movement coach (2020- present)

Ilona is also involved in secondary level education at various schools in and around Cape Town, including teaching physical theatre and movement, examining dance exams, and doing the choreography and movement direction for school productions. She authored a Grade 8 and Grade 12 dance unit for text books for schools for the Western Cape Education Department.

Ilona’s 2020 review of D. McCaw’s book, “Training the actor’s body: A guide” (2018), was published by the South African Theatre Journal and can be accessed at the following URL:  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10137548.2019.1703372