Natalia da Rocha

Natalia da Rocha (1957- ) is a pioneering South African actress, singer, dancer, director, youth activist and businesswoman.

Sometimes wrongly given as Natalia de Rocha

Biography

She was born in the Cape to a large Capetonian family with a mother of Jewish stock and a father of Portuguese descent. It was a musical family – her father was a pianist and she had sung in his band, so she followed her passion and went to the University of Stellenbosch in 1979-1981, the first mixed-race person to graduate with a Drama degree from that institution.

Finding little work after university, she went went north to live in the cosmopolitan neighbourhood of Hillbrow in Johannesburg, a centre for the entertainment industry in the 1980s. While working in Johannesburg, she met her future husband, actor Kurt Egelhof, with whom she would have three children, one of them the performer Talia Egelhof (aka Talia Alexis)

In 2001 she returned to Cape Town.

Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance

Musical work

A consummate veteran in South African cabaret and stage, she really began her career when she got up on stage one evening at No 58, a well-known Hillbrow restaurant with entertainment, and was offered a weekly cabaret gig there with her long-term creative partner, Sam Marais. The pair went on to perform with a band in a show called Coffee and Cream, which ran for ten months and which later became the duo’s stage name.

From these beginnings she developed cabaret as a central feature in her ongoing performance career. Among other things she is well known for her convincing and energetic staged impersonations of international divas such as Tina Turner.

Her various other contributions to South African music include collaborating with legendary South African musician Neville Nash on a TV special commemorating his achievements (during the 1980s), hosting her own retro-hits radio show Classic Hits of our Time on Kaya FM, co-writing the African Child theme for the International Crystal Awards for Women in Film (1997), and singing Bly by My, the theme song of the 1984 Jans Rautenbach movie Broer Matie (song written by Christa Steyn) .

Stage work

Her broader stage career has also been wide-ranging and critically acclaimed, encompassing a various forms across the country, including regular performances at the a number of the many South African arts festivals, including the Suidoosterfees, KKNK and Cederberg Arts Festival, and worked for Cape Town's Baxter Theatre, the Wild Coast Sun resort's mainstage and Sun City in their Extravaganza (1987). Among the numerous nominations and awards she received, count a number as Best Musical Performer (e.g. at the Artes Awards in the mid-1980s) and Best Actress (e.g. at the Vita Awards in the early 1990s).

Over the course of her stage career she appeared numerous productions, often musical shows, including The Boy Friend (1980), Fangs (1982), Barnum (1984), Godspell (1985), Die Verhoor (1986), Movin' (at Sun City, 1987), Ain’t Misbehavin’ (André Huguenet Theatre in 1990), Gathering of the Beasts (1991), Jimbo (1994), Vere (2001), Die Laaste Aand (2002).