--- title: "Cat got your tongue? Certifiably funny Cape Town comedian goes canine crazy" description: "Alan Committie, two-left-footed comedian and internationally acclaimed animal whisperer, is emceeing this year’s edition of Dancers Love Dogs, a one-night-only gala event happening on 3 November at Artscape in Cape Town." type: "NewsArticle" publisher: "Daily Maverick" site: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za" section: "THE INTERVIEW" author: "Keith Bain" author_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/author/keith_bain/" canonical_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-11-03-cat-got-your-tongue-certifiably-funny-cape-town-comedian-goes-canine-crazy/" published: "2026-11-03T14:17:47" lang: "en-ZA" word_count: 1168 --- # Cat got your tongue? Certifiably funny Cape Town comedian goes canine crazy > Alan Committie, two-left-footed comedian and internationally acclaimed animal whisperer, is emceeing this year’s edition of Dancers Love Dogs, a one-night-only gala event happening on 3 November at Artscape in Cape Town. By Keith Bain · Published 3 November 2026, 16:17 SAST ## Key points - Alan Committie will emcee the upcoming Dancers Love Dogs gala evening on 3rd of November at Artscape, a much anticipated annual event where the worlds of pups and the performing arts collide. - The gala, Brigitte Reeve-Taylor’s brainchild, brings together the dancing community and local dog lovers in this wonderfully wacky event supporting a good cause. - Each ticket sold funds the sterilisation of an animal, and helps support the education and assistance of communities affected by the animal welfare crisis. - Committie teases a return to his drama student days — when he was trained as a dancer before embarking on his comedy career – with plans to perform a narrative dance with Helen Zille’s life as the subject, Tate McRae on the backtrack, and a Great Dane for his duet partner. ## Content Comedian and actor Alan Committie is crazy about canines, though he says his travel commitments make it impossible to keep pets these days. “Sadly, I’m not a dog parent. I wish I was. I absolutely adore dogs, and it’s one of the reasons why I do this show.” The show is Dancers Love Dogs, an annual charity gala event happening on 3 November. Committie will be emceeing, as he has done for the last eight or nine years. “That’s human years,” he confirmed, “not dog years.” In an exclusive interview with Maverick Life, Committie confessed that one of the reasons he always agrees to host Dancers Love Dogs is that “I get to hang around with some of these magnificent dogs”. ![Alan Committie. 2019. (Photo: Jesse Kramer)](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/cLKHEkYjt8p50hm62qypn_HN8IY=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/attachments/orphans/Dancers-love-dogs1_645533.jpg) *Comedian Alan Committie. (Photo: Jesse Kramer)* “The big ones and the small ones, I love them all. The little yapper dogs are magnificent, too. *Yap, yap, yap.*And if they get very irritating, you just push them further down into your handbag. Or so I’m told.” Committie claims his ideal dog, today, would be a bulldog. “I love the bulldog. My spirit animal is a warthog, and the warthog is essentially the bulldog of the wild kingdom. They are stubborn, headstrong, determined, clownish and just magnificent creatures. I love them.” He says his last canine companions were a Border Collie and a basset hound. His Border Collie was named Jessica Fletcher. “She would solve murders in the neighbourhood.” The basset went by Boris Johnson. “Because he had those silly floppy ears,” says Committie. “He looked stupid, but was hilariously entertaining.” On a slightly more serious note, Committie said that Dancers Love Dogswas a personal calendar highlight. “It’s honestly one of my favourite events of the year. It’s why I say yes to it quicker than I do to any other event in the year. It’s the superb brainchild of Brigitte Reeve-Taylor. She does this amazing job of bringing together the dance community, of which I’m a huge fan. Their dedication, their unbelievable spirit, and the way they create such beautiful work. They’re coming together for this gala performance which manages to sell out every year.” Committie said that as much as the gala was a singular gathering for dance fans, it was also an opportunity for Cape Town’s dog lovers to get behind a “great cause”. “Each ticket pays for the sterilisation of an animal,” he explained. Ticket sales also contributed to ongoing efforts to educate and assist communities where unwanted litters brought additional pressure to the already overwhelming animal welfare crisis. Dancers Love Dogshas over the years paid for more than 35,000 animal sterilisations. We asked Committie why he’s been asked – repeatedly – to participate. “Why? Nobody knows, but it’s important that I’m there,” he said, indicating that part of his job – apart from telling jokes – was to maintain decorum behind the scenes. “Backstage, there’s a lot of humping of legs, and weeing, and yapping, and running around in circles,” he said. “And that’s just the dancers.” Committie confirmed that, “like the dancers, the dogs also get out of hand backstage”, which is where his own brand of animal magnetism becomes useful. “My task as the emcee to bring some of that raucous behind-the-scenes energy onto stage. It really is a barrel of laughs, loads of fun.” ![Dancers with dogs. (Photo: Ingrid Owen)](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/SKUnQOKHdZmf1O7sdWsliJ52kJo=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/attachments/orphans/Dancers-love-dogs5_180082.jpg) *Dancers with dogs. (Photo: Ingrid Owen)* ![Gemma with dogs. (Photo: Ingrid Owen)](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/MFVsxMWLe3lMpsGewCBOj0hZPMA=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/attachments/orphans/Dancers-love-dogs6_629338.jpg) *Dancer Gemma with dogs. (Photo: Ingrid Owen)* Of course, for true Alan Committie fans, the actor-comedian’s involvement within the dance fraternity will come as little surprise. “Anyone who has been following my career closely enough will know that I was trained as a contemporary dancer back in my drama school years,” Committie said, although only when pressed relentlessly for further comment about the recent speculation. He says everything he knows about dance he gleaned from his training in the mid-1990s, “from the superb talent that is Jay Pather”. “It was from Professor Pather that I learned about the tap-tap of the chest, and about reaching out towards the audience, the extension, the second foot, the candelabra, and a buttock held aloft in the air. And this isn’t even the dance. This is just a very, very exciting Wednesday night in Cavendish Square. “But I do love contemporary dancers, and I think one of the reasons I love them is because they take themselves so very, very seriously. It’s that seriousness and weight that creates comedy juxtaposition and incongruity, and it’s just perfect fodder for this comedian.” Committie said that, as a comedian, choreographers and dancers were a tremendous inspiration. “I love watching dance in all its many styles and genres, and I generally admire them from a distance. The precision, the dedication, the many, many hours that they put into it. And then what I do is I send it up within seconds, and sometimes I still look better than some of those doing it. Isn’t that strange?” Committie did, however, reveal that his uniquely avant garde and singularly bizarre dance style may in fact finally be getting the recognition it deserves. “It’s still hush-hush, but the really big news about the gala is that I might well be doing my dance. It hasn’t been confirmed yet, so it might change on the night. But what I’m hearing is that I will be doing my *pas de deux,*which is a French term meaning ‘two frogs’, because of the shape of the legs. “If all goes to plan, I will be dancing with Anja Ingrid Wieger. She’s a Great Dane. She has wonderful paws and two enormous jowls, although she always says to me, ‘Don’t look at my jowls, focus on my skill!’ That’s what she says. Or rather, she doesn’t say it, she barks in a very deep voice. “We’ll be dancing the life story of Helen Zille, sub-scored by Tate McRae’s ‘Housewife’ in a thrilling arrangement by Charl-Johan Lingenfelder’s younger brother, Petrus-Johan Lingenfelder. He can’t do music, so what he’s going to do with the track, nobody knows. But it’s certain to be something audiences will love.” ![IMG_0825- photo Ingrid Owen](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/UhtHqTBZefnBNcJNGxx9wir6kRk=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/attachments/orphans/Dancers-love-dogs8_281331.jpg) *Committie quips that the dancers and dogs can both ‘get out of hand backstage’. (Photo: Ingrid Owen)* Returning to modesty, Committie wanted it to be made clear that, contrary to ongoing rumours, he in fact has had “very little ballet training” at any point in his life. “My turnout,” he said, “well it turns out so far that it actually goes a full 360 degrees and ends up being back to where it was originally.” He said that while some steps he takes in his stride, many others get caught in his throat. “It’s true that I *pas de deux*better than most, but certain French terms I just can’t do. And because I speak French so badly, I can’t do the ballet. So once I’ve mastered French using Duolingo, I feel that my ballet will improve too.” **DM** *The Dancers Love Dogs charity gala takes place at Artscape on Tuesday, 3 November. Tickets are available through through Webtickets.*