Wisps of embraces whip into gales of intimate movement. Little cyclones of emotion fuel swirls of breezy lifts from a thigh, on a shoulder, into an elbow, from two partnering knees.
There are moments, high in the Braamfontein University Corner movement studio, when water is rippling over two stones triggered by Gustavo Santaolalla’s violin soundtrack. These are liquidly honed human bodies.This duet being rehearsed by Nicola Haskins and Bailey Snyman is for Matchbox Theatre Collective’s The Anatomy of Weather season, which officially launches our dance year.
At a brief count, greater Joburg and Soweto currently house 15 active contemporary dance companies, or projects, existing on various levels of funding and plenty of ingenuity. Matchbox was founded in Grahamstown in 2006, when the First Physical Theatre Company closed due to lack of funding. After two weeks of crying, and thinking they would never dance again, Snyman and Haskins created their company.
Tired of being asked by audiences “what did that mean”, their first collaboration, Le carnival de ma vie, an amalgam of their Rhodes University training in physical theatre, contemporary dance, acting and mime with Gary Gordon and Andrew Buckland, was directed by Craig Morris.
This production, a favourite on the arts and schools festivals circuit, put Matchbox on the map because of its core mission as performers, choreographers and educators to build audiences through its schools workshops, in Joburg and Cape Town, and performances.
While on stage they have had a high profile in a number of highly flamboyant roles in Dada Masilo’s Romeo and Juliet, Carmen and notably, last year’s Swan Lake. Their own choreographic and movement signatures are very different.
For the past three years Haskins has been teaching at and making physical theatre works for the University of Pretoria’s drama department. The peak of her achievement was One-way (2010) a collaboration between the Tshwane University of Technology and Pretoria University, which toured to the National Arts Festival and was a highlight of the Jomba! Contemporary Dance Fringe in Durban.
Snyman, physical theatre lecturer at the Wits School of Arts since 2008, found his stride in the HIV/Aids-themed Clockwise (performed in excerpt form as Outside at the 2010 FNB Dance Umbrella) and Façade (2010).
Both choreographer -directors have a gift of communicating shades of sexuality and social violence to their student performers.
They first met in 1999 when the fourth year student from Kimberley auditioned the Joburg first year for his first choreographic work, which was inspired by Sam Shepard’s play Buried Child. For Matchbox’s latest creation they are departing from the literalness of Carnival.
“We got that out of our system,” laughs Haskins. “We have grown up now,” counters Snyman. Part of that maturity is their ultimate goal of creating the first choreographic institute in South Africa.
Thanks to funding from the National Arts Council, Matchbox’s High Rising, hit by the World Cup NAC funding cut, has morphed into The Anatomy of Weather. Their friend and mentor, Forgotten Angle Theatre Collaborative PJ Sabbagha, is still on board and is the consulting choreographer who oversaw two weeks of the creation process. Haskins and Snyman are joined by Penny Ho Hin and recent P.A.R.T.S. graduate Thamsanqa Ka-Majela.
Climate change and that conversational ice breaker, “How’s this weather?” seemed the ideal topic du jour. But for Matchbox, the unpredictably of human relationships became the perfect fit.
“Bailey and I are not passionate about global warming. But how do you make it real?” asks Haskins. “Audiences have to connect on an emotional and personal level. Like a body of the weather. Weather is a metaphor of our experience.” At this point their thoughts and sentences flow into each other. Just like their bodies and spirits on the rehearsal floor.
l See the The Anatomy of Weather, designed by Karabo Legoabe, in the Wits Downstairs Theatre from February 1 to 4 at 8pm and February 5 at 3pm and 8pm. To book log on to strictlytickets.co.za