If you thought you were going to see site-specific pieces at Dance Umbrella this week, think again.
Similarly, the notion of modern and post-modern (South) African dance is also debatable.
This cerebral spin was what the recent colloquium Emerging Modernities unleashed.
Hosted by the Gordon Institute for Performing and Creative Arts (Gipca – directed by Jay Pather) at the University of Cape Town (February 18-20), this colloquium was a think tank for theorists, curators, teachers, researchers, students, visual artists, composers, dancers, choreographers, theatre directors and performance artists. Or anyone engaged in making, or thinking about, conceptual performance, or engaged in inter-disciplinary activities.
In his keynote address, Professor Achille Mbeme set the tone for the discourse and linked performances.
“Have we in South Africa ever been modern?” was the explosive question he asked, then unpacked, in reaction to post-colonial thinking and current realities.
“Culture is not just a form of service delivery” was another provocative thought which hovered over the weekend and interacted with works presented by Peter van Heerden, Sello Pesa’s Ntsoana Contemporary Dance Theatre, Magnet Theatre, composers Jeanne Zaidel-Rudolph (collaborating with the Ngqoko Cultural group) and Neo Muyanga.
Gipca 2010 fellowship recipients Van Heerden and Anne Historical (Bettina Malcomess) unveiled their research in the form of Monument, an evening performance in which a Victorian European explorer takes a tour group from Cape Town Station (with security guards in tow) to the walls of the Castle where Peter van Heerden carved a replica of Table Mountain (from a huge pile of sand) with his body. Forget historical monuments – this is real estate up for grabs. The pushy estate agent (Leila Anderson) paid no heed to the fact that people were living there in at least one double-storied shack or that the real inhabitants – migrants who occupy this piece of prime no-man’s-land – were viewing this artistic mayhem from across the road.
More aesthetic adventures into the heart of the city were provided by Ntsoana’s In House initiative transplanted from Joburg.
In Woodstock, Brian Mtembu lay in a main road like a piece of rubbish while a female street cleaner asked, “Should I clean him up?” as taxis whizzed by, dangerously close.
Humphrey Maleka played his colonial invasion games in a garden drive-way in Gardens. Again the audience was transported in taxis which were hosed down by Pesa, who also washed one (and Ubuntu’s cloth tokoloshe penis) in Keizersgracht Street.
Van Heerden’s provocative black-faced Ubuntu (who introduces himself in isiXhosa: “My name is ubuntu and I come from Africa”) also took on the resonance of a Cape minstrel who was trying (unsuccessfully) to hitch a ride on a Sunday morning. Then he was chased, told to “F**k off! Tsamaya!” and stoned by Pesa’s xenophobic taxi driver. At last sight Ubuntu had vanished against Table Mountain.
Throughout the weekend there were innovative examples of rewriting, interrogating, dismantling and reconnecting with our cultural history. Yet, as Pesa explained in the panel discussion – Performance and the African city: multiple tongues, hybrid formations and translocations – their work isn’t easily pigeonholed.
“I’m trying to find a language as a dancer-choreographer. Projects like this push your body and how you relate with your audience. Is it site-specific or audience-specific? That’s the question we ask ourselves, I don’t understand site-specific. I do know about ceremonies in the townships. We have tried to find answers.”
Ntsoana’s latest quest is Inhabitant, which premieres on Thursday at Dance Umbrella at Goethe-on-Main. Playing a major role in this continued investigation into the zeitgeist of Joburg streets is conceptual artist Vaughn Sadie. This is an extension of Sadie and Pather’s “performing the streetlamp” project in Fordsburg last August.
While Pesa is obsessed with connecting with virgin urban audiences Alan Parker is targeting seasoned dance-goers in Retrospective – Altered Daily. In this series of Dance Umbrella interventions Parker, Gavin Krastin and members of Grahamstown’s First Physical Theatre Company are inspired by American dance pioneer Yvonne Rainier’s Trio A (1966). Working off her minimalist principles, the performers revisit seminal South African contemporary dance works such as Steven Cohen’s Chandelier, Robyn Orlin’s daddy… and Gary Gordon’s Shattered Windows.
The locations are the Dance Factory, Wits Theatre and University of Johannesburg foyers at 7pm or 8pm before performances.
Site-specific? History-specific? Post-modernism African style? Viewers will decide.