We’re still here – 23 years on! That’s the joyful message of Dance Umbrella which weathered the funding storms to present a 10-day bonsai edition of this vital contemporary dance festival.
It was touch and go, but artistic director Georgina Thomson and her Dance Forum team never lost the faith and managed to secure life-saving funding following the departure of long-time sponsor First National Bank. The heroes in this scenario are the National Arts Council, Rand Merchant Bank, Business and Arts South Africa and key partners.
Scanning the programme of this compact line-up, with a national and continental bias, it is gratifying to note at least 16 women choreographers are listed across the 16 programmes.
That does not detract from the fact that it is still a battle for serious- minded female dance makers here, and especially elsewhere in Africa, to have their artistic voices seen and heard.
But it is heartening that at this year’s Dance Umbrella audiences will experience the signatures of pioneers the calibre of Durban’s Lliane Loots (whose Bloodlines opens the fest in a double-bill at the Dance Factory on February 24 at 7.30pm) who is joined by other generations of equally feisty artists (who happen to be women).
Also on the main programme is Cape Town’s Mamela Nyamza, Standard Bank Young Artist Award 2011 dance laureate, with her installation work Shift (March 3 and 4, Wits Downstairs Theatre, 6.30pm). Lulu Mlangeni, featured on this year’s poster dancing in PJ Sabbagha’s Deep Night, premieres her first solo, ? ,(February 28 and March 1, Wits Downstairs, 7.30pm). Mlangeni is also one of the Ophelia’s in Sabbagha’s I Think It’s Hamlet (February 25, 26, 27, Wits Downstairs, 8pm).
No longer participating are Madagascar’s Julie Larisoa, recipient of the first Puma Creative African Award for Women in Dance (in Mali), and Ethiopia’s Meseret Yirga, who were collaborating in the Pan-African project Vumbi (March 5 and 6 Wits Theatre). But Hind Benali, co-creator of Mirage (March 5 and 6, Wits Downstairs) with Soweto’s Thabiso Pule, arrives from Casablanca this week.
The casualty of this shortened festival is that only one Stepping Stones day is presented instead of two or three. Forty groups had to be turned away from this community showcase.
The main programme features works by invitation only including a revival of Tshwane Dance Theatre’s Redha’s Giselle (March 4 and 5 at the University of Johannesburg Arts Centre, 7.30pm).
The exception to this new rule is The Fringe (February 26, Wits Theatre, 2pm), which offers 17 works by established dancers like Moving Into Dance’s Sonia Radebe and Muzi Shili as well as Cape Town’s Ebrahim Medell testing their choreographic mettle. This marathon ends with an excerpt of Matchbox Theatre Collective’s The Anatomy of Weather.
Film is not neglected. The Goethe-Institut presents a Pina Bausch retrospective with screenings of Auf Der Suche Nach Tanz (March 1, Wits Nunnery, 3pm) and Café Muller Fruhlingsopfer (March 3, Nunnery, 6pm). Bausch specialist Norbert Servos will talk at both showings.
Providing a glimpse of how challenging it is to make and perform contemporary dance from Lagos to Maputo, from Cairo to Joburg, is Qudus Onikeku’s landmark documentary Do We Need Coca-Cola to Dance?, courtesy of the French Institute of South Africa and the French Embassy.
Three years ago this Nigerian dancer and acrobat spent his holiday at the national circus school in France performing in the streets and public sites in various African cities. He and his team also interviewed dance and cultural specialists on the intellectual and practical aspects of this art form. This screening (February 26, Dance Factory, 3pm) is preceded by performances of his Dance Africa Dance! 2010 winning solo, My Exile is in My Head, (Dance Factory February 26, 7.30pm February 27, 2pm).
Then there are the surprises.
Veteran dance professional Mark Hawkins was commissioned by MIDM to create Hotel (February 28, March 1, Wits Theatre, 8.30pm) with a score by Philip Miller. Joburg-based Sifiso Kweyama’s circle (February 24 and 25, Dance Factory, 7.30pm), which has premiered at festivals in Durban, Yaoundé, Cameroon and Arnhem, Holland, gets a whole new audience.
As does the flamenco duet To Whom Shall I leave My Voice? for Capetonians Veronica Williams (67) and Nicole Kleinhans (23), which was commissioned by the 2010 Baxter Dance Festival. The La Rosa Spanish Dance Theatre director Carolyn Holden (Carolina Rosa) explores the passing on of knowledge and the question: “As we grow older are we considered to be oracles of wonder or thrown away like old toasters?”
Look forward to 10 days of explorations and revelations.