Humphrey Tyler reports on the Napac Dance Company’s latest offering
WHAT is happening to dance in South Africa, probably the world? Where are the tutus?
The dancers in the picture advertising the latest dance performance coming to the cavernous Opera Theatre in the Natal Playhouse in Durban for 11 performances shows one of the dancers wearing goggles. It is because in one scene there is so much powder thrown around the stage that it gets in the dancers’ eyes. Also up their noses. They would sneeze except their nostrils are stuffed with tissue paper. Is this art?
It is in fact theatre, says Mark Hawkins, the artistic manager of the Napac Dance Company, who is eating muffins in a break between rehearsals. Boyzie Cekwana, the company’s resident choreographer, agrees enthusiastically. His piece in the programme is called Brother, Brother. It started off (so rational) being performed by two male dancers.
Now it is still called Brother, Brother but there are three male dancers and two female dancers, who are the two brothers’ wives. The third male dancer is a malevolent force. The music is by Vivaldi and Schoeman.
“Listening to the music made me change direction,” says Cekwana. Hence more dancers.
Another piece in the programme has also undergone metamorphosis. It was called originally Breakfast for Three; there were three dancers. Now there are eight dancers and the piece is called Breakfast for Anyone Who Wants to Come. The choreographer, Neville Campbell, has just flown in from Zimbabwe.
“He works very fast,” said Hawkins. “He may add still more dancers to the piece.”
The present cast consists of seven male dancers and one female. Why the preponderance of males?
Hawkins shrugs. He adds: “The guys are now working harder than the girls. They don’t just hang around any more.”
Campbell, who comes originally from Leeds, runs the increasingly renowned Tumbuka Dance Company, whose performances this year at the Standard Bank National Arts Festival in Grahamstown were a triumph. The company in Harare consists of between 10 and 12 young black male dancers and one white female dancer.
Campbell has used some traditional music in his unusual piece, some Coppelia and Romeo and Juliet. Hawkins shakes his head. He guesses this will freak out some people.
Another visiting choreographer, Janet Smith from England, is rehearsing downstairs in the bowels of the Playhouse building.
You wind along numerous passages and climb up and down stairs and go around corners. You could be in a cave looking for the minotaur. Is that Theseus? No, he’s from security.
It is hushed in the rehearsal room but not dead quiet. Some dancers are gathered around Smith. Others are sitting against the walls. They can do astonishing things with their bodies. Casually one slides her legs along the floor and does the splits.
Blues by jazzman Muddy Waters plays softly over the speakers. Smith has a surprising way of counting the beat. For example: “32, 3, 4, 5, 6 … 1.”
“Do that in slow motion,” she tells one group. She reassures them: “It’s going to be like this for a couple of days, until we work through it.”
But the dance has a mesmeric quality already. Smith says something about “bringing order out of chaos” and “very plastic movement; you are cutting space”.
On the night, the dancers will wear jazzy boots and the girls will wear miniskirts. Jazz. “Quite funky,” says Hawkins. “It’s theatre. The boundaries are breaking down. Drama and so on. It’s all theatre. Open up. Enjoy.”
The Natal Dance Company is wide open to all influences. Some of the company are keen to take singing lessons. What next?
Smith is in Durban thanks to the British Council. She carries on counting: “32, 3, 4, 5, 6 … 1.” The dancers seem to be getting the hang of it.
Perhaps the most controversial piece in the programme is Robyn Orlin’s production called the explosion of stars is not only reserved for ticket holders. Orlin doesn’t waste time with capital letters.
She is returning to Durban from Chicago, where she is on a Fulbright scholarship, at the end of the year to direct something she calls if the whole population of China jumps at the same time the earth would shake. Towards the end of her current piece the girls go bare-breasted and a male dancer strips completely.
Hawkins is annoyed that this has been “so misunderstood”. It is symbolic. He says the dancers are peeling off old habits, the old South Africa, and then they dress up in the new.
What about tearing up books on-stage and eating some of the pages and spitting them out?
Same thing, says Cekwana. They’re getting rid of old indoctrination and spitting it out. “Like getting rid of Bantu Education. You know how it was forced into people,” he says.
Hawkins is wearing a T-shirt with a scowling dwarf’s face labelled GR’MPY. He says he puts it on to warn dancers in the company when he is feeling short- tempered.
At the local cafe the man behind the counter gets the message as well. “Got your Grumpy T-Shirt on today,” he says.
It’s a false alarm. “Actually I’m feeling fine,” says Hawkins.
This season is probably the Natal company’s most ambitious. For a start, it is playing in the biggest theatre in Natal, the Opera in the Natal Playhouse. More than 1000 seats a night. Everything is new. Not one tutu.
* The season called Explosion of Dance starts on September 13.