DANCE: Swapna Prabhakaran
WHY did they call it the Dance Umbrella? For two weeks now, there’s been a gentle but persistent rain over the city of Johannesburg, adding its own peculiar drumming to the rhythms of dance at the Wits Theatre.
The grey downpour outside the Braamfontein building drew a motley crew indoors to share the sheltered space that dancers and choreographers seem to live in.
On opening night the Moving into Dance Too company flourished in the meta-rain. In Pula-Mvula three agile dancers tap-danced in makeshift plastic raincoats, clutching a large umbrella, to the cheerful refrains of Singing in the Rain. It was a tongue-in- cheek celebration of the occasion, and a spirited experiment in uniting dance and theatrical space.
On the whole, though, the tone of the evening was sombre. As one dance piece replaced the next, it became clear this shelter is a temporary therapist’s couch for the current obsessions of the South African psyche.
Corporate Cacophony (discord in the office), choreographed by Christopher Kindo and Denise Stephani, chafed at a raw nerve for many people. It was a ruthless look at the network of anger, resentment and fear that makes up a new South African workplace, where race and gender struggles lead to ever-tightening spirals of destructiveness.
A strong tone of cynicism was prevalent throughout all three programmes that I’ve seen. Arthur Pita and Clair Breton’s carefully orchestrated piece, Momentarily, was dripping in sarcasm. He danced earnestly in a little blue frock, and she sat in the audience talking at the top of her voice into her cellphone, about isolation, boredom and loneliness. Her voice wove sentences around his movements, making for very effective theatre.
I also saw many vehement protest dances. They were making statements of social consciousness against the injustices of the past, and the reflections in the present. Some of them were a literal translation of the testimony of amnesty applications into the language of dance, or a litany of the agonies of poverty and welfare.
Though these pieces often showed inevitably mediocre dancing, I think they are important parts of the therapy process that the arts in South Africa are apparently going through. That didn’t stop me from being bored though.
Among the statements that did work, perhaps because they were metaphorical and open to more interpretations, were Jeanette Ginslov’s Severance, and Timothy Bellew’s Hi!, which was a strong antithetical power play between lust and Aids.
Themes of violence were visible everywhere, echoing the fears that everyone feels – some have called it a pre-millennium paranoia. Violence against women, rape and prostitution, apartheid-era violence, misunderstandings and nameless rage – all of these were very visible.
Craig Morris as the Untouchable, used visual puns to punch home how comfortable we all are with the imagery of violence, masochism, crime and murder. Ironically, this only occurred to me in retrospect. During the performance, the audience was laughing hard right the way through.
Not surprisingly, there were a number of pieces depicting havens of safety in a wistful counter-reaction. Sarah Tudge’s Chasing the Dragon, and Grayham Davies’s Somewhere, both explore the search for an idyllic world.
Meanwhile, in his performance, Charlie Jeffries has found it. He hangs suspended just above the stage in a gorgeous simulation of a womb, blissfully representing one of the safest places in the world – a Womb Limbo.
Diek Grobler offered a rather less successful attempt at minimalism with Music Box Dance – “a comment on the nature of art through the medium of dance”. A giant projection of a plastic music box ballerina spinning through her limited oeuvre was fascinating to watch, but quickly became inane and wasn’t exciting enough to arrest an audience so tuned in to television culture.
Many dance companies put on characteristic traditional or cultural pieces, of Indian, Spanish or Zulu dance. Like soap bubbles that reflect a rainbow, these pieces were spectacular to watch, and non-threatening.
Braver choreographers have tried to synthesize various styles, and often these attempts are unsuccessful or bland.
Everyone, however, was wowed by the rhythmic masterpiece,Talas in Conversation, by Jayesperi Moopen, with dancers from Tribhangi Dance Theatre and Moving into Dance Too, sharing the stage with drummers on Indian tablas and a large African drum.
For me, the performances most interesting to watch were those in which the dancers’ relationships with their physical or metaphysical props serve to create some kind of magic: the ropes that hold Tracey Human’s dancers off the ground and the leaves Denise Stephani dances on in Dust, Robyn Orlin’s swinging naked light bulbs, and the inflatable world on a weary shoulder – all integral communication tools in the procession of dance.
The Umbrella stays up for another week, and I look forward to feasting some more on the glut of enthusiasm and energy it shelters, before we’ll be turned out into the rain again.