Charl Blignaut: On stage in Johannesburg
Confounding though it may seem, it is quite likely that one of the main reasons South African contemporary dance finds itself poised on the brink of serious international acclaim has to do with the battle for resources and a workable artistic space that local dance has had to emerge from. Struggle has a habit of breeding tenacious artists.
But, if the struggle is in fact over and the time has come to test the standard of emerging South African choreography within the parameters of a decent budget, then we should, for once, thank FNB Vita and the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology.
Each year since 1994, they have identified the two most promising young choreographers working in a contemporary dance language at the annual FNB Vita Dance Umbrella and have commissioned a new work from them on a budget of R10 000 each.
For one heady evening we can see what a talented young South African choreographer’s work would look like under normal production circumstances, with luxuries like sets, costumes and a decent lighting rig at their disposal.
David Gouldie, a former ballet dancer turned bad and taken to hanging out with the contemporary dance crowd at Durban’s Playhouse, and Gregory Maqoma of Johannesburg’s Moving Into Dance were the two choreographers selected to close the annual FNB Vita Dance Umbrella with their commissioned works last Saturday night.
They find themselves in pretty fine company. Previous bursary recipients include the likes of Vincent Mantsoe, Boyzie Cekwana and David Matamela, all three overnight darlings of the international dance circuit.
Gouldie’s The Last Time I Checked I Thought I Loved You is an elaborately designed exercise in ambiguity and the art of expressing the unexpressed. Feeding off a strange formalism, possibly bred from years of ballet discipline, the work constantly threatened to venture out, but instead retstrained itself, producing the quietest sort of radicalism within the slightly tired scenario of dancers in surreal hoop skirts constantly clinging but then letting go.
Gouldie obviously knows where he’s taking his work. It’s no mean feat to pull off conventionally solid moves with the framework of a muttery, polyrhythmic soundtrack, but all the same, one kept getting the feeling he was trying too hard to be precisely that –conventionally solid.
Maqoma’s Layers of Time, on the other hand, suffers from no such restraint. An amazing performance from Moving Into Dance – and Mantsoe in particular -thrust right into the auditorium a beautiful and jazzed-out celebration of the basic ability to move.
Flirting with the presence of several pairs of gumboots littering the stage before eventually bursting its stitches, Maqoma’s new piece is not unlike a potted history of the rediscovery of tradition. The perfect tension between playful convention and crazy-mad busk had the crowd eating out of the company’s hands. If Maqoma’s heading for bigger things, on Saturday night showed he intends getting there by going back to basics.