Boyzie Cekwana is no longer content to let his dancing do the talking, writes Lauren Shantall
It’s what Ntsikelelo “Boyzie” Cekwana says, that matters. Watching him dance is to gaze transfixed as a graceful being effortlessly co-ordinates movement into beauty. It is to be smitten. Not by any kind of aesthetic elegance, nor by the flurry of rapidly morphing compositions, but by the dancer’s ability to communicate.
Audiences have been sitting up and listening to this renowned performer and choreographer’s intuitive, fluid melding of traditional African dance, modern, jazz, classical ballet and performance for many years. He has been widely praised for his ability to comment intelligently on these formative influences and then transcend them with an idiom that is strikingly fresh and decisively contemporary in its concerns.
Flashy adjectives like “wunderkind” have been bandied about in his presence. As have a Standard Bank Young Artist award, an FNB Vita Choreographer of the Year award, an FNB Vita Dance Indaba Most Outstanding Male Dancer award and, most recently, this year’s FNB Vita most outstanding male dancer prize.
On a par with choreographers like Robyn Orlin, Jay Pather and Mark Hawkins, he’s danced at Switzerland’s Basel Tanz Festival and done pas de deux for the Queen of England. Twice a year over the last four years he has worked and performed to acclaim with the Washington Ballet.
But one of our finest exports, who has no plans to leave South Africa, is reluctant to sing his own praises. Cekwana turns the conversation, instead, to the political undercurrents dragging South African dance back into a slough of blocked advancement.
While the political terrain has shifted dramatically since 1994, dance appears to have missed its cue. Tripping up lazily behind the rest of the country, transformation has occurred superficially, at the more visible lower levels. It may be a historically groundbreaking fact – and testament to his talent, rather than a politically correct gesture – that in 1993 Cekwana was the first African choreographer to be appointed as a resident artist in the history of the performing arts councils in South Africa. But it’s also reprehensible that our past has necessitated such a dismayingly odd achievement, listed harmlessly in a curriculum vitae.
“My kind of dance, contemporary and classical is predominantly run by white, middle-aged females who occupy the administrative hierarchies,” says Cekwana. “Inevitably, their whims, tastes and standards dictate everything. It’s fine when you’re a young kid, because then all you want to do is dance. But you don’t stay a young kid forever. It becomes a bit tiresome when 10 years later you look up and you see the same faces in the same positions. And you look around you and the industry has gone nowhere.”
“I am at the stage of my life where I am not happy with the status quo. I kept quiet and continued with my own work, but I am not going to keep quiet about the status quo any more. We need a changing of the guard. All the structures to do with dance in South Africa need a radical shift. The old guard must go.”
He credits the annual Dance Umbrella and Indaba as two of the few structures that have provided a much-needed platform for emerging dancers and choreographers. He’s hardly being reactionary. Cekwana’s distaste for the divisive studio mentality which prevails in this country and which has long separated dancers along colour lines is more than understandable. So is his rejection of provincial structures.
“I would like to see a situation where choreographers are not owned by individuals or companies, but belong to the industry, belong to South Africa. We must stop having these outdated ideas of resident choreographers. Paying someone a salary and owning them are two different things. The industry is not big enough to own people. We need a situation that is so open and accessible that it benefits everyone involved in it.”
Cekwana speaks firmly, but quietly, with the kind of resignation that seeks to contain years of frustration. Not content to rest on a pile of laurels and rhetoric, he is now directing his energies into establishing an entirely independent company of three core members. Capturing, in a well-turned phrase, the gravity defying control of dance, the aptly named Floating Outfit Project is intended to be a rootless, unaffiliated creature. Although based in Durban, its thrust is not provincial at all.
At any rate, it’s probably best that Cekwana intends to travel as much as possible. A demanding calendar has rushed him from Pather’s critically feted A South African Siddhartha at the National Arts Festival, to a performance at the Nico last Saturday and the recent Confluences conference organised by the UCT Ballet School.
He and the Floating Outfit Project are currently in Cape Town as the guest company of the annual FNB Vita Dance Indaba. In between tutoring workshops and giving a master class to Jazzart, Cekwana will be floating above the boards until Saturday July 24.
The FNB Dance Indaba takes place at the main theatre at the Baxter in Cape Town from July 21 to July 25. Starting at 10am on Sunday July 25 is a fringe day that is free to the public