Thebe Mabanga
TELEVISION
The sport-orientated e.tv doccie-soap The Summit this week began a second, 13-week season with swagger and grace as the spotlight fell on dance sport. The previous season focused on boxing and kept 420 000 viewers glued to their screens each week.
“In this series, we look at dance sports as a popular culture phenomenon rather than as a sport,” says Harriet Gavshon of Curious Pictures, the masters of personal drama who honed their skill from the days when they produced series such as Ordinary People.
Gavshon adds: “We are interested in and looking at the machinery behind the preparation.”
The series follows the trials and tribulations of sportsmen and women in pursuit of excellence. It documents in sweat-drenched detail the rigours of competitive sport: the rivalries of big names, the agony of the vanquished and the ferocious release of the victorious.
The season just wrapped, The Summit: No Substitutes, followed boxers at two Johannesburg gyms and the rivalry of trainers Ellias Tshabalala and Nick Durandt. Now, in The Summit: The Winner Takes All, leather and canvas make way for sequins and high heels as the lives of both aspiring and established dancers come under scrutiny.
The cameras follow five of the country’s leading Latin American dancers as they prepare to strut it out for a grand prize of R50 000 a relatively hefty prize for a sport that gets minimal exposure despite the fact that it is said to be the third-largest participation sport in the country after cricket and soccer.
The couples are captured in natural mode as they pound their bodies to prepare for competition, take time off to teach and earn a living, and go about their social lives. They talk about what drives them to push themselves so hard in the face of such little reward: the benefits, or pitfalls, of being romantically linked with a dance partner and the admiration, or hate if they are honest, of fellow competitors.
Running parallel to the big guns’ chase for the big prize is a development component involving 16 participants. They are all taken off the streets, some with two left feet, and given training by leading dance sport trainers Tyrone Watkins and Dave Campbell.
When dance sport made a mild breakthrough in exposure about five years ago two leading icons were Tebogo Kgobokoe and Kagiso Ntsheane. At the peak of their prowess the two split to form new partnerships.
Kgobokoe now dances with Grant Esterhuizen and they are ranked first in South Africa. Ntsheane these days moves in step with Fagmieda Cale, three places below his former partner.
Esterhuizen finds the experience of shooting without the guidance of a script to be awkward without being bothersome. “It has been weird because you have a camera on you all the time. Fortunately, Tebogo and I have some experience from performing and doing studio work,” he says.
The dancer says he is driven by the love for the sport, in which he has been engaged for 13 years and now teaches fulltime in Boksburg, a town on Gauteng’s East Rand.
And what does he think of being romantically linked with a partner? “I do not think you should do it because you must be adult about what you are doing. Being involved might affect your work negatively if things are not well between you and your partner.”
Esterhuizen’s views are not likely to find favour with Brendan Eilers and Chantell Joubert, two dancers who are romantically involved.
Expect some feathers to fly on the dance floor at least.
The Summit: The Winner Takes All is on e.tv, Mondays at 9pm