It was the week the DaimlerChrysler Award came to town. One felt a sense of comfort in the continuity of it. But that’s the thing about corporate involvement in the arts in South Africa. Just when the public feels most secure in the positive face of private-sector promotion, the tide turns. Big companies change their funding strategies, initiatives are abandoned and accolades once bestowed upon artists in company names are rendered meaningless.
For now, though, the DaimlerChrysler Award is the biggest arts giveaway in the country. So it’s no wonder that the discipline chosen for any particular year comes to a standstill while observers check out whose career is being mapped out for the future.
On November 7 and 8 Newtown’s Dance Factory paid host to eight choreographers with full companies in tow. Given that the award would go to someone under the age of 35, the showcase amounted to a snap survey of the dance scene’s top young practitioners: Gladys Agulhas, Ntsikelelo Boyzie Cekwana, David Gouldie, Gregory Vuyani Maqoma, Madanalo David Matamela, Sbonakaliso Ndaba, PJ Sabbagha and Acty Tang.
No form lends itself better to explorations of time and space than contemporary dance. Dispensing with narrative, the choreographers selected displayed depth and maturity, rising above the dichotomies of good and bad that often persist in theatre. As a result the audience needed a programme with detailed analysis to get to grips with the subtextual meaning of the works. ”Southern Comfort looked at how perceived ideas define where we are, where we meet and what we miss,” wrote Maqoma of his piece based around the difficult jazz of Daniel Hutchinson. ”Songs connect the singer to the dreamtime of the land,” Tang wrote about his pastoral work with prose by Andrew Buckland.
Perhaps the most honed talent in the competition was Cekwana who took his cue from the less-is-more climate of international awards. Cekwana’s The (Re)definition of … had the dancer running around the stage, naked. The sound of his heavy breathing and mumbling was heard via a microphone strapped to his waist while Cekwana undertook a personal rite redefining his ”identity, place, context, space and gender”.
In a strategic move, the award didn’t go to the celebrated Cekwana, but to a lesser-known female choreographer from Durban named Sbonakaliso Ndaba (31). According to the jury, headed by renowned African-American choreographer Donald Byrd, her piece, When the Outside Comes In, presented ”a ritual of horrible and apocalyptic images of nightmarish intensity”.
Ndaba receives a cash prize of R30000 and a sponsorship of R100 000 to create a work. In addition, the choreographer will attend workshops abroad.
Read an interview with choreographer Donald Byrd at www.mg.co.za