It seems that dance at the grassroots is treading water, struggling to move forward. The FNB Dance Umbrella’s mixed platforms have posed a familiar challenge. One has had to sit through their group programmes annually, for over a decade. In over four hours, and after watching up to eight dance companies, one gets a pretty good snapshot of dance now.
In the works of the younger set of black choreographers one repeatedly sees yards of cheap fabric sewn into a sort of mix and match, futuristic African aesthetic — it’s Star Trek on safari.
Then there are the rows of un-coordinated youngsters trying to keep in step to soundtracks crudely spliced together from household favourites. Still, it is obvious why this event is regarded as a dance laboratory of international repute. Choreographer Irvin Teme of the Inzalo company aptly summed it up in his programme note. He said his work ‘explores our personal doors which remain unopened — yet unlocked”.
In other words, there are infinite possibilities. There is potential waiting to be unleashed. New choreographers are fumbling for the keys.
There was something mildly disturbing in Teme’s Behind Closed Doors. Three hyperactive, jittering youths, in this instance fashionably dressed, in a sort of tribal trance, trying to make it through the jammed doors of the mind.
On the other end of the spectrum was Reginald Danster’s sophisticated Too Sweet, funded by the Department of Arts and Culture of the Free State. Its opening minutes were enigmatic and anarchic as a troupe of colonially dressed adults playing children meandered across the stage, talking rubbish. (‘Please, I need eight rand for school fees,” one repeated.)
Then there was the Ezithuthukayo’s astounding Reconstruction and Development Bliss, the result of time spent by performers in the shacks of Alexandra, Etwatwa and Tamboville. A full screen projection showed the journey of these wayward new dancers through the densely corrugated shacklands, and into the polluted wastelands beyond. Onstage there was mayhem, topical to the week of local elections. A boisterous woman with a Democratic Alliance rosette laughed out loud, oppressively, while another wept as her shack leaked in the rain (there was real water onstage dripping from her roof).
This is movement hewn from real life. Indeed ‘docu-dance”, as I’ll call it, has learnt valuable lessons from its cousin, docudrama.
Into this landscape, later in the month, is thrown one of the world’s top choreographers. Emio Greco and company will perform Conjunto di Nero (Conjunction of Black), a work directed by visionary Dutch theatre director Pieter Scholten. The Times of London described Greco as ‘a performer of almost Mephistophelian intensity. Greco is in command of one of the most exciting, original and eccentric dance vocabularies of anyone in contemporary dance.”
It will be the Italian-born, Amsterdam–based choreographer’s second visit to the country. Greco, who has interacted with top South African choreographers at festivals abroad, is familiar with the standard of dance here at home. I spoke to him on the telephone this week.
When I saw your work in Double Points in 2003 I wrote that your dance was quite similar to recreational dance, similar to what people do when they go out and dance in clubs or at parties. In other words, I understood that it didn’t derive from any meaning per se, but that it exists for its own sake.
There is maybe an aspect of what you say in our dance. Of course, the origin of this dance comes from a different place — from a technical background, from knowledge of the place of the dancer in contemporary society — where dance comes from. In performance, as you said, there’s a sense that dance can be a revelation of the human being — it is a way of communication. I’m conscious of that and I take that part into consideration.
There’s never any reason given for why people are dancing on your stage. This is interesting because I notice on your website that there’s some discussion about authenticity. What is authenticity in the realm of your choreography and company?
Of course, there are different ways we consider authenticity. On the one hand we consider authenticity maybe, let’s say, as a politics or a statement. This dance now is a language, a medium to used talk, to communicate a stance in an autonomous way. That’s language that doesn’t die — it keeps evolving. I try to free it from the opportunistic way of thinking, from an opportunistic way of creating which I observe a lot around me in the dance field.
Also, there is an inner authenticity which, I think, is more intrinsic, and it belongs to the friction between authenticity and reproduction. Dance is also about reproducing something. It’s basically a group of people onstage dealing with a certain language, with a certain codification. But that reproduction should be an expression as much as possible of an authentic source. This authentic source is created by me, but the dancers also have to find it in themselves so that the authentic stays alive and it doesn’t die. It doesn’t get forgotten in the production of the piece over and over again.
Does that mean you have an affinity with traditional forms of dance, like African forms? Where, not to stereotype, communities dance out of a particular need rather than a commercial situation?
Absolutely. I really believe that, yes.
And when you’ve come to South Africa, what is your experience of local dance?
I got a glance of South African dance in Vienna, where I met people from Jo’burg. South Africa I think is the strongest African dance community. I also worked with [choreographer] Gregory Maqoma. There was a bunch of people that followed our work — that were inspired, and they were very inspiring to work with. There is a human understanding that makes me very close to them.
When I came Jo’burg I saw there’s a strong, real need to do something to change the situation. There’s a need to involve their reality, in the dance scene, or maybe in the whole society through dance. There’s a need to make dance independent and really exciting to the whole world. But I think, also, that the history of South Africa sometimes influences their way of thinking a bit too heavily. It holds the dance back from being completely free to express the power that is contained in the culture. Sometimes the need of the choreographer to talk about the social aspect and the political aspect slows the process down. I spoke with Gregory and said, in my opinion, he could find a little more independence. The term ‘free” doesn’t mean a denial of things, a denial of where you came from because you are a result of circumstances, this is undeniable. But it is important that [freedom] must be used to put forward another way of thinking so that things are not just clearly present, not literally present.
I think it would help if there would be a little bit of an abstraction. All this cultural background would get strength from being a little more abstract. It would bring in another energy — there would be huge potential and things would really move. It could change the world.
The Dance Umbrella continues until March 18. Emio Greco performs on March 10 and 11. Tel: 011 482 4140. Visit www.artslink.co.za