The development of contemporary dance has often been hailed as one of the more remarkable artistic achievements in our new democracy. In the past 10 years companies and festivals abounded, with much of the leadership coming from quarters as diverse as an annual dance festival funded by First National Bank and the challenging discourse put into print regularly in daily newspapers by writer and critic Adrienne Sichel.
At the heart of it all, there is the plethora of established choreographers and the children of the brave new world, the growing number of young choreographers featured on the mercifully increasing number of platforms for the creation of new work.
Beyond this, however, the moving, mutable and richly elastic body was identified and seized upon as an ideal site for a massive range of languages, symbols and cultural iconography reflective of a society in rapid and sometimes turbulent flux.
Witness Hlengiwe Lushaba’s Sacrament in which, with child hitched on her hip, she spits on a crucifix while stabbing a hanging chicken, whose blood pours over her heavily pregnant dancer — all of this against a video of traditional male hostel dwellers pontificating on how a pregnant woman should behave.
Contexts shifted, boundaries between disciplines blurred, visual artist Steven Cohen stormed the Dance Umbrella and city spaces resembled elaborate, ready-made sets for choreographers fleeing the confines of the theatre. South African choreographers quickly became the darlings of the international dance community, epitomised by choreographer Robyn Orlin winning the prestigious Lawrence Olivier Award.
In 2001, after many years of a bewildering lack of funding and axing of companies, the government provided some seed funding to about 15 companies, allowing choreographers and directors the rare comfort of planning and shaping, at the very least, a short- to medium-term vision. The initiative generated major developments. And even with the state’s rocky managment of this, the visionary principle should not be overshadowed by the attendant problems in its execution.
In KwaZulu-Natal alone, this initiative ensured that a fledgling company such as Phenduka Dance Company emerged to produce full seasons with 15 dancers; for Siwela Sonke Dance Theatre to produce more than 30 works in the past year; and Fantastic Flying Fish Dance Company satisfying all tastes — ranging from an experimental season, to a classical ballet production, to a popular musical.
Together with seasons by Flatfoot Dance Company (FFDC) — also courtesy of a grant from the National Arts Council (NAC) all in one year and just in KwaZulu-Natal — this arguably adds up to a significant national trend that has been more than welcome. In the past year the NAC also made available funds to such theatres as the Playhouse to co-produce dance work with these companies, such as the FFDC’s Giselle and Siwela Sonke’s Edge, featuring the work of 18 new designers, choreographers and video artists.
But there was and is a great deal that militated against the development of dance, a lot of dithering and botched attempts at implementing what is essentially sound policy. At the Playhouse, studios and theatres continue to stand empty — an orchestra occupies one of a handful of the rare, sprung dance floors in the city, and dance mats are trashed.
As far as the national structures go, no medium- or long-term plan has been forthcoming. No succour for companies to hang on to a long-term vision. If any old crisis can wipe out effective implementation, it is reflective of structures that are far too fragile. As a maturing democracy, we are ready for a solid, 10-year business plan — not the sudden swerves to the left or the right, the exasperated shouting, odd decisions and the whims of ever-changing boards. And this must be an informed plan.
The current inertia and lack of dialogue between the government and artists is dangerous as it is damaging. Guidelines were put into place through both the Advisory Board Document in 2001 and, even as early as 1996 through the Arts and Culture Task Group, re-commendations for the creation of peer review boards and consultative forums. There is no need to reinvent the wheel for effective and strategic models.
Curiously, dance also reflected an economic policy that abandoned reconstruction and development for growth, employment and redistribution (Gear) principles, mirroring, in turn, a symmetrical favouring of the high arts. Opera and ballet have become fashionable once again, and this is reflective of a new middle class anxious to cap the smell of new money with stealthy liaisons with tulle and sopranos. The hot-shot black entrepreneur is more likely to be swanning around at the opening of Swan Lake than of a new work by Moeketsi Koena. The thirst for lavish spectacle that reinforces notions of power and sophistication is simply indicative of how, in spite of the transference of political power, the dominant collective mindset remains firmly entrenched in colonial iconography.
As with the economic controls of this country, shifts in power relations in cultural relations and integral transformation of key institutions still ache to be made. A post-election optimism does pervade. The government has received the support of an overwhelming majority of the electorate. With a measure of fiscal health having been achieved, a return to issues South African has been promised. Together with the imminent appointment of a new minister of arts and culture, the time is ripe to revisit dialogue and usher in stability, coherence and transparency.
What of the dance itself? Of late, there seems to have been a failure of the imagination. A kind of flatline has emerged in choreography. Sichel commented at the end of this year’s Dance Umbrella on a repetitive language creeping into South African dance.
This may well be true. While she pointed to a lack of choreographic training as an important contributory factor, I also feel that whole contexts need to shift, relationships need re-examining and reworking among disciplines — with audiences, spaces and material — quite simply, with the avant garde and the public. The European notion of waiting for something to happen inside a studio may not be the only way to go. A visit to the recent Dance Umbrella was a case in point. The same dull black box, the same curtains, the same one-size-fits-all lighting. It is ironic that the works that stood out broke through the spatial confines of the proscenium (Gerhard Bester) or the confines of manufactured emotion to the reality of the recent death of dance pioneer Jackie Simela by hijacking (Soweto Dance Theatre).
Other contexts need to shift and stretch as well — the relationship between the government and dance is tenuous and awkward. What stops choreographer Vincent Mantsoe (with a company of 40) being featured at the inauguration of the president? A failure of the imagination? On whose part?
Contemporary choreographers should be urged to stop thinking just in terms of the three-strong dance company and be supported to create large-scale companies that, fired by a contemporary imagination and edgy aesthetics, can inspire a nation as well as rightfully be the pride and joy of the government. If we have fought for what is rightfully ours, why can’t we leave the peripheries and inhabit centre stage without losing our edge? On the other hand, in our justified cries for more funding and infrastructure support, artists sometimes imply that it is the job of the government to provide for its artists.
This interpretation is slightly skewed. It is the government’s responsibility to protect the development of art, which involves the audience as well. Negotiating that tricky area in between is going to be one of the biggest challenges in the next 10 years for all of us — how we swell and develop context and support for not only those who make this art, but also for whom and where it is created. This need not mean dumbing down or abandoning the radical experiment.
One of the most poignant examples of dance to emerge from our new democracy was a work by young choreographer Siyanda Duma inside a rubbish bin at the Meadwood Gardens in the Durban CBD during a recent Red Eye event.
Flailing arms, signalling through flames that looked as though they would devour him, Duma provided a powerful symbol for contemporary dance. The drastic shifts in all contexts (this was an initiative funded by the Ethekwini Municipality) made the work both a shocking and an articulate experience of a man struggling to shrug off his desire to kill white people.
He performed this in a space populated by hobos and the unemployed, at night in the middle of the city, to recorded Indian ragas, shouting expletives in Zulu while his two fellow dancers elegantly negotiated the black-and-white squares of the public chessboard painted on the asphalt. Far removed from the confines of a comfortable theatre, the work provided all the layered complexity of contemporary dance accessible to a wide range of people.
As artists, we also have to take our thumbs out of our bums (or dildos or sparklers) and realise that some of the more drastic innovations are still to be made — in a meaningful relationship between contemporary dance and ordinary South Africans for many of whom, let’s face it, our hard work remains shrouded in mystery.