Harold Manciya flies across the dance floor, his arms winding in every direction while his legs remain completely still — dead still. Left disabled after a plough fell on his back when he was a child, Manciya has been a paraplegic for 20 years.
At 31, he has participated in wheelchair basketball and long-distance walking by wheelchair, and started his own kwaito band. Now he has taken up modern dance at the Agulhas Theatre Works, a dance company at MuseuMAfricA in Newtown, Johannesburg, that teaches disabled people movement and dance.
Under the supervision of the able-bodied Gladys Agulhas, a retired ballerina and freelance dancer, the company has taught disabled children and adults to empower themselves using dance since 1999.
At first it feels strange watching wheelchairs dodge each other like bumper cars on a dance floor. There is nothing graceful or beautiful about a metal chair flying across a stage. But then Manciya grabs hold of his wheels and in one swift and powerful jerk lifts his wheelchair to balance on the two back wheels while turning and jolting them into a choreographed solo.
And that’s when the audience of able-bodied schoolchildren from Riverlea Primary School, who have come to watch the show as part of an awareness-raising programme, gasp and break into applause.
Message
Although Agulhas says she teaches dance for the love of art and ”to invent interesting new things”, she adds that there is a political message behind the company.
Creating choreographed shows that portray the lives of disabled people will promote ”inclusivity” and independence. ”Society wants disabled people to beg,” she says, flexing her muscular arms. ”They [society] don’t want disabled people to be independent; they want disabled people to rely on them.”
Although people are sympathetic, they are not giving disabled people the tools they need to be independent, says Agulhas. ”Through dance we can show that disabled people are capable of working. It’s saying you [the disabled person] can do it.”
Makhotso Sompane (25), who has been a dancer at the company on and off for five years, was born with spina bifida and had to have both her legs amputated after they became septic.
She proudly reveals her multicoloured wooden legs. ”They’re the real rainbow nation,” she says.
For Sompane, dancing has great meaning and boosts her self-confidence. ”I’m ready to do it [work] now. Dancing here is a platform for us to start doing our own thing … now I’m mentally ready to work and do even more dancing.”
It’s the feeling of having ”the audience eat out of [her] hands” that she loves about dancing. ”It’s that ‘oomph’ feeling for me when I’m on stage. I didn’t know what dancing could do for me, but it has opened my eyes. If I didn’t enjoy it, I wouldn’t come back every day.”
When she goes home after nine hours of dancing every day and looks at what she has achieved, she feels great, she says.
During acts, Sompane pushes herself off pillars that surround the dance floor to give her extra speed. She soars across the stage repeatedly, curling her arms in a spiral motion.
Agulhas often uses Sompane and her wheelchair for acrobatic moves, doing handstands and splits by supporting herself on Sompane’s strong arms and wheelchair handles.
Something to live for
Chris Isaacs (43), a blind member of the dance group, lost his sight in 2000 when two robbers smashed his face over and over again with an iron rod. Now blind and with steel plates embedded in his face, he dances and walks long distances to carry out ”a very big message”.
”I’m blind now, but I’m a human being and there’s nothing I can’t do that a ‘normal’ person can,” he says, his eyes hidden behind dark glasses.
Dancing has given Isaacs something to live for; there was a time, he says, when he couldn’t stop crying and tried to commit suicide. ”I decided to go to the freeway because I can’t see the cars, so I was going to walk on to it. I’m talking from personal experience; the Lord started talking to me. He said: ‘I’m going to bring you back from the dead …”’
Isaacs intends to take up bungee jumping to raise money for blind people. ”I can’t see the ground, so why not?” he says, laughing.
Agulhas says that the minute she saw Isaacs in 2005, she ”just had to dance with him”. When they dance, they are always touching. In this way there are no surprises when she jumps on Isaacs and coils herself around his lean body.
Isaacs starts the performance by standing centre stage and, with his walking stick, tapping out a rhythm on the ground that is then taken up by the music.
Agulhas also holds dance classes for deaf children and adults on Saturdays. She says the classes are very popular, attracting an average of 20 people to the lessons.
Despite the large number of disabled people living in South Africa — five million, and more than 80-million on the African continent — few services and opportunities exist for them to participate equally in society. Many are unemployed and live off a monthly disability grant of R820.
Agulhas’s dancers all agree that one of the hardest parts of being disabled is living amid taunts and unfair treatment. Dancing is just one way of countering people’s ignorant attitudes.
Sompane says she doesn’t take what people say to heart. ”If you say something mean to me, you’re just building me as a person and you don’t even know it.”