This year’s Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Dance winner, Acty Tang, came of age in the 1990s. He says, ‘the whole country was changing, the vibe in the air was of extremities of anguish and anger and of joy.”
But, he says, ‘Today, there is this peace and prosperity in our present condition, but you also have these traumatic memories from the past. The pot is still stirring, but people are trying to say it is not.”
He remembers the Nineties as a golden age for theatre in South Africa, probably because it was when he first discovered the power of art. As a teenager, Tang saw two works — Magnet Theatre’s Medea and the First Physical Theatre’s The Unspeakable Story, based on an experience in the life of the surrealist painter, René Magritte. These were works in stark contrast to the plays taught at school. ‘I keep remembering that piece [Unspeakable], it stays with me here and here,” he says touching first his forehead, then his heart.
As it turns out, what is unspoken has become the raison d’être of Acty Tang’s work, to articulate feelings that cannot be easily expressed or understood in words.
‘I want to maintain that original encounter, which is physicality, a direct link to the emotional truth, that resides in the body. I think that is the most important thing for me.”
South Africa has a strong tradition of physical theatre, broadly following two schools. There are the mime-based artists, exemplified by Andrew Buckland, and the dance-based school of Gary Gordon.
‘My work has various tendencies that draw towards theatre, towards visual and sound and song. But I make dance and choreography my primary art,” he says.
Tang is interested in how ‘narrative and ideas interact”, but not in ‘a dance drama” (he rolls the r, gently mocking).
I’ve caught up with him in Grahamstown. An attractive, quiet young man, refreshingly egoless. He cuts a neat figure, tomorrow he will perform his latest work — Chaste. He has a high forehead, but still has his hair, later it will be shaven off for the premiere.
He was born in Hong Kong, but moved to Johannesburg in his pre-teens. ‘Here [South Africa], Hong Kong and the idea of China — my heart will always straddle those different places, therefore I think I identify with people who have experience of the diaspora, who are migrants, the marginalised.”
‘And gay,” I prompt. He nods. Hong Kong is, of course, itself a liminal state. He is also to some extent ethnically marginalised. The Chinese community in Grahamstown, where Tang lives, is minute. He is sustained by creative relationships with people such as Gordon and Juanita Finestone-Praeg.
I ask him what he means by the idea of China. ‘I come from the generation of Tiananmen Square. Even this idea of being a Chinese I am marginal to.”
Seeing Tang’s latest work confirms that he is deserving of the accolade.
‘It is a relief, an affirmation and a morale booster that my approach is recognised,” he says.
At last year’s festival Tang, almost naked, invited people to throw water over him. The year before he performed a work entitled amaQueerKwere.
Chaste is about breaking down audience resistance to themselves and to new things.
‘I see a shift in young people away from a depth of emotion, from a depth of encounter, moving towards a world dominated by quick sound bites, the imagery of mass media. It’s a defence, a preference for laughter at all costs.”
His greatest challenge is ‘to link the avant-garde work I practice” with the broader social ethos ‘dominated by news bites, cellphone technology, mass media.
‘The expressiveness of the body is not only achievable through the techniques recognised out there, for instance classical dance … There are other languages out there that are just not widely known.”
Tang is inspired by the avant-garde Japanese dance form of butoh, which started in 1959 and has strong connections to Yukio Mishima.
In Chaste the dancers take the audience by their hands and place them against their bodies. The traditional barriers disappear. It is particularly unusual in such an avant-garde work, where witnessing the artists’ pain is often moving, but also alienating and disturbing.
‘The driving slogan of avant-garde this past century was to transgress … crossing boundaries as the task of art has exhausted itself … I believe it should shift away from this … to the idea of redemption, healing or restoration, which is also the narrative of this country, hopefully.”
The National Arts Festival ends on July 7. For information, visit www.nafest.co.za