/ 25 February 2011

Moving home

Moving Home

I was supposed to meet choreographer and performer Sello Pesa at Arts on Main in downtown Johannesburg. He couldn’t make it. Instead, he sent Brian Mthembu and Humphrey Maleka, performers from his dance company, Ntsoana Contemporary Dance Theatre, and his lighting collaborator, Vaughn Sadie.

The three are working on a collaborative piece for this year’s Dance Umbrella. Titled Inhabitants and conceived by Pesa, it examines “inner city spaces” in Johannesburg.

According to the director’s statement, Inhabitants examines how “a doorway becomes a home merely through the occupation of space, even though it does not have the traditional structure of four walls and a roof”.

By way of preparation, every morning the performers traverse the Johannesburg streets, each day in a different location, breathing in the chaos and espying unlikely homes made in doorways, pavements and abandoned buildings.

Sadie says the piece addresses the plight of homeless people, the daily choices they make and the impact of those decisions on their lives. “What informs those choices? Are these people desperate?” he asks.

Concurring, Maleka says: “We are talking about homeless people who live in the city. We are asking whether they are homeless by choice, desperation or some other reason.”

Sadie tells me that, as a Durbanite, he is trying to understand Johannesburg. After the interview, the trio took me to Goethe on Main’s courtyard, where the production will be presented. Sadie was keen to emphasise that they would use the courtyard and part of the pavement that runs parallel to Main Street, not the interior.

Exploring things
Their piece is not limited to movement, “a body moving in empty space”, Sadie explains. “We can’t just present works that focus on structure, dance concepts and other theory. We don’t exist in a vacuum. We want to explore things, not only using dance theory but using the everyday.” Says Maleka: “We don’t spend all our time in the studio; we spend time exploring the idea on site.”

The Dance Umbrella presents something of a privileged space for dancers to explore their craft. This year’s event is a more streamlined platform than in previous years, presenting a tight schedule of 15 works over 10 days.

Last year the event’s long-term sponsor, First National Bank, ceased its funding and it seemed that the livelihood of the nation’s premier dance forum was under threat. But the National Arts Council, Rand Merchant Bank, the Goethe-Institut, Business and Arts South Africa, the City of Joburg and other partners have made this year’s festival possible.

The strength of the programme lies in its all-African content but, sadly, there is only one work from beyond our borders. Lagos-born Qudus Onikeku, now resident in France, will present his deeply personal work, My Exile is in My Head. The production was brought to South Africa courtesy of the French Institute of South Africa and the French Consul.

My Exile is based on The Man Died, the prison memoirs written by his compatriot and Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka. The book dealt with the author’s incarceration during the Biafran war. The account, about his 22 months in prison, is by turns searing and claustrophobic, combining anger and an acute sense of the injustice in his home country. The dancer and choreographer brings to Soyinka’s work a frenetic and twitchy energy.

Intellectually challenging, stamped with something madly enigmatic and presenting an introverted sense of home, it’s an elegy for a vanished childhood. The fact that Onikeku compares his exile with Soyinka’s horrendous experience (some of it spent in solitary confinement) should give one a sense of the depth of his angst and displacement. In a newspaper interview Onikeku spoke of the disappointment he felt at his return to Nigeria after spending time in Paris. Perhaps the piece addresses the contradiction between the cerebral notion of home and the physical reality of the place one returns to.

Onikeku’s film, Do We Need Coca-Cola to Dance?, will also be screened. The work is a personal journey that explores the African artist’s place in the globalised world. Thus its title.

Other works on show at the Dance Umbrella include Bloodlines, a collaborative piece by slam poet Iain Wok Robinson and Durban’s Flatfoot Dance Company. Mark Hawkins choreographs Hotel, a production based on a poem by Guillaume Apollinaire that features music by Philip Miller and costumes by Robyn de Klerk. On a lighter note, PJ Sabbagha will present I Think It’s Hamlet, a humorous take on Shakespeare’s tragedy.

Performances will be held at the Dance Factory, Wits Theatre, Goethe on Main and the University of Johannesburg Arts Centre from February 25 to March 6. For a programme, visit: www.artslink.co.za/arts. Tel: 072 703 9332