History is undoubtedly the theme of choice on drama stages at this year’s Festival, but dance has altogether loftier ambitions – the sky is its limit.
This much is evident in three works headlining on this year’s dance agenda, all making use of the often forgotten ‘space of suspension’ between earth and sky.
Ireland’s Fidget Feet and Spain’s Fura both make us look up, bringing aerial dance to Grahamstown.
Fidget’s Madam Silk is in four acts, using three dancers to tell the tale of strong women across history, while Fura (the dancer Pilar Cervera) uses a fixed trapeze and vertical cloths in her two pieces, the second of which is her interpretation of Jorge Luis Borges’ short story The House of Asterion.
And outside, closing the Festival on the Victoria School grounds, catch Argentine ensemble Proyecto 34?S and their production, Machitún, a swinging, acrobatic spectacle in the air and on the ground.
Making magic
Back down to earth, and closer to home, Mamela Nyamza, the Standard Bank Young Artist for Dance brings two new works to fruition.
Isingqala is her solo work exploring the intersections of the dancer and her past, while amaFongkong features Ethiopian dance company Adugna in a piece aimed at underlining the truism that you can make magic out of very little.
Capetonian Nyamza, an Alvin Ailey fellow, is best known for her extraordinary, evolving work Hatch, initiated in 2007 and developing (into Hatched) as the dancer and woman herself evolves.
Most recently it toured to Mexico for the Performatica International Contemporary Dance Festival.
History, it seems, filters onto the dance stage this year too — on the Main is Moving Into Dance Mophatong’s Batsumi, rewinding the clock to the time of hunter-gatherers in an effort to celebrate — and reinvent — their contributions and roles.
Choreographer Thabo Rapoo was the 2009 Standard Bank Young Artist for Dance (also see his work in The Public Oscillation on the Arena stage).
Reaching further back before the time of even the hunter-gatherers, Gregory Maqoma and Vuyani Dance Theatre bring the intriguing Desert Crossings to Alec Mullins, interesting not only for its content but also its funding source.
A great example of imaginative arts management, Crossings is part funded by UNESCO as part of their World Heritage Site arts programme.
The work itself turns the clock back to the time of Pangaea, when future continents were fused and we were, effectively, one nation.
Song as well as dance features, with a distinctive score by Steve Marshall.
Indian dance and music
Music features heavily in the Rajasthan Folk Dance Troupe’s Rajasthan, a celebration of the desert province.
The production comes off the back of a number of Indian dance outings of late, with this premiere exploring not only the dance, but also unique sounds of that dry land.
Included on the programme are the difficult dances of Kalbeliya and Bhavai, the dance of the brass vessels and of the snake charmer respectively.
The Baxter Theatre’s dance contribution this year is Remix’s hugely successful Lovaffair.
Remix, resident at the Cape Town theatre under Lara Foot, is a company of six differently-abled dancers, and the work is a collaborative effort under the directorship of Ina Wichterich-Mogane.
Carefully staged and beautifully realised, it surprises everyone, so expect the unexpected.
Also from the southern tip is Cape Town City Ballet’s Swan Lake, Vladimir Bourmeister’s version of the old standard, dating from the late 1960s, danced 17 times by the company since.
Tchaikovsky’s stirring 1875 score will be in the hands of Naum Rousine and the KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic Orchestra.
The Arena, a space established by the Festival for notable performers to try new, cutting edge work, has grown this year and the dance component features three companies — the Sibikwa Dance Theatre, Tshwane University of Technology and iKapa Dance Theatre.
Sibikwa’s offering is an interactive piece, The Public Oscillation, choreographed by Thabo Rapoo, Tshwane University offers Timothy le Roux’s Chronicles and iKapa’s Fuse is a triple bill created and performed in collaboration with New York’s Steps Ensemble.
On the Fringe the choice is dizzying, a full 35 productions across contemporary, indigenous, jazz, flamenco and physical theatre forms.
Contemporary dance rhythms
Highlights are always difficult to single out, but make sure you catch The Matchbox Theatre Collective’s The Anatomy of Weather, choreographed by Nicola Haskins and Bailey Snyman, with consulting choreographer PJ Sabbagha; English outfit Reverb Dance Company’s Spring Board; Flatfoot Dance Company’s Bhakti, exploring Eastern mystical philosophy and African contemporary dance rhythms; and The Language We Cry In, a première collaboration between the Amaphiko Township Dance Project, Ubom! Eastern Cape Drama Company, and the Kingswood College Concert Band.
And for something entirely different, try Gumfusion, tribal, belly dancing, gumboot and physical theatre all thrown into the bubbling potjie pot.
This article first appeared on Cue Online.
For more from the National Arts Festival, see our special report.
