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After 30 years of pioneering contemporary dance, Dance Umbrella announced it was closing – but the platform was picked up by the SA State Theatre and renamed Dance Umbrella Africa. Internationally celebrated choreographer Gregory Maqoma attended the shows and says they reflect the people's anger.
Dance Umbrella Africa arrived in Pretoria a few weeks ago and stayed true to its theme: Figure-Ring.
I did not see all the productions on offer but saw enough to come to the conclusion that dance in Africa is alive and well – and that urgent intervention, dialogue and action is needed to address the diverse issues raised in the work, of history, politics, identity, culture, gender inequality, and social and economic exclusion.
Minds and bodies challenged audiences, questioning South Africa’s state of being, of survival, in a time of widespread state corruption. The week-long programme appealed for a hygienic political dispensation.
The mood in Pretoria was of contemporary dance as a revolutionary new movement. Our new generation of post-apartheid dance practitioners is observing society and telling it as it is. They are clear that the country is in trouble and they are frustrated.
The festival, under the curatorship of Mamela Nyamza and with unprecedented support by an institution, The SA State Theatre, took over the 30-year legacy of Dance Umbrella, which was under the stewardship of Georgina Thomson, who battled a lack of sustained structural support.
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Dance Umbrella Africa 2019 opened with The Dish by Oupa Sibeko in collaboration with Thulani Chauke and Benjamin Skinner, as well as the audience who received a broadcast from the satellite dish, a cocktail of metaphors, along with cheese, wine and grapes served by the performers. At the end one walks away with a realisation that we are all consumers, exterminators of truth and violators of our own Constitution. Greed has reduced many of us to stray dogs, homeless and hungry. Dish was performed in the Opera Marble Foyer of the theatre and immediately followed, in the Applause Foyer, by a launch of the book Body Politics: Fingerprinting South African Contemporary Dance by author, researcher and doyenne of dance, Adrienne Sichel, who announced her retirementfrom writing.
Her legacy lives on in the book as well as the establishment of The Ar(t)chive hosted by the Wits School of Arts as a space for research and an archive of dance history in Africa.
On the same evening, in The Drama Theatre, was a double bill, Yours Truly, Gavel, by accomplished female dancers and choreographers Thandazile “Sonia” Radebe, Julia Zenzie Burnham, Lulu Mlangeni and Teresa Mojela in white overalls, questioning the systems and conditions faced by the workers who drive the economy of our country. It told of the daily labour and struggle for bread by the landless classes. Eddie Ndou’s Troupe De Dance presented My Journey, My Foot Work, which used isipantsula to drive the issues, like a toyi-toyi, performers wearing their mothers’ dresses, questioning the nation that they have inherited – unemployment and poverty embodying the pain their mothers endured, which still faces many young black township dwellers. Their dance was buoyed by a sense of trouble, of consequences brewing.
Many works that followed in the week carried similar themes, telling it like it is, performed with sincerity and so much bravery, attaining truths that will evade even a commission of inquiry appointed by the president. This was dance with fists, punching with honesty and urgency.
Issues of LGBTI rights, misogyny and patriarchy also ran like a seam through the week, often provocative and emotionally searing.
Dancer and choreographer Thamsanqa Tshabalala’s Simon paid homage to queer icon and struggle hero Simon Nkoli, performed to a harrowing score and visuals.
Roseline Wilkens’ Cry The Beloved Eldos claimed a space for the mixed-race community and was a cry for Eldorado Park residents, caught in a spiral of drug use and crime, to be heard.
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As the buzz and hype of the Dance Umbrella Africa festival came to an end, the theatre complex still reverberating with the sound of words, music and stamping, filled with the breathing of performers, sweat lingering in the air, we returned to our various realities with a new political focus.
A range of issues voiced at the festival will remain to haunt us as we return to our lives of survival and a deep sense of doubt in the political offering leading to the polls. To our communities ravaged by unemployment, crime and the protection of the corrupt.
Dance may not be able to save us, but it is able to open new and old wounds so that we can seek healing. The festival offered a requiem, a moment to pause a little and seriously reflect and come to the decision to act.
As I reflect on the reality of what the performers and performances delivered, I come to the conclusion that South Africa is still a divided nation, not only divided along lines of race but also in economic disparity and class inequality. Dance Umbrella Africa made it abundantly clear the gaps are not narrowing, but growing wider.
My hope is that in future years, under a renewed vision and purpose, the festival will grow from strength to strength and that one day we will dance to a different tune at Dance Umbrella Africa.
- Gregory Vuyani Maqoma founded Vuyani Dance Theatre in 1999 and has won numerous awards and accolades and international acclaim. He has most recently choreographed and performed in William Kentridge’s new opera, The Head and the Load, as well as choreographed the stage production, Tree, a musical collaboration from Idris Elba and Kwame Kwei-Armah. Maqoma’s hugely successful solo work, Exit/Exist, will return to the South African stage. Due to popular demand the show will be on at The Market theatre in Johannesburg from May 9 to 19, produced by the Vuyani Dance Theatre and performed by Maqoma.
