Spotlight South Africa blends personal and political
Works by Mamela Nyamza and Luyanda Sidiya stimulate debate and conversation
Mamela Nyamza is throwing a revealing light on those emblems of classical ballet, tutus and toe shoes, in the North American premiere of a provocative work that presents them as emblems of repression. The Meal is one of two works Nyamza and her company perform as part of Canadian Stage’s threeweek, multidisciplinary Spotlight South Africa festival. It echoes what she calls her “love/hate relationship” with a European art form that fascinated her from childhood, growing up under apartheid in the troubled township of Gugulethu, outside Cape Town.
Her first ballet teacher was a white woman who came into the township. In an all-black class, Nyamza accepted ballet’s rigorous demands without much thought. When the end of apartheid made it acceptable for her to take up a scholarship at a prestigious academy in Pretoria, everything changed. Nyamza was now the only black woman in her class.
She came to grasp that classical ballet was not just made for different bodies; it was inherently alien to her culture.
The Meal, abstract, metaphorical and complete with tutus and toe shoes, is her often witty testament to that awakening. It also parallels the awakening of a liberated South Africa.
“It’s the smartest piece of political art I’ve seen in my life,” says Matthew Jocelyn, Canadian Stage artistic and general director.
This is Jocelyn’s third, biennial “Spotlight” festival, modestly inaugurated during his first season in 2011 with a focus on Italy, followed by another featuring artists from Japan in 2013.
“I wanted to have a symbolic event that epitomized Canadian Stage’s commitment to international arts and other arts disciplines,” explains Jocelyn. “We feature international work throughout our seasons, but the festival allows us a more extensive view of a specific country and this year’s is our most comprehensive ever.”
Beyond dance, drama, performance art and puppetry, the festival includes ancillary programming such as an “Artist Panel” series, preand post-show chats, and student workshops.
Jocelyn says he’d had a general interest in South Africa’s arts scene for many years, but it was only during his first, eye-opening visit in September 2013 that he decided the young nation should be the focus of his next Spotlight.
“In Canada, I don’t think we fully understand the vitality and political force of these artists. Their artistry is heightened by their political consciousness and their political consciousness heightens their artistry.”
That political consciousness is not necessarily limited to the South African context. The personal, almost autobiographical journey that 39year-old Nyamza, a divorced single mother, travels in Hatched, her second festival presentation, speaks at a universal level to gender issues and personal identity.
Its wellspring is deep, drawing on Nyamza’s self-realization as a lesbian and the lingering pain of her mother’s 1999 rape and murder.
“Coming out was hard, but it also freed me,” she says. “After my moth- er’s death it was as if I heard her voice telling me, ‘Don’t just dance; dance for a purpose.’ So I’m trying to say something to the universe.”
Luyanda Sidiya, the other dancerchoreographer featured in Spotlight South Africa, also has strong socialpolitical awareness. Dominion, part of a double bill of his work opening April 22 at the Bluma Appel Theatre, conjures images of dictators such as Adolf Hitler, Moammar Gadhafi and Robert Mugabe in its portrayal of cycles of popular revolution and repression. It addresses not only some of the unfulfilled dreams of postapartheid, democratic South Africa, but “it touches on both national and global issues of power,” Sidiya says.
Sidiya, 32, has since 2013 been artistic director of Johannesburg’s world-travelled Vuyani Dance Theatre, founded in 1999 by another leading figure in South African contemporary dance, Gregory Maqoma.
Like Nyamza, who spent a year studying at the Alvin Ailey School in New York and later performed in The Lion King in Amsterdam, Sidiya’s resume is international.
He and his dancer-teacher wife spent almost four years performing in England.
Both could have made successful careers abroad but are committed to their homeland and determined to use their artistic voices to make it a better place.
“As artists,” says Sidiya, “we must be brave and provocative, but in a healthy way that stimulates debate and conversation.” Spotlight South Africa runs until April 25 at the Berkeley Street Theatre, 26 Berkeley St., and the Bluma Appel Theatre, 27 Front St. E.; canadianstage.com or 416-368-3110.