STORYTELLER
In praise of the women in his life who raised him to be the man he is,Themba Mbuli talks about the piece that he was commissioned to create for the 2017 Baxter Dance Festival, writes
and the dancers are the authors rewriting their own future through dance,” he said. “The books are emblematic of the knowledge that his grandmother imparted to her grandson and her ability to multitask – literally carry and balance the components of her life.”
Dance was not on Mbuli’s career radar. As a young person, he channelled his anger – over an absent father – and all the challenges of his youth through physical activity: He was cognisant of facing his anger. “I played sport – to keep sane – rugby, soccer etc”. The physicality of sport took on a different dimension and when in primary school, he joined a drama group during Heritage Week.
“I loved the engagement between performer and audience,” he said.
Telling the story captivated him. It wasn’t enough to simply perform. He devised and directed his own work and, during high school, one of his plays won a major award at a festival. “I realised that I have a skill to tell stories,” he said.
Kent Ekberg, a Swedish theatre director, saw him perform and suggested he explore dance as a medium, and introduced Mbuli to Moving into Dance in Newtown, Joburg.
Mbuli was wowed. “I saw people flying on stage – telling stories without using a single word. You did not need to know Xhosa or French. Dance is a universal language. I got it.” Training followed after school – after taking a gap year – and the accolades soon followed. Last year, he received the Standard Bank Young Award for dance. It is the telling of stories through dance that propels him. “Dance is a language to tell stories. Anyone can dance. It is the story that compels me – most of my work has been story-driven.” He has danced and choreographed with prestigious companies and was instrumental in a number of start-ups. He has co-founded Broken Borders Arts Project and the Unmute Dance Company. In 2011, he moved to Cape Town to work with Remix Dance Company. “I fell in love with Cape Town,” he said. However, he continues to commute between the city and Gauteng, and is in demand in the international dance circuit as a dancer and choreographer.
A thrilling aspect of his commissioned piece for the Baxter Dance festival was that he was presented with four dancers who auditioned to be part of the festival. “It is exciting and challenging to be working with new people… I bring the framework and then it is about them bringing their own stories to the piece. This is how I work – collaboratively. I’m like the midwife, waiting for the birth.”
Regarding Autho(r)ise he said: “Growing up in South Africa and travelling the world, I’m always bothered by how men treat women. I have many questions such as: ‘Who gave man authority to be decision makers on behalf of women? Who gave man power to dictate how women should be, socially, culturally, religiously?’
“To me, gender hierarchy is a form of self-hate. Men wouldn’t be treating their daughters, sisters, mothers and grandmothers the way we do if we had a sense of self-love.
“From my observation, there seems to be a continuous disregard for the genocide on women (globally). It feels like a subtle slavery that women have to endure daily from men who feel they have full authority and are entitled to control them…
“Having been raised by women, turning a blind eye feels like a betrayal to my grandmothers, mothers, aunts and sisters. My silence contributes to this genocide.”
Tickets for the Baxter Dance Festival: R100 Main, R70 Off-Main, and R40 for Fringe Season. Discounts for block bookings, students and seniors. Book at Computicket / www.computicket.com/0861 9158000. AS WE grow older, we like to think that we’re over mundane drama and that we’ve become the best version of ourselves. But sometimes we give in to our most destructive instincts and expose the world to the dark secrets that we thought we hid in our fabulous closets long ago.
The UK’s Daily Mail reported an “exclusive” on Thursday: Kim Cattrall, the brash, lascivious Samantha Jones, was the supposed holdout for a third film instalment of Sex and the City, demanding that Warner Bros. produce some of her other movie ideas or she wouldn’t participate in the film. A “source” told the tabloid that everyone else was pretty much ready to start filming.
Meanwhile, across town – or an ocean, rather – Sarah Jessica Parker, otherwise known as the glamorous Carrie Bradshaw, confirmed to Extra a little later that day that Sex and the City 3 was indeed officially squashed.
“It’s not halted; it’s over,” Parker said on a red carpet for the New York City Ballet Gala. “We’re not doing it… I’m disappointed. You know, we had this beautiful, funny, heartbreaking, joyful, very relatable script and story, and I think – it’s not just disappointing that we don’t get to tell that story and, you know, have that experience, I think more so it’s for that audience that has been so vocal about wanting a third movie.”
Though Parker did not explicitly name her co-star as the reason, we couldn’t help but wonder – were the rumours true? Not according to Cattrall: “Woke 2 a @MailOnline storm! The only ‘DEMAND’ I ever made was that I didn’t want to do a 3rd film… & that was back in 2016
However, some of the other Sex and the City cast members didn’t seem to agree. Willie Garson (BFF to Carrie, Stanford Blatch) posted a now-deleted tweet: “And that, is that. And sadly, the reasons are true. Period.” (As BuzzFeed noted, he kept up his retweet of the Daily Mail article, whose headline linked the shelving of the project to “Kim Cattrall’s demands”).
Kristin Davis, who played the uptight, but sweet Charlotte York Goldenblatt, also expressed disappointment on her personal Instagram about the disintegration of the project.
In an interview she taped with Piers Morgan on Monday night, Cattrall reaffirmed her stance on the issue. “It’s quite extraordinary to get any kind of negative press about something that I’ve been saying for almost a year of ‘no’ that I’m demanding or a diva,” Cattrall told Morgan on Life Stories, according to the Daily Mail.
“And this is really where I take to task the people from Sex and the City,” she continued, “and specifically Sarah Jessica Parker in that I think she could have been nicer.” Yikes.