Nyamza dances off with Featured Artist honours
ACCLAIMED Cape Town choreographer and dancer Mamela Nyamza has been selected as this year’s Featured Artist at the National Arts Festival (NAF) in Grahamstown.
It’s the first time a choreographer and dancer has been made Featured Artist at the festival.
David April, a member of the NAF’s artistic committee and the 2018 dance programme curator, says “Nyamza encapsulates what Nina Simone once articulated – that an artist’s duty, as far as she is concerned, is to reflect the times, whether they be painters, sculptors, poets or musicians”.
“Nyamza’s work remains politically charged and tackles issues which also challenge societal norms on, among other things, religion and gender-related matters.
“It is quite fitting that audiences far and wide will be given the opportunity to witness her work.”
Previous featured artists include musician and composer Neo Muyanga (last year), director Lara Foot (2016), the genre of satire (2015), director Sylvaine Strike (2014), and director Mike van Graan (2013).
Nyamza, who was born in Gugulethu, will present her work on the main programme.
Confirmed dance works include Hatched and Phuma-Langa, which looks at the revival of language, art and culture, as well as a third work which has not yet been named.
Nyamza is known to explore the deeply personal and challenging issues of culture, tradition and a woman’s evolving sexuality in her innovative work.
She does so by contrasting movement, vocabulary and accompaniments from different cultures.
Her artistry brings together both classical Western music and dance, along with traditional African vocal scores and grounded movement.
Hatched will again feature her son, Amkele, who performed in this production when he was just 8, 10 years ago.
“I have always been inspired by a saying that without losing, winning or getting rewards isn’t so great,” says Nyamza.
“So I have strived, got rejected, but still strived with doing my art, with the knowledge that one day my work can get appreciated, if not recognised. I am truly humbled and honoured to get this recognition from the National Arts Festival.
“Without doubt, it remains one of the platforms in South Africa that continues to strive along with artists, enabling them to reach their fullest potential and beyond.”
This year’s NAF in Grahamstown will be held from June 28 to July 8 and selections were finalised this week, following what has been referred to by executive producer Ashraf Johaardien as “an overwhelming number of high-calibre proposals”.
Visitors can look forward to seeing, among others, Steven Cohen’s performance art piece Put your heart under your feet… and walk! / to Elu – described as an intense meditation on loss, grief and absence, following the death of Cohen’s partner and artistic collaborator, the choreographer Elu.
This work takes the form of a performance, a two-screen projection and an installation of sculptural objects. A myriad pointe shoes – among them Elu’s – invoke his absence, collaged with other found objects embedded with histories, ideologies and beliefs, many of them recurrent images in Cohen’s artistic lexicon.
Boris Nikitin’s Hamlet is presented in partnership with Pro Helvetia. Johannesburg performer and electropunk musician Julian Meding takes on the role of a contemporary Hamlet rebelling against reality. Supported by a baroque ensemble assembled by Neo Muyanga, Meding embarks on a tour de force in which he reveals himself, his body and his biography to the eyes of the audience.
Presented by the Market Theatre Laboratory and Windybrow Arts Centre Youth Drama Company in collaboration with Art of Synergy Circus School, and supported by the French Institute of South Africa, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince is the story of a grown-up meeting his inner child. It’s a philosophical contemplation of loneliness, friendship, adulthood and authority retold for the stage.
A select range of must-see shows will go live for booking on April 2. The full National Arts Festival programme will be available on www.nationalartsfestival.co.za and all shows will open for booking on May 7.
The National Arts Festival printed programme will be available at select Exclusive Books and Standard Bank branches, as well as at some theatres across SA from mid-May.