Blood, sweat and triumphs: how
A new artistic producer has brought a liberating energy to the Cape Town City Ballet, and the dancers are
In a huge white-wall studio, with daylight pouring in through high picture windows, spilling from the speakers was George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, the early 20th-century composer’s most famous work, full of pizzazz and jazzy up-tempo, heart-soaring rhythms.
On the floor, the men were one moment being used as chairs, the women perched on their shoulders. The next moment, they were being hoisted, maybe a leg raised, toes pointed skywards. A kind of seduction, a romantic tease, ensued.
It was demanding choreography effortlessly executed. Broad, deliberate smiles on the dancers’ faces, even in moments when, surely, they wanted to fall on the floor and cry, their bodies aching, broken, exhausted.
Instead, despite lungs on fire and sweat glistening, there would be another power-lift moment, their partners suddenly over the shoulder or overhead. Then volley after volley of pulse-quickening leaps, throws, catches and twirls, a simultaneous mix of playfulness and control, feet flexed and arched just so, fingers poised, heads at precise angles. All this interspersed with coy, furtive glances, flirtatious exchanges, sassiness, schmoozing, unwavering cool.
There was no mistaking the gender dynamics, the sensuality, seductiveness and hip-centred razzmatazz of a kind of whirlwind glitz-and-glam party full of glamourpusses and handsome geezers. The women possessed a porcelain doll grace, poise and perfection as they spun on the tips of their
toes. The men, some ripped and shredded, others lean and sinewy like they have ropes beneath their skin. All of them magically concealing exhaustion, barely out of breath, hardly a hint of effort, aside from a few telltale sheens of sweat.
My own heart was racing, however. It was like watching a sprint and a rugby match all in one: exhilarating to behold, exhausting simply to see it unfold.
The rehearsal was apparently a gentle one, the objective being to let David Ward, a guest dancer who’d flown in from the US the night before, find his place in the whirlwind action.
At some point, amid the swirls and twirls and pirouettes, the women suddenly went limp for a sequence that choreographer David Nixon referred to as a “mannequin” moment. The females feigned motionlessness, becoming dead-weight objects that the men pushed, pulled, lifted and dragged around the space like rag dolls, the women fearlessly being spun and lifted and held.
At the end of it all, Nixon turned to those of us watching and, as if surprised by the effect of his own choreography, whispered: “Now that’s a workout!”
Then a sly smile filled his face: he knew precisely how tough it was to do what they did.
Shock to the system
“It’s very showy,” said Cape Town City Ballet dancer Hannah Ward during lunch. “We’ve got to bring a lot to the work. When a section is 10 minutes long, towards the end you’re
exhausted. And that’s when you need to pick it up, so stamina is critical. This show has been a shock to the system.”
The show, I Got Rhythm, is Nixon’s inaugural production since taking over the company as artistic producer. Ultimately, he explained, the ballet company will also share the stage with dancers from Jazzart Dance Theatre, plus singers from Cape Town Opera, and the orchestra.
“Ballet orchestras are always in the pit and that makes them feel that they’re lesser than [the dancers], even though the music is so central to what we do as dancers. I thought, why not make them visible to create a real connection between musicians and dancers?”
It is, Nixon said, a way of gathering various tribes in Cape
Town’s performing arts community in a celebration of unity.
Nixon first began tinkering with elements of the show in the late 1990s, completing it just ahead of his departure from Ohio’s Balletmet in 2001 to become the artistic director of
Northern Ballet in Leeds in the UK, a position he held until his so-called retirement at the end of 2021. He said that after six months of watching
Judge Judy, he was ready to start working again, which is how he came to be in
Cape Town.
Despite his demand for precise movements, the Gershwin programme has became symbolic of Nixon’s interest in bringing a freer approach to the form. In Leeds, he used the show to loosen the company up. “It was good for the dancers because it allowed them to move out of the style they’d become set in.”
Though artistically liberating, it’s incredibly demanding because it incorporates elements from dance genres other than classical ballet. Nixon said his own instincts as a choreographer are rooted in a strong tap background and flamenco dancing, both of which inform his extensive classical ballet experience. He said Gershwin’s music is ideal for a show that’s about bringing together contrasting elements. The composer was himself at the intersection of genres and styles.
“He wasn’t jazzy enough to be jazz, not classical enough to be classical. He became this ‘thing’ for America – to some extent representative of their integration, considering that jazz is a form of music that came from the black people of America.”
In the UK, Nixon put Northern Ballet on the map, transforming it into a powerhouse of innovative dance programmes. He left an