MY LIFE IN DANCE
ONE of the highlights of this year’s Dance Umbrella is a piece that celebrates Adele Blank, the 71-year-old South African doyenne of choreography, teasingly entitled Blank Page!
Blank’s career in dance started at the age of six with classical ballet. She trained in Johannesburg under Faith de Villiers, Denise Schultz and Sheila Wartski. Blank learnt and subsequently taught the Cecchetti technique of classical ballet for years before she leapt into her own stride. In 1984, she was appointed Principal of the Dance Department at the Performing Arts Workshop. Three years later, when PAW funding dried up, she formed the Free Flight Dance Company with Christopher Kindo. When Kindo returned to Cape Town, her daughter Natalie, in partnership with Russell Cummings, replaced him. Under Blank’s direction Free Flight travelled all over the world.
My first contemporary dance work was supported by Sylvia Glasser, in 1987. At the time, I was collaborating with Sylvia, Wendy de la Harpe and Robyn Orlin. My first piece was Cacophony , which toured Israel in 1979. It featured black and white dancers on stage together. The group was named 8+1. It was banned in South Africa.
Blank Page! started off as a kind of
flash mob. Involving dancers like Nelisiwe Xaba, Mamela Nyamza and my daughter Natalie Fisher, and it grew out of the idea propagated by Debbie Allen’s One Billion Rising flash mob, engaging with breaking the chain of women abuse, which was done in the US in February this year.
I decided to do it with a focus on the strong, spiritual women I’m
working with, not the heavy stuff around women abuse in our society. In April, we did a flash mob in Wembley Square, Cape Town. We told our friends: “Please come and have coffee with me and some of my friends”, and people came out of curiosity. We were sitting around, seeming to be drinking coffee and chatting and then Mamela banged her hand on a chair, the music started and the flash mob began! It was great fun.
That idea has developed into what you will see on stage on September 3, 4 and 5 at the Market Theatre. Everyone whose life I have touched will be there… well, nearly everyone. There’s a lot! I met with some former students recently. Some of them are nearly grandmothers themselves — can you imagine what that makes me! There’s also a few fantastic celebrity surprises in Blank Page!
My greatest inspiration is my
daughter, Natalie. My family has always been on my side. I’m also inspired by the youth. They will tackle anything. It’s their naïveté that makes them so wonderful to work with.
In choreography you’re as good as
your tools [the dancers]. It’s been quite a journey. — Robyn Sassen