Leaps of faith and a life of dance
Dada Masilo and I are enjoying wild oysters at Fishmonger in Rosebank, Johannesburg. She comes here a lot, she tells me and always orders the oysters.
I can see the appeal. Oysters are an instant hit of celebration and indulgence. The life of a professional dancer and one of South Africa’s pre-eminent choreographers is a thing of discipline, order, routine and endless international touring, so a small gustatorial flight of fancy is a must.
Plus, despite being a classic offering at any self-respecting fish restaurant, oysters are surprising by nature, with a renegade quality that is an acquired taste.
I am probably reading too much into the menu, but seldom in the life of this column has the food and the subject so closely coalesced in spirit. By which I mean Dada is best known for taking classical ballet repertoire and giving it a thoroughly contemporary revision. Her work is a surprise; it is powerful precisely because she forces you to revisit and rethink the stories you thought you already knew. Just like the leap of faith you take every time you raise the oyster shell to your lips.
She was born and raised by her grandmother in Meadowlands, Soweto, where she started dancing at 11. At 12 she fortuitously met Suzette le Souer from The Dance Factory, who offered her formal dance training in ballet, contemporary and improvisation. She auditioned for the National School of the Arts for high school and by 14 she had decided that this was her chosen path.
After matriculating she went to Jazzart in Cape Town because she wanted to prepare to go to the Performing Arts Research and Training Studio (Parts) in Brussels one of the most respected and prestigious dance and choreography schools in the world.
“I auditioned in 2004 a very scary audition. They auditioned 800 students and took 30. I was there for two years. When I was 14 the company called Rosas, which is affiliated to the school, came to perform in South Africa. I had never seen people move like that before. They have this technique that fuses the realistic gestures of daily life with formal dance. It is really amazing, and I wanted to learn how to move like that. To learn something different.”
It was not easy living in Brussels. “It was horrible six months of winter. I never wanted to choreograph, because it is a lot of work. I just wanted to dance, but they forced us to in the second year and that is when I started, and in 2008 I got the Standard Bank Young Artist award for my Romeo and Juliet. I did Carmen, Giselle, Swan Lake, and I have just been touring with The Sacrifice, which is inspired by Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.”
I realise that she is very discreet about what is a stellar global career.
She has all these classical works and makes them new. “I want to see how I can incorporate them into how we live now. Taking the fairy tale out of the ballet and making them more real. Telling stories that are linked to now.”
How does she do that? “I’m very big on people-watching and observing what is going on, so I make sure that I know what is going on in the world, even though it is surprising at times.”
Her dance company is based in Newtown, where they are rehearsing her Hamlet in the mornings. In the afternoons she is rehearsing with the Joburg Ballet for Salomé, her first work for the company that she has choreographed in response to 30 years of democracy. It is part of the Joburg Ballet’s Scar/city programme taking place from March 15-24.
“I have always been intrigued by Salomé .I think it is about obsession and about having power but not knowing necessarily how to use it.”
Salomé is a rare chance to see her work in South Africa. “We have not performed here for a very long time, because of loadshedding; it’s very dangerous.”
I ask her what she is saying to our government through this work. “There is too much inequality and I am thinking of the Herod character in Salomé, and gender-based violence. I was asking a friend last week, ‘Do you think our government ever feels any remorse for all this corruption?’ It has just become the norm. And someone else said they don’t care really.”
I am in awe of her ability to say so much through the medium of dance. “I think what I find interesting is that with all the different works I’ve made I’ve tried to find out where in the body the emotion comes from in terms of movement.
“So with Juliet, because of the innocence, it’s very lithe and airy, with Carmen it’s very visceral from the gut. So I chose to change it up a little bit, so normally she dies, so I kill Albert and I shake him to death. So it is also empowering,” she says.
“And with Swan Lake I changed the gender stereotypes. There is this misconception that men who dance are gay, and I was like what happens if they are in fact gay.”
She is now turning her attention to the classics of literature. “Because I feel I have done all the ballets that I wanted to, we are doing Hamlet — 10 dancers, an opera singer, a violinist and two actors. We should be premiering in the summer. We spent months with Dorothy Ann Gould to work on the story — she is amazing.”
Dance is everything to her. “For me it is life, it is a way in which I’ve been able to deal with a lot of things, powerful emotions, to figure out and know my body and to be happy in my own skin.”