Exploring our humanity through dance
Figure of Eight Dance Collective present a double bill of dance at the Baxter, writes Theresa Smith
IT HAS BEEN a long time since the Baxter Theatre commissioned a dance piece outside its annual dance festival. So, Grant and Shaun: A Double Bill of Dance comes as an added bonus.
Grant van Ster and Shaun Oelf were awarded Baxter’s artist of the year award last year, capping a year in which they distinguished themselves on whatever festival platforms they appeared.
Baxter chief executive and artistic director Lara Foot liked what they did with Couched, a piece originally commissioned for the 2013 Baxter Dance Festival, and vowed to bring them on to the main programming at the theatre complex, for a season of their own.
Van Ster choreographed Oelf’s performance in Foot’s Fleur du Cap winning Fishers of Hope, which travels to the State Theatre next month, to Germany in June and Durban in August.
Both are part of the Baxter Theatre Centre and Sweden’s Scenkonst Sörmland’s successful collaborations of I Hit the Ground Running (2013) and Struck Silent (2014), and they are off to Sweden later this year for research for the third and final part of that particular collaboration which will be performed at the Baxter early next year.
When Oelf and Van Ster work together though, it is as the Figure of Eight Dance Collective (FO8), where they bring in various collaborators depending on the nature of the projects.
“Part of it is to work with as many artists as possible, to expose ourselves to, and also to learn from,” said Van Ster.
They already have the next few months mapped out.
They are taking Couched and We Left (which debuted in the parking tunnel at the back of the Artscape Theatre for last month’s Infecting the City Festival) to the AfroVibes Festival in Holland in October.
“They’re looking at starting Couched outside and people would follow us into the theatre for We Left,” said Van Ster.
Oelf laughs when I ask whether the theatre will reinforce the props for them, “so the couch won’t break” he agreed.
The two perform a series of seemingly effortless lifts and throws in Couched, some of which means both place a lot of pressure on said piece of furniture (they broke two different ones when performing on Queen Victoria Street for Infecting the City last year).
For this Baxter double bill, they will present Most Honest Man and The Architecture of Tears which they created last year with dancer-musician Thabisa Dinga and choreographer-director Ananda Fuchs for the Cape Town Fringe Festival.
The Architecture of Tears was most recently performed at the 2015 Dance Umbrella in Joburg.
For this Baxter season, Ciara Barron will perform the female role from today until Tuesday and Dinga will return to the role from Wednesday to April 18.
Architecture sees the three dancers explore human responses to attraction beyond gender and social correctness.
When they first performed it at the Hiddingh Hall, they had to start it three times over because the video projection wasn’t working.
The astounding part of the show though was not only how they managed to stay focused, but they actually improved the performance each time.
Most Honest Man is different to the work they have been presenting over the past year, taking its starting point from a specific story, Shakespeare’s Othello.
The premiere of Most Honest Man also marks the debut of Baxter artists-inresidence Mdu Kweyama and Alex McCarthy.
Supervised by Foot, Kweyama heads the production as director and choreographer, while McCarthy is assistant director and handles dramaturgy.
McCarthy was familiar with Othello, and Most Honest Man looks at the relationship between Othello (Van Ster) and Iago (Oelf), exploring the notions of jealousy and its power to destroy.
Kweyama, a former Jazzart dancer with a Masters in directing from UCT, says working with two such accomplished dancers cuts down on the amount of choreography he has to originate, leaving him to concentrate on story and intent.
Working with a dramaturg also has its perks.
“It makes the director’s job easy. He did all the dirty work,” he laughs, looking at McCarthy.
“My job is to stimulate Mdu. He’s the maker,” said McCarthy who is the dramaturg who brings particular suggestions to the director’s attention. “And, then, we argue. Then, he goes and does it, and I critique the doing of it.”
Most Honest Man was created organically, choreographed as they worked on it, with Kweyama and McCarthy originally wanting a guitarist playing live on stage.
This has morphed into a combination of a recorded soundscape which Bongile Mantsai has created with Tembelani Qhwalana playing on the stage during the performance.
Grant and Shaun: A Double Bill of Dance is on the Baxter Flipside stage from today until April 18.