Dance pair recalls isolation of lockdown with emotional production
‘It’s all about longing for creative space and freedom’
Award-winning contemporary dance duo Fana Tshabalala and Thulani Chauke critically interrogate personal and social issues in their latest collaboration Reflection and Reflex.
The piece opened on Tuesday at the Market Theatre in Newtown, Johannesburg. It will run until Sunday.
The two choreographers have been working together for more than 10 years but have dug deep on this one.
Time Out visited the duo at their rehearsals preparing for the first preview on Monday. As we watch the rehearsal with a TV crew filming the performance, the duo starts pushing a house-size steel cage situated right in the middle of the John Kani stage clockwise.
The movement starts slowly and the speed increases while music is playing in the background. This happens close to 20 minutes and the whole exercise starts getting to you as an audience.
The two men dance in poetic relationship evolving in multiple forms. Sitting down with them after rehearsal, Tshabalala is all smiles because the plan has come together and they are ready to open the show.
With the dance piece physical asking a lot on their bodies, he admits that some days they are too tired that they struggle to fall asleep.
Tshabalala, born and raised in Sebokeng in the Vaal, explains that the concept of Reflection and Reflex developed during lockdown where people were not allowed to be in one room [in large numbers].
It was inspired by how the lockdown forced us to be confined to certain spaces for a certain period and how that affected creatives.
“The idea behind the show deals with the issue of being in an isolated space where creativity is no longer there. During lockdown, we could not physically rehearse in one space and see each other as friends and families. We long for the rehearsal space but the regulations did not allow us.”
Chauke chips in: “It is all about longing for creative space or creative freedom. It is all about wanting to go out and expressing yourself.”
Tshabalala further explains the idea: “I realised during lockdown that whenever I will call him since we are more like brothers, I will find that we are going through the same emotions and suffer same problems. It did look like that we are all frustrated by this lockdown thing.”
Tshabalala points out that the cage they used in the show represents space of living, mental space or environment.
The seasoned dancers who are also in a residency programme at University of Johannesburg (UJ) say the conceptual part of the dance piece was challenged.
Tshabalala says when UJ Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture sold an idea to them of use the cage structure and create a piece around it, they struggled to utilise in the dance piece.
“We did not want to do the usual approach, hold the structure and dance around it. It was too obvious for us. We wanted to come up with something unique and deep in terms of concepts. We struggled to get the entry point.
“We realised that when we started rehearsing the show Thulani was abroad and I was in South Africa. I will videotype my rehearsals and send a clip to see what I have done.
He will do the same where he is. We used the two different locations as our entry point.”
Chauke, who is the man behind the music, says the whole process of looking at Tshabalala’s clip and creating music was a reflection and reflex in its own.
The two firstly presented the show last year at UJ as part of the launch of Broken Borders Arts Project and it got positive reviews. In 2013, Tshabalala was named the Standard Bank Young Artist Award Winner for Dance. In 2018, he received Black Excellence Award in Chicago.
Chauke began his formal training in 2009 at Moving into Dance Mophatong (MIDM) as part of the Performing Arts Training Course (PATC).
He recently came back from an international tour with Sybil, a production by William Kentridge.
‘‘ It’s all about going out and expressing yourself